Manjimup Senior High School pair Emily Karafillis and Samuel Pitts achieve amazing ATAR scores

Two students from Manjimup Senior High School have achieved outstanding Australian Tertiary Admission Rank results. The ATAR system puts students in a percentile to indicate their academic accomplishments relative to their peers, with MSHS graduates Emily Karafillis and Sam Pitts registering scores of 97.65 and 96.20 respectively. The proliferation of early university offers and their impact on the attractiveness of the more challenging ATAR pathway has been a recent concern in the education system, but Emily — who took up an unconditional early offer — said it did not affect her level of motivation. “Once I got my early offer, it just took the pressure off,” she said. “I still definitely wanted to do the best I could.” Most universities boost the ATAR of students who complete their schooling outside major cities in their own rankings, but Sam said the advantages of a regional education did not end there. “The classes are a lot smaller, for example, there was only four kids in my modern history class, so you get more one-on-one time with the teacher,” he said. Emily will undertake a traineeship in the lab at the Greenbushes lithium mine next year before heading to Perth to begin a degree in biomedical science with the hope of becoming a regional GP, while Sam is taking a gap year but has locked in an offer to study molecular sciences and biotechnology.