VERITY Duffield was wide awake at 4.30am on Monday.
There was still more than two hours to go until she was able to access her Australian Tertiary Admission Rank result — but the Swan Hill College graduate was simply too nervous to sleep.
After all, it was the moment she, along with thousands of other Victorian year 12 students, had been working towards for two years.
Logging onto the internet at 6.50am, Verity was thrilled to receive her results 10 minutes before they were due to go live.
“I kept refreshing the page, and then it came up at 6.50,” she said.
Expecting a result in the high 80s, Verity was over the moon to learn she scored much higher than she had expected — a 94 out of a possible 99.95, making her the dux of her school.
The cherry on top was discovering she received a perfect score of 50 for legal studies.
Across town, it was a similar story for St Mary MacKillop College dux Chris Barkman, who was thrilled with his result of a 93.8.
Chris studied religious education, accounting, psychology, legal studies, mathematical methods and literature.
“I had been hoping to get in the 90s, but I tried my absolute best not to think about it too much so I wouldn’t drive myself crazy,” he said.
Still unsure of what career path he would like to take, Chris hopes to study a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Criminology and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.
For more on this story, grab a copy of Wednesday’s Guardian (December 17).
