EMMA Siejka and Abby Shaw were friends at high school, and now they will be friends at university.
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The two were among an unprecedented number of students seeking a place to start studying at Charles Sturt University from this year.
There have been a total of 1757 offers made by CSU Bathurst since main round offers came out earlier this week.
Emma will study sports and exercise science as a pathway into physiotherapy, while Abby will start a four-year psychology degree.
The young women completed their studies at Bathurst High School last year, and have chosen to stay in Bathurst to continue their education.
“I chose CSU because I wanted to stay in my home town and I have a great job I didn’t want to leave,” Emma said.
“It’s got everything here that I’ll need for my course,” Abby said.
“It’s not too big like some of the Sydney universities are.”
Bathurst’s CSU campus had a seven per cent jump in course demand this year, with 2100 applications to study.
The most popular discipline areas for CSU Bathurst were allied health, communications and education.
The most popular courses were clinical science (paramedic), communications, nursing, criminal justice, education (K-12 and early childhood/primary) and exercise and sports science.
New Bathurst courses this year – Bachelor of Technology/Master of Engineering (Civil Systems), along with the online Bachelor of Laws – both attracted good applicant numbers, according to CSU deputy vice-chancellor (Academic) Professor Toni Downes.
To date, CSU has made 36 offers for engineering, and there have been 30 acceptances, while law attracted 120 applications and more than 30 offers have been made so far.
CSU data also reveals that demand for courses across the university’s six campuses has been strong.
There have been 5800 on-campus offers made to commence study this year – an increase of 14 per cent on 2015.
Professor Downes said high demand to study at the university was due to the range of good quality courses available.
“I would like to congratulate all students who have received an offer to study at university in 2016 and we are excited to be able to make offers to such a large number of students,” she said.
“Bathurst is one of our bigger campuses ... this is a really good result.”
Demand for CSU Online undergraduate and postgraduate courses also remains very strong and as of this week around 8400 offers have been made.