If you are a student considering admission to a top Australian university, one avenue that you should strongly consider is the Early Admissions scheme. While it’s been around a while, it’s recently increased dramatically in scope; both in terms of participating universities and the degrees on offer. This includes degrees in Law and Medicine, depending on the university. That means that if you are considering having your university education be Down Under – then there’s never been a better time to apply.

What’s Early Admission?

As the name suggests – “Early Admission” means that participating Australian universities like Australian National University (ANU), La Trobe, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) will send out conditional, or unconditional offers based on factors like;

1. Your Year 11 academic results;

2. Your impact in your extracurricular or service activities during Year 10 to Year 12;

3. A personal statement (written by you, of course!) detailing your passions and impact in your local community. For example, some of the participating universities, like RMIT, include assessment criteria like a 200-word description of your involvement and impact in your local community.

It’s a radical paradigm shift compared to what you may be familiar with, which is of course the system of Australian universities purely considering your Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) results in Year 12.

Not only are universities considering your academic results a year earlier, but they also are considering you extracurricular engagement. Through the Early Offer Program, your hobbies, extracurriculars passions could be considered alongside your academic results. Furthermore, your life experiences outside the classroom could help you reach your dream degree, allowing you to even be potentially accepted on a lower ATAR while also taking some of the pressure off your final year at high school.

Those are all big changes, but of course, with change comes lots of opportunities for you.

How do I maximize my opportunities in Early Admission?

Here’s the most important thing to note. To be able to be part of the opportunities offered by Early Admission, you must have undertaken your academic studies in Australia from at least Year 11. This makes sense – after all, your Year 11 results are an essential component of what is being assessed in determining your Early Admission offers.

To be clear – if you’ve undertaken your Year 11 in a high school that’s not in Australia, you won’t be able to apply for Early Admission. Instead, you’ll have to apply to normal route that international students usually take – which may not be as guaranteed as a conditional or unconditional offer from an Australian university.

As such – the way to think about it is this. If you must undertake your high school education at least from Year 11 here in Australia, then the way to maximize your academic results for that critical year is to start early and come to Australia as a student earlier, such as in Year 10 or 9, or even as from Year 8 or 7. In this way, by coming early, you’ll be able to create a solid academic foundation for yourself and familiarize yourself with the Australian system, so that when the critical year that is Year 11 swings around, you’ll be able to hit some big home runs and score top grades, maximizing your options in terms of degrees and universities for Early Admission.

Of course, in achieving all this, you’ll also need to apply to a top Australian high school that not only will set you up for academic success, but also will be a great fit for you as a person.

How ivyO can help

At ivyO, we can guide you through the whole journey of Early Admissions to Australian Universities. Not only can we assist you with degree selection and university selection, but we can aid you in that critical step that is selecting your Australian high school, the place that you will call home in the time before you apply to university.

Just as finding a good fit for your academic passions is important for selecting a university degree, so to is it essential that you have a good fit both as a student and as an individual in your high school. ivyO has the knowledge to set you up for success in this important endeavour.

Reach out to ivyO for your free consultation – and let’s talk.