Is an ATAR necessary for me?

[Pollyy12]

Hello,

I am undergoing my VCE currently via Distance Education.

I will be finishing my VCE (currently scored) by the time I am 20 years old, I am still unsure exactly what course I will do, all I am aware of is it will be something in the IT field.

Question: Considering I will be completing my VCE at such a late age, is an ATAR necessary for me? I would preferably like to go to University, although the entire process of getting an ATAR is extremely stressful for me. I would absolutely love a definitive answer.

Thank you! Let me know if you need any other info etc.

[darkz]

Hey
So I saw that you were interested in the IT field and thus I don't really think that completing VCE would be completely necessary. This is simply because a lot of the applications in the IT industry don't actually require an ATAR per say, as you can self-learn and then get yourself into the industry and then complete further training etcetera. (A lot of the best programmers are actually self-taught!)
Hope this helps

[Aaron]

IT is an extremely competitive field.

My personal thoughts are that you would be getting a uni degree for the look, rather than anything. Again, really competitive.

I have an IT degree myself and realistically if we lived in an ideal world, practical TAFE/hands on learning would be sufficient.. unfortunately most employers in the IT field look for a Bachelor degree minimum.

If you intend on creating your own business in IT, then practical training would be sufficient. But for anything decent, uni is the way to go. This is coming from somebody who knows quite a number of people in industry now via my uni days (in various areas such as programmer, database admin, developers etc).


In regards to uni itself, I know somebody who entered uni that left school during Yr 10 and did a diploma first at a RTO. If you were to go down the non-ATAR path, you'd need something else to back yourself up with (such as a diploma or cert recognised by the uni you want to go to).


My advice would be to look up some job ads in an area which you'd potentially be interested in (e.g. database admin, front-end developer etc) and see what the job ads are requiring. That will give you an idea.