All over the country right now, students are receiving their final Year 12 results. Whether it’s the HSC, SACE, WACE, VCE, QCE, NTCET, TASC or any other bizarre combination of letters, to some, it can feel like nothing else in the world matters except the results that turn up in December.

There’s asecretthough. Well, it’s not really a secret. It’s something that’s yelled very loudly at Year 12 students over and over again by teachers and parents and cousins and family friends but they don’t listen becauseit sounds like a lie.

But here it is.

It’s going to be okay no matter what.

You tried your best, sure. But… how do we put this?

In the long run, the mark you get means very, very little. Strangers on the street won’t stop you and demand you tell them your final result. You don’t have to wear it as a badge until the day you die. In fact, anyone you do tell will forget anyway because it’s so ridiculously insignificant.

So we decided to ask nine successful Australian women how they went in their Year 12 exams and if, in the long run, they think it really mattered.

Roxy Jacenko: 68

Founder and former Director of Sweaty Betty PR.

I was the world’s worst student. I never got into uni because I didn’t have the marks. I had worked since I was 14, I was a florist and then I worked at Kodak.

My parents gave me a good schooling, I f**ked it up I never listened. I had no formal training.

Watch: Celebrities who went to school together. Post continues after video.

Rachel Corbett: 99.35

Co-host of The Project and founder of online podcasting course, Pod School.

I know plenty of incredibly successful people who didn’t do well in the HSC so if you’ve put in the time and effort but you don’t get a high mark it’s definitely NOT the end of the world.

However, that shouldn’t be an excuse not to give it a red hot crack because the better you do the more options you have.

When I got my results back from trials they weren’t good.At all.To be honest, that was because I hadn’t put nearly enough effort into studying for them and it showed.I wanted to do Law and I wanted to do it straight out of school so when the final exams came round I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. I literally shut myself in my room for the best part of a month and focused on nothing else but those exams and it was the best thing I could have done.

In the grand scheme of things, a month of my life was nothing but that month meant I got a mark that gave me a very important thing… choice.

If you don’t get the mark you want there is ALWAYS a way around it but one of the benefits of doing well is that you have options and that’s an incredibly empowering place to be.Oh, and by the way, just because you get into the course you thought you wanted to be in doesn’t mean that’s your path either.I knew the first week of my Commerce/Law degree it wasn’t going to be my path but I stuck it out almost to the end (I got my Commerce Degree but left Law with one year to go because I’d found a career path that was better suited to me).But the people I met, the things I learned and the fact I’d gotten there by working my butt off were worth absolutely worth it.

Georgia Love: 95

Television presenter, journalist and former Bachelorette.

It did matter for me as the course I desperately wanted to do (journalism at RMIT) required 95! Ridiculous.

Jane Lu: 99.45

Founder and CEO of Showpo.

Year 12 exams are probably one of the hardest things at school you’ve had to go through so I get why it feels like such a big deal at the time! I think your exams only matter because they help determine what comes next. If you get the marks you needed to get into university, and that’s what you want to do then great. But if not, there are so many other options.

I studied so hard through high school to get the marks I needed to get into a university course, which led me into a career that actually really wasn’t for me. Then I quit my job and started a business in a completely different field that failed and then I started Showpo – a career that I absolutely love! And it really wasn’t my grades from high school that got me to where I am today, it was all the other skills and learnings that I picked up along the way.

I’m not saying don’t worry about your exams – the hard work definitely paid off because getting a good mark gave the confidence to back myself throughout this journey. So do your best and put in as much work as you can to get the grades you want, but if you don’t, learn from the experience and look at what you can do to get to where you want to be!