RMIT Is Spilling the Tea on Their Early Offer Program

Here’s how your life experience could get you into uni.

With the year halfway done, most Year 12 students will be focusing on getting a good ATAR from their exams to claim a spot at university, but what if we told you that your ATAR isn't the only thing that could help you get into Uni?

Let’s be real: the ATAR isn’t always the best way to measure a student’s university potential. It doesn’t factor in underperforming in exams due to stress, family situations at home, and even a student’s life experience and skills.

Thankfully, unis like RMIT University have realised this and are taking more than just your grades into account when you apply for a course. Basically, with RMIT’s Early Offer program you can secure your spot in uni before your final exams.

Here’s how it works.

What is RMIT’s Early Offer program?

RMIT wants to show you that you're more than just your ATAR. Sure, your ranking might tell unis that you are good at coursework and studying, but in terms of real-world life skills, an ATAR can’t measure that.

To do this, they want to recognise any life experiences and skills that you have acquired outside of school and reward you for it with an early conditional offer to study your dream course before exams even start.

Pretty sweet, right?

What life experience does RMIT recognise?

Basically, anything that you have done in the past contributes to life experience and skills that you have learnt along the way. This can be coaching a sports team, being a school prefect, producing a film or creating your own website.

To make it easier for you, RMIT have broken life experience and skills into five categories:

1. Analytical and Critical Thinking
2. Interpersonal Skills and Teamwork
3. Leadership
4. Communication
5. Creative Thinking and Innovation

Within each category are examples of skills that can help you refine your abilities when you submit your application.

For example, let’s say you started your own screen-printing t-shirt business in high school. That would be demonstrating entrepreneurial skills, which comes under Category 5: Creative Thinking and Innovation.

Nothing is off limits if you believe it relates to one of the categories.

How do I apply?

Applying for the Early Offer Program is super easy. Just choose two of the above five categories and write an epic summary of your skills and life experience in 200 words per category. Don’t forget to include how long you spent gaining that experience and why it relates to the chosen category.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to provide some evidence to beef up your application. This can be a a reference letter from where you did work experience or volunteered, a certificate of completion (like TAFE or a coding course), awards and even a link to some of your creative work like a film you edited or an app you made.

Be sure to include a different form of evidence for each category you're applying for.

Am I eligible?

The great thing is there aren’t many hoops to jump through to be eligible for RMIT’s Early Offer program. To apply, you just need to check off these three requirements:

• Be a current Australian Year 12 or IB (or equivalent) student.
• Be an Australian or New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident of Australia.
• Must be applying for your course through VTAC.
• Must submit your Early Offer application through RMIT by 30 August.

Once you've landed your conditional offer from RMIT, and to receive your full offer from RMIT, your Early Offer course must be the highest eligible preference in your VTAC application. Don't forget to list your RMIT course in VTAC by 30 September to avoid any late fees!

How simple is that?

To find out more about the RMIT Early Offer program visit this link here.

Header Image: @charlesdeloye via Unsplash