How ATAR is Calculated

The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank is a percentile number between 0.00 and 99.95. It tells you where you sit relative to your entire age group in a given year, including people who did not sit final exams. An ATAR of 80.00 means you performed better than roughly 80 percent of your age cohort.

ATAR is not a mark out of 100. Two students with the same ATAR in different states demonstrated an equivalent position within their respective age groups, even though the raw exam systems differ. This national comparability is what makes ATAR useful for university admissions across state borders.

Not all subjects are equally difficult, and not all cohorts are equally strong. A raw score of 35 in one subject might reflect a far stronger performance than a 35 in another. Scaling adjusts for these differences so that your aggregate fairly reflects your overall ability rather than your choice of subjects.

The adjustment is based on how students in each subject perform across all their other subjects. If the students taking a particular subject tend to perform very well elsewhere, that subject's scores are adjusted upward. The reverse applies to subjects where the cohort tends to score lower overall.

This means that chasing high-scaling subjects at the expense of your grades is almost always counterproductive. Your best strategy is to choose subjects you can excel in and let scaling do its job in the background.