The 16-year-old was one of the 75 Taieri College pupils affected by an exam blunder in which the school entered pupils in the wrong algebra and graphing papers for NCEA level 1 maths.
It meant that when pupils sat the exams in November, they faced unexpected questions.
Sarah said she was preparing for the worst yesterday, as the maths exams had shattered her confidence in passing.
However, she was surprised and annoyed to find no results from the maths exams had been posted.
Instead, she had been marked absent from the exam.
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority's deputy chief executive, qualifications, Bali Haque, said the "absence" coding for the 75 Taieri College pupils was temporary and would be replaced with a grade by noon today.
The exams had been given to NZQA's chief examiner to mark and special consideration had been given to the pupils, he said.
"We've taken a bit longer because it was a very complicated process to go through."
Mr Haque said the examiner had looked at the results and was satisfied the best job had been done for the pupils under the circumstances.
"The results are in line with expectations, but students always have the option of asking us to reconsider the grade."
Sarah was pleased with her other results, which included several merit and excellence endorsements.
But for her parents, the maths exam ordeal was "the straw that broke the camel's back" and they have pulled her from the school in favour of sending her to Columba College this year.
Sarah's mother, Susan McLean, said three of her children had been through the school and had done well, but the present learning environment no longer suited Sarah.
Taieri principal Christina Herrick and deputy principal Paul Bolton could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
Nearly 140,000 candidates, including 6335 in Otago, sat NCEA exams last year.
Of the 48,773 candidates gaining NCEA level 1, 23.2% received endorsement with merit and 5.9% gained NCEA level 1 with excellence.
Last year, 22.9% of candidates gained the qualification with merit and 5.2% gained excellence endorsements.
Of the 40,229 candidates gaining NCEA level 2, 16.9% (the same as in 2007), received a merit endorsement and 4.1% (3.8% in 2007) gained excellence.
In NCEA level 3, 20.5% of the 21,729 candidates (20.9% in 2007) gained merit and 4.8% (4.2% in 2007) received excellence endorsements.
Mr Haque said the results were consistent with last year's results.
Marked NCEA papers will be returned to candidates from January 21 and New Zealand Scholarship results will be delivered in mid-February.
