Securing a spot at university has become more difficult, with students needing a higher ATAR to get into most courses.
After sweating out the summer in anticipation, thousands of university hopefuls found out on Wednesday whether they had been accepted into the course of their choice.
First round of uni offers today: got an offer and they accepted it for me? I got this #unistudent #justgottaenrolnow
— Talia (@tali_mckenzie) January 16, 2017
While criminology, physiotherapy, nursing and agriculture had become more popular, interest in teaching, paramedicine and journalism has waned, according to a Fairfax Media analysis of four years of admissions data.
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Figures released by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre on Wednesday showed that 54,045 students received main round offers for undergraduate courses, down 5.5 per cent from the previous year. This means it is more difficult to get into a course because there are fewer places, hiking up ATAR requirements.
A sense of relief swept over students who took to social media to share their news.
The hardest courses to get into were the Chancellor's Scholars Programs in Arts, Biomedicine, Commerce and Science at Melbourne University, which only a select few would have achieved the required ATAR of 99.90.
Optometry at Deakin University in Geelong was the hardest course non-scholars program to get into, with a clearly-in score of 98.75, a cut-off which has steadily risen over the past few years.
The three most popular courses were Melbourne University degrees in Arts (which needed an ATAR of 89.3), Science (85.00) and Commerce (95.00). at the University Melbourne. These courses are consistently the most sought and typically attract about 2000 first preference applications each year.
Another sought-after course was medicine at Monash University's Clayton campus, which 1701 students put as their first preference but for which 123 people received a first round offer.
But fewer year 12 leavers want to pursue a career in journalism. The number of students who put the once incredibly popular journalism course at RMIT as their first preference has dropped for the past three consecutive years. And this year the cut-off ATAR was 81.2, down from 90.25 in 2014.
Much to the delight of the Andrews government, which is trying to boost entry standards for teachers, the average ATAR of students applying for education courses increased from 57.35 to 62.74.
The state government is introducing tough new entry standards for teaching courses, which will require students to achieve a minimum ATAR of 65 in 2018 and 70 the following year. While first round offers for graduate entry teaching courses plummeted by 47 per cent, there was a 5 per cent increase in undergraduate main round offers.
Education Minister James Merlino said the rise in average ATARs for education courses was "very welcome news".
"Our reforms to teacher education, which will come into effect from 2018, will attract the best and brightest into the profession."
Average ATARs required for courses increased in most fields of studies, except for agriculture and environment, which fell by 1 per cent.
Many popular nursing courses were harder to get into this year.
Students wanting a place at nursing courses at Deakin or Australian Catholic University needed an ATAR more than 10 points higher than the cut-off three years ago to be guaranteed a spot.
VTAC director Catherine Wills said that the decline in main round offers could be due to the rise of people applying directly to universities.
And for TAFEs, main round offers fell by 18.6 per cent to 5762 students.
Zein Alhamdani was one of the lucky students on Wednesday. Not only did he get his first preference, he was among 7 per cent of people who applied to study medicine at Monash University who were given a first-round offer.
"I found out this morning and woke up my family and screamed … they thought there was some sort of intruder," he said.
Zein, who achieved an impressive 99.4 ATAR at Suzanne Cory High, said he got through the year by being a "firm believer in balance".
He took regular breaks from study, and reached out to other students studying the VCE on the internet, including on the popular website ATAR Notes.
"I enjoyed getting reassurance that other students were feeling the way that I was feeling," he said."People would often advise on what you should and shouldn't do, and this allowed me to not make mistakes myself."
In a bid to boost transparency, VTAC has scrapped changes that it introduced last year and which meant clearly-in ATARs were no longer published for courses where 60 per cent or more of offers went to students below the clearly-in ATARs. It now requires all university courses – which make more than 10 offers to school leavers and which use ATARs the main criteria for enrolment– to publish their selection data.
Last year, only 25 per cent of Victorian courses published their clearly-in ATARs. This has increased to 28 per cent this year. However, even with the changes, a smaller proportion of courses are publishing clearly-in ATAR scores than in 2014 and 2015, when cut-offs were published for about four in 10 courses.