Hard work pays off for student high achievers

St Luke’s College graduates Arshya Pankaj and Jayden Dadleh have done themselves and their school proud by gaining Australian Tertiary Admission Rankings above 95.

Arshya, who was also named as dux of the school last year, said she had found her exams to be “fairly reasonable” and gained the ranking of 98.05.

“I am ever so grateful to all my teachers for giving up their time to come in and do tutoring during the holidays for hours,” she said from India.

“I felt privileged with all that St Luke’s offered in terms of guidance support and preparation material.

“I also owe it to my family for constantly supporting me during the stressful year.” Arshya said that being able to study with friends had helped make the year much easier to handle.

She plans to go to the University of WA to study medicine, and she is now looking forward to the challenge.

Jayden, like Arshya, said the physics exam was by far the hardest.

“I felt quite comfortable with the majority of my exams because I was (mostly) prepared,” he said from Japan.

“I had stepped up with study from previous years but not as much as I would have liked.

“It really does help to make sure you have plenty of time to ask questions and fully understand concepts and theories within our classes.”

Jayden said he planned to go to UWA to study engineering, which his ATAR of 95.35 more than allowed, although he was not sure which discipline he would focus on.

Curriculum co-ordinator Donna Clifford said the school was proud of all the students from the graduating class.

“The majority got ATARs that will allow them to get into the university courses that they wanted,” she said.

“They all worked very hard and I think the students in general are beginning to realise earlier every year just how much work it takes to get the score that they want in the end.

“It is a very stressful time for the Year 12s and they have a short year to get a lot of work done.”