"We don't necessarily want to be famous, but definitely want to live off the money that we make from music. Already it's pretty much a part-time job. I've had to make a lot of sacrifices, like I've had to give up rugby because I could break a finger," the guitarist and singer said.
The most academic students - those sitting scholarship exams - still had another month to wait before finding out whether they would be getting a government contribution for their studies.
Among them was star student Finnian Smith, also of WBHS, who was more worried about upcoming interviews with scouts from Princeton and Yale universities. He had also applied to Harvard, Stanford and Chicago universities. The 18-year-old said this, as well as sitting the American SAT exams, was causing him more nerves and stress than the NCEA results. Finnian had rounded out his CV through soccer, swimming, being a house captain and his school's public speaker of the year.
"I don't want to be confident at all to be honest," he said of his upcoming interviews. "Though the interview is not a make or break ... The backup plan is to work for a year as a lifeguard and reapply ... Or do engineering at Auckland [University]."
Finnian said for many Year 13 students, the Level 2 results from last year were more important, as those were the ones universities looked most closely at, with Level 3 results coming out as most students had already been provisionally accepted.
