Yes, a Bachelor of Laws or a Bachelor of Engineering or a Bachelor of Medical Science are code for 'bricklaying degree'.
Most of the time those are just recommendations and if not there is nothing stopping you doing a bridging course.
Seriously, absolutely nothing is stopping you Year 11 students starting university July this year. You will be half-way through your degree by the time you would have finished high school.
If you get a percentile rank of 98.55 that means you did better than 98.55% of the people who have taken the test. Picture in your mind walking into the room to sit the STAT with 100 other people. Only one or two of them can do better than you if you want to get into physiotherapy.
My friend and I did extremely poorly in the HSC, he got a UAI of around 48, I got a UAI of around 46. We took the STAT to get into university, I believe he scored in the 73rd percentile or so and got into Computer Science at UWS, I scored in the 96.4th percentile and got into Arts at UWS. If you...