WHENEVER Lily Webster needed a break from studying for the Higher School Certificate, she would walk around Caves Beach and collect four leaf clovers.
"I found it really therapeutic because it's a task where you don't have to think about anything, I could just listen to music and just have a look for them - I found that really meditative," Lily, 18, said.
"I ended up collecting over 100 so at my school's formal me and my fellow school captain put them all in a little card and we gave one to everyone in the year as a good luck charm."
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The Newcastle Grammar School student combined any luck she gleaned with hard work to achieve the Hunter's highest Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, 99.9.
"I'm quite surprised really, I was not sure what I was going to get so I was pretty happy to see that this morning," she said on Thursday, after a restless night's sleep.
Lily intentionally didn't check her HSC subject results until after she had her ATAR.
"I was hoping to get above 99 maybe but I didn't really have any sort of strict goals," she said.
"I worked pretty hard across my high school years so I guess I just wanted to see how well I could do this year and push myself to do as well as I possibly could, to make the most of it.
"You definitely have to have a balance but I did work pretty hard at the key points, before trials, before the HSC and before each assessment I would really focus on school and try and do as well as I possibly could."
She said she honed "natural study skills" throughout high school.
"This year I didn't really have to develop study skills, I already had them in my bank from refining them across the course of my high school years, so I really sort of felt I knew what I was doing this year. If you can also develop an investment in school that isn't just purely for the marks but you enjoy what you're doing I think that really helps."
Lily hopes to gain entry to a bachelor of science and advanced studies at the University of Sydney and specialise in medical science.
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