16 Dec 2019 | 3 mins

Well, folks, the wait is finally over.

Over a decade of rocking up to class, learning a bunch of stuff you may never need to know again in your life, trying not to fall asleep during morning assemblies, gossiping, studying your ass off, stressing out over exams, and cramming thousands of words into your head in a particular order only to forget them all 24 hours later.

Over a decade of all those tears, all that laughter and all that nonsense. Over a decade of learning, all finally summed up and served as one deceptively simple number:

Your ATAR.

Some of you will be stoked with the number you received. Some of you will be devastated, disappointed, let down. The rest of you won’t really care. And, strangely, it’s the third group of people above that really are doing it right.

Because what changes after you find out your ATAR?

That’s right – absolutely nothing!

Even if you got an ATAR of negative 50, not a thing has changed. You can still go to uni, you can still take a gap year, you can still hang out with your mates who got a better score than you. You can still find a way into any career you damn well please.

Sure, there’s a chance that if you wanted to do a specific course at a specific uni, it might take you a little longer to complete that course. Or you may have to take a different route to get there than you originally planned. So what?

So you’ve got your ATAR… Congrats! What now? What do you mean, what now?!

Life keeps on going. Keeps on keepin’ on.

You can keep hanging out with your mates. Keep enjoying the summer. Keep being a little turd who annoys their siblings/parents/friends/neighbours to death. Keep being you.

But more importantly: keep pursuing your passions and your goals. If you know what you want to do in life, then kooking it on your ATAR isn’t gonna stop you from getting there. If you got a great ATAR, then that’s sick! Use it if you need to, not because it’s there.

So, study up, go to TAFE, go travel, do that apprenticeship, enroll in a short course, look into uni pathways. Try out a few different ideas. Do whatever it is you want to do with this life of yours and enjoy every damn minute of it.

If you are worried and are looking for a way into uni, pathways like UTS Insearch help prepare students to ace university despite their ATAR. They offer a tonne of different courses that help prep you for uni life and most will fast track you into the second year of a UTS degree, so you’re not even wasting any time. If you do have any questions about your ATAR and where to go from here, Year13's very own CEO Will Stubley was a guest on UTS Insearch's podcast panel You Are Not Defined By Your ATAR today, talking about all things ATAR - tune in over here.

We're proud of all you legends!