December 23, 2025 — 12:39pm
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More than 16,000 people have secured entry into Queensland universities in 2026, as the state’s tertiary admissions centre sends out its first round of major offers.
The Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre said the number of offers in the December round had grown by more than 4 per cent from the previous year, with the largest uptick being mature-age students.
Mature-age students made up one-fifth of the December-round offers – a 7.2 per cent increase from the 2024 December round.
Belle Gundrum is an All Hallows graduate starting at the QUT in 2026.Queensland University of Technology
QTAC chief executive Chris Veraa said almost 35,000 offers had been made for courses in 2026, including early offer rounds through November and early December.
Across all rounds, 37 per cent of offers were made to mature-age students, with the rest going to high school graduates.
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Future Queensland University of Technology student Belle Gundrum was among those offered early entry in November.
“I found out actually the day after I graduated, and even that one night of genuinely not knowing if I’d get into the university that I really wanted to get into – it felt like a huge weight,” Gundrum said.
The All Hallows graduate was enrolled in dual degrees of business and design, majoring in fashion design, which she hoped would one day see her designs walked down runways.
“I’d been hoping to get into QUT since year 9, when I learnt how to sew,” she said.
Gundrum said her twin sister Rose had also received an early offer, about a week after her own offer, to study acting at QUT.
Many courses are not offered in December and are instead included in the second major round in January, as individual institutions finalise course entry criteria.
Veraa said health was the most popular area of study, with 4331 successful applications for degrees including courses for pharmacy, speech pathology and veterinary science.
The number of offers for health degrees increased by 7.7 per cent from last year’s December round.
“It’s encouraging to see applicants gravitating toward study areas that align with Queensland’s workforce needs and long-term growth priorities,” Veraa said.
The University of Queensland made the largest number of offers in the 2025 December entrance round.University of Queensland
The five individual courses with the largest number of places offered on Wednesday included engineering, finance, arts, and psychological science degrees from the University of Queensland, which had the largest number of courses of any institution.
Lourdes Hill College graduate Sophia Oberhardt was among those offered a place in UQ’s bachelor of engineering honours program – currently the largest course in Queensland.
“I really wanted to get the first offer round, just so that the stress is off … I went ahead and just accepted it straight away,” Oberhardt said.
She said she was both nervous and excited to be joining the almost 493-strong cohort.
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Planning to major in mechanical engineering for her undergraduate degree, Oberhardt said she might specialise in the aerospace field later on.
“I had always found it very interesting – the creative side of engineering, as well as the math side and the science side,” she said.
University of Queensland vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Terry AC said demand for engineering degrees had increased by 8 per cent in 2026, as compared with 2025.
Terry said UQ had offered more than 5800 places in the first round, with health, education and science programs also receiving large volumes of applications.
Applications to Griffith University followed a similar trend, with nursing, physiotherapy and biomedical sciences among the top five most popular degrees offered on Wednesday, although the two most sought-after courses were education and law.
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