For someone who scored a 98.55 ATAR, Busselton's Thomas McGregor was cool, calm and collected about it all.
"I had an early entry offer from UWA so when I saw the number I just thought 'hey that's cool'," the teenager said.
The Bunbury Cathedral Grammar student said University of WA was offering early entries to certain subjects because of the impact COVID may have had on students' scores.
Normally, to get into the course McGregor wanted he would have needed a score 98, but he was offered a spot unconditionally, which meant it didn't matter what score he achieved.
McGregor's mother Amanda said he was really excited when he heard that he was offered early entry.
"And even more so when we read further and saw that it also came with a guaranteed scholarship and guaranteed accommodation," she said.
Mrs McGregor said they were grateful to UWA for providing this pathway and taking away some of the stress from 2020.
McGregor was one of 11 students at the grammar school to reach an ATAR score of 95 or above.
The Dux of the school went to Lauren Mellet who achieved an impressive score of 99.8.
With the pandemic making an impact on almost every part of our lives in 2020, McGregor said he was lucky that he only had to do online learning for about two to three weeks.
"I didn't like it at all, it wasn't for me," he said.
He said the online classroom was sometimes chaotic and often meant all the students would turn off their microphone and there would be no interaction with each other.
But when students were allowed back at school, things went pretty close to being back to normal.
"There were a couple of things like no assemblies and the school play was delayed until term 4," McGregor said.
McGregor will start his four year course in February, where he is doing a Bachelor of philosophy, majoring in media.
However, he isn't quite sure where the course will take him in the future.
"Being a filmmaker would be really cool but I decided on the course because I enjoy the subjects, not because I know what the next step is," he said.
McGregor said he loved how film was a medium to tell stories and particularly loved to write comedies and satire.
"I did a project last year which was a mockumentary about a man living in an apocalypse," he said.
The teenager said his course was not a normal undergraduate degree but an honours one and would be doing more research based study.