‘I was one mark away’: Oscar’s reaction to receiving his HSC results

2 months ago 16

Year 12 student Oscar Bradfield went on a three-hour-long drive from Sydney to go camping in Jervis Bay days before HSC results came out.

“I just wanted to take my mind off it,” the Inner Sydney High School student said.

Inner Sydney High School HSC student Oscar Bradfield opens his results with parents Sarah Oquist and Michael Bradfield.

But on returning home the day before HSC results were released on Thursday, the stress of receiving his scores and ATAR set in.

“One of my friends even called me at 3am, I slept pretty badly,” he said.

Oscar was one of almost 84,000 students across NSW who were able to access their HSC results from 6am, with those eligible for an ATAR set to receive them at 9am.

It was the first time students from Inner Sydney High School had sat the HSC, having started as the first year 7 cohort in 2020.

The Herald was with Oscar on his first day at the school and met him again for what is, technically, his last.

Oscar Bradfield, then aged 12, poses for first-day-of-high-school photos as he heads off to the brand new school, Inner Sydney High on January 29, 2020.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Shortly after sunrise on Thursday, Oscar gathered with his mother and father in their living room. The trio huddled around his laptop and eagerly awaited the email containing his results.

Letting out a sigh, Oscar looked over his results and said: “That’s OK, I’m happy with that. It’s a big relief.”

Oscar got exactly what he predicted: band 6s for economics, business studies, advanced maths and biology, a band 5 for advanced English and an E3 score for mathematics extension 1.

After congratulating him, his dad added: “And now it doesn’t matter. He’s probably never going to look at it again!”

Oscar was slightly disappointed that he received marks of 89 for English and 44 for mathematics extension 1 – scores just shy of the top performance bands.

“I was one mark away for a band six in English, and one mark away from an E4 for maths.”

He felt the happiest seeing that he had got an assessment mark – or the internal school result – of 95 in economics, which ended up being his second-highest result overall, after advanced maths.

He almost dropped it to study physics instead, and told himself he would cruise by the first few weeks and not pay too much attention.

Surprisingly, he ended up loving it, and placed first in the subject his cohort at Inner Sydney High School.

“Being able to do something in class and being able to directly see it as it’s happening in real life is really interesting. In economics, you can see when the cash rate moves, and seeing how that affects the economy,” he said.

Economics is also known for being a content-dense HSC subject with concepts that could be difficult for students to grasp, but Oscar admitted he barely took any notes for it.

“Conceptually understanding everything was what really helped me. If I got to understand something, I didn’t need to memorise everything. I could think about it and kind of make these links in my head, that was really fun to do,” he said.

Oscar is aiming for an ATAR above 94 once they are released to students at 9am and wants to study economics at the University of Sydney.