By Michael Newhouse
FOR VCE students around the state, logging onto the information super highway for results might be easier than waiting by the mailbox, but for one successful St Albans student snail mail was the only way to go.
Last Monday, as thousands of Victorian students scurried to their computers to view their VCE results online, St Albans’ Duncan Tong was sitting on his hands, determined to wait for his results to appear in the letterbox the next day – a satisfying end to one of the most important years of his life.
“I guess a letter confirms it, is more official,” the 17-year-old St Albans Secondary College student said.
“My sister and my mum checked it on the net because they were dying to find out,” he said.
“I told them not to say anything.”
When Mr Tong’s results did come, the long wait was worth it.
He came out on top of his graduating class, earning himself an ENTER score of 97.9 after he decided to study mostly maths and science subjects during his final year of high school.
“I was just kind of in shock because I didn’t expect myself to get that high,” Mr Tong said, saying he’d hoped only for a score above 90.
Next year Mr Tong hopes to study optometry at Melbourne University – one of the state’s most highly sought-after courses – with only a couple of dozen places available.
Six students from St Albans Secondary College earned ENTER scores over 90, while 20 of the school’s 103 VCE students received scores over 80.
Only one student failed.
To recognise this year’s VCE high achievers, the school will hang photographs of every student who achieved an ENTER score above 80 in the administration building for all to see, a process it has done for the past few years.
“The results in the last three or four years have been consistently high, and we’re very proud of it,” senior school coordinator Phil McMillan said.
He said over the past decade St Albans Secondary College had built up a reputation for VCE excellence.
“Every year we think ‘will this group of kids be able to perform as well as the previous’ – and they have, they haven’t let us down,” Mr McMillan said.
Another member of the school’s 90-plus club, Ha Phan, scored a perfect 50 for English and an overall score of 96.35.
Ms Phan’s family moved to Australia from Asia when she was a child, and her mother encouraged her to read from a very early age.
Ms Phan said she would possibly like to put her English skills to use as professional writer.
After the initial flurry of excitement that followed last week’s results, attention will now shift to first-round university offers, which come out on Tuesday, 16 January.
