Not every NSW student who finished year 12 late last year did the HSC.
International Baccalaureate students have had to wait almost a month longer for their results, which finally arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning from the UK.
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Can you game the ATAR?
How does scaling work, and is it possible to game the ATAR system?
Clare Leslie was among the happiest of those. The Queenwood student, from Mosman, received the highest possible IB mark of 45, which translates to an ATAR of 99.95. she was one of just 94 students worldwide to do so in this session.
She chose to do the IB over the HSC because of the subjects she could do - Spanish and psychology - and because it would give her tiny, personalised classes of just two or three students.
"IB is really meant to be an all-rounder type thing - so it's not for everyone," she said. "If you hate maths or can't wrap your head around a language I wouldn't recommend it."
Clare hopes to study medicine at the University of Sydney, and with the rest of the 2016 school leavers has until midnight on Friday to apply for the universities' main round offers.
Just 15 NSW schools - all non-government - offer the IB as well as the HSC, but at some, such as Redlands in Cremorne and St Paul's Grammar in Cranebrook, more than half the year 12 cohort chose the IB over the HSC in 2016.
That number fluctuates at each school but Antony Mayrhofer from St Paul's, who is also on the IB Schools Australasia committee, says enrolments are growing at roughly 10 per cent each year. 5,205 students in Australia and New Zealand did the IB last year, of some 161,000 worldwide.
"It is an international program, offered in about 130 countries worldwide. It's been running for more than 40 years. And it's one of the most recognised matriculation programmes in the world. So no matter where you go, universities recognise it," he said.
Mr Mayrhofer said the IB put strong emphasis on critical thinking and independent study, and sought to prepare students for tertiary work.
Because the IB tends to draw high-achieving students and is not reported with the Board of Studies' HSC results, schools with high IB cohorts can be misrepresented as underperformers in the HSC "league tables" or rankings, he said.
"Some schools that had gone down in the Herald HSC rankings had increasing IB enrolments - like Canberra Grammar," he said.
The mean ATAR of St Paul's went up 10 ATAR points when the IB results were included along with HSC results.
Kim Elith, director of curriculum at Queenwood, said the school had offered the IB since 2001.
"We feel that it's a really good credential for the right kind of student, students particularly interested in a multidisciplinary approach to their studies.
"We are also aware that a lot of the newspapers put emphasis on league tables and the outcomes in those, but the IB is not counted because the league tables are based on the number of [HSC] band 6s not ATAR results.
"We want everyone to understand that more and more students are doing the IB and it can be a fantastic leverage for students."
Students completing the IB diploma over year 11 and 12 must do a language, maths, science and humanities subject, a critical thinking course, as well as charity or volunteer work and an independent 4000-word research essay.
Just 11 students at Queenwood did the IB in 2016, but this year there will be 33.
At Redlands, 69 students took the IB - more than half the class. In total, 20 of them received a mark of 40 or higher, which translates to an ATAR above 98.
A school spokesman said that about half the IB students planned to go to university overseas.
One of these was Grace Galloway, a champion junior rower, who achieved an early acceptance offer into a liberal arts degree at Yale in the US.
"I got the marks this morning, I'm pretty happy I can move on now," she said. Compared with her friends who did the HSC, "it's felt like forever".
"I thought that the IB suited me better because of the breadth of subjects it makes you do. Personally I don't know exactly what I want to do at university, so doing a subject from each field suited me better. I also really liked how there was no scaling in IB so it was very transparent.
"But, in saying that, the HSC definitely suits some people better. Lots of my friends did the HSC and they loved it so I think it's really just a matter of what suits you best as a student."