For most of the state's 85,000 university applicants nervously waiting for first-round university offers on Wednesday night, the HSC exams were the toughest challenge to getting a tertiary education.
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But it's fair to say the stress of the HSC pales in comparison to the journey faced by 26-year-old Keyhan Farahmand, who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan and spent years being processed as a refugee before finally being offered a university place in Sydney this week.
"Before 2001 there was nothing at all. All universities, schools, colleges all closed," Mr Farahmand said.
After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the country's education system was bolstered, but living in a rural village, he couldn't reap the rewards.
"All of the students who have finished high school, you have to participate in an exam ... but if you don't have the materials, how can you go and pass the exam?"
In 2009 he was forced to leave Afghanistan. As member of the Hazara ethnic minority in an area controlled by the Taliban, he faced persecution and judged it far too dangerous to stay.
"The place that Hazara people are living is just like a prison ... all around [is] the Taliban," Mr Farahmand said.
So he fled, and ended up in an immigration detention centre in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city. Mr Farahmand told Fairfax Media he once spent eight consecutive months in the same room without leaving it.
"I'm not complaining," he said. "But it wasn't like what it should be.
"I'm sure that even in prison that people have a right to go outside."
He spent about 1½ years in that detention centre before being transferred to a refugee camp, where after 18 months he was offered asylum in Australia by the Gillard government. Today, he lives in an apartment in Auburn.
Many of his fellow detainees weren't so lucky. A young friend grew impatient with the system and left on a boat for Christmas Island.
"No one knows what happened to him."
But his years of pain and uncertainty were vindicated this week. Mr Farahmand was offered a place at Macquarie University in north-west Sydney to study a bachelor of arts in media. He hopes to one day work as a journalist.
"I think journalism has a very strong responsibility to the public and all the things that are happening in society," Mr Farahmand said.
"And probably one day I can do something for my people, for any people who need it."
