EAS Category:

• Personal Illness or Disability

Supporting Documents:

• Personal Illness coversheet including personal statement
• School Statement
• Patient Statement

Background

Lin lived with chronic illness through her senior studies. A problem with her immune system meant she was prone to frequent, severe infections of the sinuses and lungs.

This had caused permanent lung damage, so flare ups could be really scary. She sometimes had trouble breathing because mucus had blocked her airways. When this happened, she needed urgent medical help.

Unfortunately, though she was in regular treatment – a weekly three-hour specialist appointment for a blood infusion – her condition deteriorated across her last two years of high school. When she wasn’t skipping class to go to the clinic, she was off sick. All up, she missed more than a month in year eleven and nearly three months in year twelve.

Lin’s school was supportive, offering exemptions from some assessment items and extensions on others. But she still found it hard to keep up. Between the pressure of year twelve and managing her health, she had little time or energy for anything else.

Exhausted, she stopped seeing friends on weekends and dropped out of her once-beloved yoga classes, so she could devote more time to study. Late in the year, her doctor referred her to a psychologist, who diagnosed Lin with moderate anxiety and depression. Soon, she was in treatment for her mental as well as her physical health.

Application

To support her application in the Personal Illness or Disability category, Lin supplied a coversheet, a school statement, and a patient statement.

In the personal statement section of the coversheet, she described in her own words the way illness had affected her senior studies.

The school statement, completed by a guidance officer, confirmed the school was aware of both her physical and mental health struggles. It also verified the number of days of senior schooling she had missed due to illness and the amount of help the school had been able to offer her.

Most important was the patient statement, completed by the family doctor who had been managing her treatment. The doctor corroborated Lin’s diagnosis and treatment plan for both her immunodeficiency and her depression. In the patient statement, the doctor explained the main symptoms in a simple way that QTAC’s EAS assessors, who were not medical experts, could understand. It was the opinion of the doctor that illness had severely impacted Lin’s grades in years eleven and twelve.

Outcome

Remarkably, Lin still achieved solid year twelve results, despite all the hardship she had faced. However, her selection rank was well below what she needed to get into a highly competitive Bachelor of Nursing at her first-choice institution.

With some guidance from QTAC’s contact centre, Lin made smart choices about her preferences. She listed nursing at another slightly less competitive institution as her second preference. Though still below the cut off, she was now within a few ranks. Once the EAS assessor applied an educational adjustment, Lin received an offer for her second preference course.