Uni hopefuls wait for a place

TEACHING runs in Nic Johnston's family, so tonight when he finds out his university placement you can guess what he hopes to get into.The 18-year-old will be one of more than 2000 Ballarat students to receive a university offer tonight.Nic, a former St Patrick's College student, said he was lucky to have finished his VCE exams at all.During his preparation for exams, Nic was struck down with a severe case of tonsillitis leaving him exhausted and sore.Luckily, he was granted derived scores and achieved an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) score of 88.55, hopefully enough to land him a position in the University of Ballarat's teaching course."I want to study how to teach years prep to 10 but eventually focus on primary school teaching," he said."One of the big reasons is probably the lack of male teachers out there for young students."Studying at St Patrick's College, Nic said he had numerous male teachers who acted as good role models, but said there was one in particular he recalled."In primary school I had a teacher called Mr Sullivan and he was a really good bloke," he said.There's also the fact Nic's father gives singing lessons in the front room of their house and his mother is a year level co-ordinator at his former secondary school.With results due to be announced tonight, Nic said he was not as stressed as some of his other friends."The score for teaching is around 50 or 60 so I should be OK," he said."But then some kids are waiting for a place that needs a 92 and they only have 90, so that's a lot tougher. Many of my friends have applied to Melbourne universities with higher scores and have Ballarat or Geelong courses as back-ups."