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VCE 2016: The wait is over as thousands of students receive results

Henrietta Cook

The long wait is over for those VCE students who didn't receive their results early.

After an embarrassing technical glitch led to more than 2000 students seeing their results five days ahead of schedule, the majority of school leavers will find out their fate on Monday morning.

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'Oh my God', students get ATAR results

Watch the moment these Melbourne students get their long-awaited ATAR scores.

At 7am, mobile phones will beep across the state and computers will be fired up as 44,628 students receive their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, or ATAR.

The end-of-year rank is the main criteria for entry into most undergraduate university courses and symbolises 13 years of schooling coming to an end.

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The top rank of 99.95 was awarded to 35 students this year, comprising 24 male and 11 female students. These students will have their achievements spruiked by their schools and they will be courted by universities and offered scholarships. 

Female students performed best when it came to the average ATAR – 66.45 for girls compared with 63.76 for boys. The average for all students was 65.20.

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The VCE completion rate was 97.9 per cent, up from 97.7 per cent the previous year.

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But fewer students received a study score of 40 or above. There were 14,649 students who achieved at least one study score of 40 or above (which means they performed in about the top 9 per cent of the state in a particular subject), compared with 14,770 in 2015. Nine per cent of all study scores were 40 or above.

Students who registered to receive their results by SMS during a 90-minute period on Wednesday night were shocked to get their ATAR before the official release. After initial concerns that the premature results may have been a hoax, the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre confirmed in the early hours of Thursday that they were accurate.  

Education Minister James Merlino has ordered an investigation into the unprecedented blunder, which the opposition's education spokesman, Nick Wakeling, said was a sign of bigger issues plaguing education in Victoria.

The blunder was a major embarrassment for the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre, which warned school principals just weeks earlier that they would face serious penalties if they leaked sensitive information about students' ATARs.

It has apologised for the mistake on behalf of all agencies involved.

VTAC director Catherine Wills congratulated all students, and said they should now consider their course preferences.

"It is important that students remember that the ATAR is simply one of many factors – such as interviews, folios, auditions or tests, and special consideration schemes – used for tertiary selection by universities, TAFE institutes and private colleges," she said.

Australian students have until noon on December 20 to change their preferences, while the cut-off for international students is 4pm on December 15.

Follow The Age's live VCE blog from 7am. 

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