The ATAR—short for Australian Tertiary Admission Rank—is a numerical value between 0 and 99.95 you will receive after your HSC. Universities all around Australia use this score to select students in their admissions process.
It is important to note that the ATAR is a rank, not a score. This means that it measures your performance in the HSC relative to other students’ results. As a result, you can do “poorly” in your exams and still get a high ATAR, as long as you still did better than the majority of your cohort!
Below are the 3 main steps in ATAR calculation!
Step 1: Determining HSC Marks
Before your grades for each subject are brought together to form your ATAR, your internal school assessment results and external HSC examination marks are averaged out to determine a final HSC Mark.
Moderation
This process isn’t as easy as it sounds due to the moderation of your internal results. The moderation process adjusts your internal results based on your school’s performance in the external HSC exams. This is necessary due to the fact that schools can differ greatly in exam difficulty. Without the moderation of internal results, schools with easier exams would have an unfair advantage.
Here is a 3-step outline of the moderation process from the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA):
- NESA adjusts the mean of the group's assessment marks so that it equals the mean of the group's exam marks.
- NESA adjusts the group's highest assessment mark so that it equals the group's highest exam mark.
- Where possible, NESA will adjust the lowest assessment mark obtained by any student in the group to match the lowest exam mark. (This is not always possible when the general shapes of school assessment marks and exam marks are very different).
How does the Moderation process affect you?
The moderation of your internal results means that how well your school cohort performs in a HSC exam will affect your individual grade. For example, if your school’s Modern History cohort receives a lower average mark in their final HSC exams than in their internal school exams, your individual mark will probably be moderated down.
Step 2: Scaling
After your HSC marks for each subject are determined, they are then scaled. This is a process that accounts for differences in the difficulty of various HSC subjects. It is harder, for example, to get a good grade in Extension 2 English than in Standard English—scaling makes up for this gap in difficulty.
What this means is that an 80/100, for example, in a harder subject will boost your ATAR more than an 80/100 in an easier subject.
What this doesn’t mean is that you should choose your subjects based on scaling. It is not easier to get a higher HSC mark in Extension 2 English compared to Standard English. Though Extension 2 may scale better, the fact remains that it is more difficult than Standard.
For example, a student that excels in English may get a raw mark of 80 in Extension 2 that is scaled up to an 85. The same student may get a raw mark of 90 in the easier Standard English, which might scale down to an 85.
Instead, you should choose subjects that you know you can do well in. This could be a subject you have a natural passion for, or a subject you have consistently aced throughout high school!
Step 3: Calculating Your Atar
After your marks are moderated and scaled, your ATAR is calculated by converting them into an aggregate and percentile!
What’s an Aggregate?
Your aggregate mark is the sum of your marks in your 10 strongest units in the HSC. It is compulsory, however, that 2 of those units be English units, now matter how weak your marks are. As each unit is worth 50 marks, your aggregate mark will be out of 500.
What’s a Percentile?
The percentile is a way of showing your ranking in comparison to other students. For example, if you’re in the 90th percentile, you have scored better than 90% of students. Each aggregate mark will have its own percentile based on how it compares to the rest of the cohort’s performance.
Your percentile is then rounded to the nearest 0.05 to, finally, determine your final ATAR!
