Understanding Your ATAR: How the Ranking System Works

Ranking? Scaling? Your FAQ’s answered 🧐

It’s something you’ve been studying for and working towards for all your years of high school. But how much do you know about what an ATAR is and how it works?

No, it isn’t just some magical number that defines our entire secondary schooling life.

It’s more of a ranking system. And it doesn’t define us!

If you’ve spent countless hours using various internet ATAR calculators and still can’t seem to understand what the final number is, we get it.

Here’s a breakdown of the ATAR system.

 

 

 

 

 

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What is an ATAR?

ATAR stands for Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank. It’s a number between zero and 99.95 that indicates your rank relative to all students in your age group.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a mark. It’s a rank.

For example, an ATAR of 80.00 means that you are 20 per cent from the top of your entire age group in your state and territory.

What does scaling mean?

Scaling looks at everyone’s mark and puts the results on a common scale so the government can find an aggregate.

Scaling is meant to create a level playing field between all your subjects. It works like this:

Let’s say you take ATAR History. The education bodies who are responsible for ATAR will look at how every student performed in History, compared to how they did in their other subjects.

If everyone who did History did well, the History marks get scaled up. And same if the people who did History performed badly, they, unfortunately, get scaled down.

Scaling might look different in every state and territory as your ATAR mark is a rank within your age group only in your state and territory.

How does my ATAR get calculated?

After scaling, everyone’s marks are added together to form an aggregate and each state/territory is ranked based on those aggregates.

From there you get your ATAR.

However, every state and territory’s admission center (for example, TISC in Western Australia and UAC in New South Wales) has a different way of calculating students’ ATAR scores.

Does my ATAR matter?

To some extent, yes, your ATAR does matter.

If you want to get into a course with a required 90 ATAR for example, you’ll have to ensure you work really hard to achieve that number.

But it isn’t the end of the world. If you don’t get the ATAR you need to get into your chosen course, there are so many other pathways. For example, you can go through TAFE and/or uni ready or even look into portfolio entry.

Another option is completing a similar degree before applying for your original chosen course. Even if the course you want to get into is something typically difficult to get into the units you take in a similar degree might be transferrable.

And take it from this Student Edge writer who sat through ATAR and went to university: nobody cared what my ATAR was after Year 12.

So, if you’re sitting your exams right now, good luck and try your best! But remember you aren’t defined by a rank and there’s a whole life waiting for you post-ATAR 🫶