Applying to ACU Guarantee

All current domestic Year 12 students, including International Baccalaureate (IB) students, can apply for the ACU Guarantee program. You must have successfully completed Year 11 in Australia – studying subjects that lead to an ATAR – and still be working towards receiving an ATAR or equivalent to be eligible.

You can also choose to supply optional brief statements outlining your personal circumstances and motivation for university study. These may help improve your selection rank.

Most undergraduate degrees are available through this scheme for 2027 entry. Course availability differs by campus – a course may not be offered at one campus, but it may be available at another. If your preferred course is not available through the ACU Guarantee program, or you were unsuccessful with your application, you’ll be able to apply via QTAC, VTAC and/or UAC during Year 12.

Courses included in ACU Guarantee are being reviewed and will be available in May 2026. Please register your interest to find out when you can apply and to learn more about ACU Guarantee.

Some courses have limited spaces – this information will be available in May 2026. These are courses where we monitor numbers closely because of registration quotas or limited field placements. We will offer some places through ACU Guarantee for these courses and reserve some for the offer rounds through UAC, VTAC and QTAC. If you don’t receive a place in your preferred course through ACU Guarantee, you can still apply for that course through the regular TAC process.

No, it is free to apply to ACU Guarantee.

You apply for only one course at the time of application. However, you can change your course at any time throughout the application period. If you receive an offer in round 1 of ACU Guarantee, you can change your course for round 2 without impacting your round 1 offer.

Even if you have applied to ACU Guarantee – and whether you were successful or not – you can still apply for university admission via QTAC, UAC or VTAC based on your Year 12 results.

You can apply for a different course, or the same course. You can also change your ACU Guarantee preferences throughout the application period.

Yes, if your course has prerequisites other than English, you will have to meet those. You can find these in our course browser. If your application is successful and your course has prerequisites other than English, you will receive a conditional offer. This offer is conditional on you successfully completing the prerequisite subject/s. Once those prerequisites are completed, your offer will be converted to an unconditional offer at the next major offer round.

Yes. Applying to ACU Guarantee does not exclude you from applying to other universities.

You apply via the ACU Guarantee Portal on our website. Applications for ACU Guarantee open Monday 20 July 2026.

You may need to upload your results, depending on where you go to school.
 
Results for NSW and ACT students will be uploaded automatically.

IB students and students in all other states – including Queensland and Victoria – will need to upload their Year 11 results to the portal.

Please download a copy of our ACU Guarantee Supplementary Assessment Form below, fill it in, and upload it to the ACU Guarantee Portal once it has been endorsed by your school.

Download ACU Guarantee Supplementary Assessment form (PDF File, 142KB)

Download ACU Guarantee Supplementary Assessment form (Word File, 182 KB)

Here are some examples of completed supplementary assessment forms:
 
Victoria
Tasmania
Queensland
International Baccalaureate
South Australia

By assessing your Year 11 results, any adjustment factors and your personal statements, we can give you a predicted selection rank and make you an offer before you sit your HSC/VCE/QCE.

If you are in NSW or ACT, we can access your Year 11 results automatically. If you live outside of those areas, don’t worry –  you just need to complete and upload our supplementary assessment form as part of the application process.

The only circumstance in which your application may be reassessed is if you upload additional documents that strengthen your application.

As part of our commitment to removing barriers to university participation, the following factors will be considered alongside your academic results to calculate your predicted selection rank:

• Do you live in a rural or regional area?
• Are you attending a school that has a strong relationship with us?
• Do you identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander?
• Are you the first person in your family to attend university?
• Have you completed the ‘Studies in Catholic Thought’ subject in New South Wales?

Please note, these are the only adjustment factors considered for this early offer program. Each adjustment factor adds 3–5 points to your selection rank – up to 10 points maximum.
 
You can also provide up to three personal statements – a maximum of 200 words each – outlining your circumstances and motivation for university study. We will assess these statements while we are calculating your predicted selection rank, and each of these statements can add three points to your section rank. You should address, and your statements will be assessed against, the following:

• Impact through empathy – How you have given back to your community, eg charity work, volunteering, contributions to local networks helping those in need.
• Impact over adversity – How you have overcome financial hardship, personal illness or disability, or disrupted or disadvantaged schooling.
• Impact through family – How you have excelled in school in Australia if you are from a non-English speaking background or a refugee background, or you have a lot of family responsibilities.

Your selection rank can be adjusted by a maximum of 10 points across adjustment factors and impact statements.

No, you do not have to include any statements. You can also choose to include one, two or three statements. The benefit of including statements is you can be awarded adjustment factors which can help your selection rank. Each statement is worth up to three adjustment factors, and you can receive up to nine adjustment factors.

This is where you can tell us how you give back to others, whether that is on a big or small scale. You will be asked to complete the statement, ‘I am a good candidate for university because...’ In this section, you might choose to tell us about your:

• contributions to your local community activities while studying
• volunteer or charity work while studying
• work to improve the environment
• contribution to helping those in need, including fellow students
• contribution to your school community, perhaps as a captain or other representative position of note. Remember, holding the position is not enough. You must share additional information about the good you’ve achieved in the position.

For example:

Throughout Years 11 and 12, I have held the position of School Mission Leader. This role allowed me to further my ability in leadership, collaboration and coordination of events. As part of my role, I worked with a local aged care community group, organising visits from our prep students... This program has taught me the value of inclusivity and of personal contact between people, especially those suffering from loneliness... I believe that my work has had a positive impact on the prep students and the elderly folk in our community.

Some of you have had many difficult situations and circumstances to overcome. This is where you can show us your resilience. In this section, you might choose to tell us how you have:

• overcome financial hardship to continue senior study with help from Centrelink benefits
• overcome homelessness, been displaced from your family or spent time in care during secondary school
• overcome significant personal illness/disability during senior studies
• experienced changes to your family structure during secondary study
• experienced the death or serious illness of a close family member during secondary school
• overcome disrupted/disadvantaged schooling.

Example 1

Throughout Years 10 and 11, I battled the lingering effects of chronic fatigue syndrome which has decreased my ability to attend school and focus my attention in the classroom. It has also affected my mental health due to the stress of the potential impact on my future. To combat this condition, I have worked with my teachers to develop individual timelines and schooling hours, engaging help from external counsellors and health professionals. I have had to admit that I will not achieve a 99.95 but with help and guidance I have been able to maintain the best, passing grades I can and I've learned that life is about hard work and managing expectations.

Example 2

At the start of my Year 11, my family was in conflict which ended in my parents divorcing. I sat my first round of exams shuffling between two new households, with different access to the space, quiet and wi-fi I needed to prepare for my exams. Around me, my parents continued to fight over me and my siblings, pushing and pulling us in various directions. The conflict affected my concentration ability as well as my mental health. I became aware of the value of quiet spaces at school or public libraries and the benefits of teachers willing to devote some time to re-cover material with me. I struggled but I focussed on my future and have maintained grades which should allow me to enter my chosen course.

Our backgrounds shape us and then we shape our world. Tell us how the experiences you’ve come through are shaping the world you’re making. For example, you might have:

• significant family or caring responsibilities including responsibility for financial, emotional or physical support of family members
• a refugee or asylum seeker background
• moved interstate or internationally during senior schooling
• experienced significant loss in a natural disaster such as fire, flood or drought
• experienced discrimination or bullying or witnessed that of a close friend/family.

Example 1

Like ACU, I stand for impact, empathy and change. As a member of a marginalised refugee community, I plan to make an impact on behalf of people like me. Will I change the world? Maybe not. Will I change my world and the world of others like me? Definitely. By attending university, I become a role model for girls from my community. By becoming a teacher, I will be able to give a positive educational experience to others and be a representative of my culture in the Australia of the future. Having battled bullying and cultural isolation at school has motivated me to represent my family and my culture on the stage of my community. That impact starts with studying at a university that shares my vision.

Example 2

As I started Year 12 this year, I learned my sister had Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I've spent my year so far doing my best to support her through her treatment and struggles. While her illness is not my own and her prognosis is good, the impact on our family and home life has helped me to understand the importance of your environment on your ability to achieve, and how support and kindness can make an immense difference to an individual. This has set my goal to study social work and offer support and guidance to those who are struggling, like my sister and those in worse situations. My impact will be small in number but huge in scale to those I work with.

• Be concise and factual – you don’t have a lot of space to tell us what we need to know.
• This is not an English test. We are interested in what you are telling us – you won't lose points for spelling or punctuation errors.
• Try writing a draft first and then copying this to the portal so that you can change your mind if you want to before you commit to the submit button.
• Have a friend, family member or teacher read your draft statement. Two heads are better than one – they may pick up something you have overlooked.
• Statements are assessed on content, not language skills. If you access assistance from advisors, tutors or AI technology to complete your personal statement, please ensure that your submission accurately reflects your personal situation with regards to the criteria.