For Lisa Lokman, 17, who received excellence-endorsed in all of her subjects, it was something of a relief.
"The date of January 15 has been lingering around for a while.
"I'd sort of forgotten about it during the early holidays, but in the past last week I was just thinking about it a bit more."
Lisa studied biology, chemistry and physics, as well as statistics and geography.
The exam period was "quite intense" for the former Otago Girls’ High School student, but perhaps not as stressful as the previous year.
"I did what I could.
"But I think, actually, I felt less internal pressure to do well, because I had already known that I had a scholarship to university and stuff."
Lisa has decided to defer her university studies for a year to take up a gap year in Japan.
"I plan to spend time with my grandparents who are getting older, and just try to pick up on the Japanese language again that I've sort of been forgetting.
"I used to be more fluent."
NZQA deputy chief executive Jann Marshall said more than 160,000 students who worked towards NCEA last year were now able to see their results.
The 2024 NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams were held from November 5 to 29, with 121 exam sessions taking place in 465 exam centres, including 38 in kura, six in the Cook Islands, one on Niue, three in regional health schools and one special centre.
"As with previous years, despite high loads on the NZQA student portal, there have been no delays for students in accessing their results."
Lisa advised future NCEA students to try to find a good study and life balance during the exam period.
"Make sure you've got things that you enjoy. For me, I've enjoyed spending time with family or doing athletics, just having other activities that will also complement your studies — it certainly helped me."
Ms Marshall said attainment was provisional at this stage, as students had an opportunity to request a review or reconsideration of their exam papers. Also, additional results could be received from summer school programmes and schools could submit corrected or late-reported results from internal assessment.
NZQA will release high-level provisional attainment data tomorrow, once it has been provided to schools.
