ATAR calculator

What is an ATAR?

Your Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is a number between 0.00 and 99.95 that shows where you sit compared with every other student in your reference cohort across the state. It is not a mark, and it is not a percentage. It is an ATAR percentile rank. An ATAR of 80.00 means you finished ahead of roughly 80 percent of students in that cohort, not that you scored 80 percent on anything. The ATAR scale tops out at 99.95 because of how the ATAR distribution is built statistically across the whole state, which is also why the highest possible ATAR is 99.95 rather than a round 100.

How this calculator works

This national ATAR calculator uses a VCE-style aggregate as a shared model, since study scores out of 50 are a format most Australian students recognise, even outside Victoria. Enter four to six subject scores, and this ATAR calculator for Australian students builds an aggregate the same way a Victorian result is built, treating English as a required subject and giving the fifth and sixth subjects smaller 10 percent increments.

• Enter four to six subject scores to calculate ATAR
• English is treated as required, in line with how many states weight it
• You can calculate your ATAR before exams using predicted or practice scores, though the result is only ever an early ATAR estimate

If you want a closer match to your own state, our dedicated calculators apply that jurisdiction's actual rules. Try our VCE, NSW, QCE, WACE, SACE, TCE, ACT or NT calculator for a result built around that state's system, whether you're working from raw marks, study scores or an existing aggregate.

How ATAR is actually calculated

If you're wondering how to calculate ATAR by hand, the honest answer is that you can't, not exactly. There's no single public ATAR formula, because how is ATAR calculated depends on statewide scaling data that only becomes final once every student's results are in. What we can explain is the general process. ATAR calculation starts with raw marks and raw scores from your assessments and exams. These are converted into scaled scores and scaled marks through subject scaling, which adjusts for the fact that a raw mark in one subject isn't directly comparable with a raw mark in another. So how does ATAR scaling work in practice? It looks at how the whole group of students taking a subject performed overall, so a solid result in a subject with tougher competition isn't undervalued next to an easier one.

Once your subjects are scaled, your best results combine into an aggregate score, sometimes called your ATAR aggregate, and converting that aggregate to ATAR happens through a statistical process based on the entire state cohort. This is how scaling and aggregation work together, and it's why raw marks and scaled marks can look quite different, and why your final ATAR depends on more than just your own results. It depends on how everyone else in your cohort performed too.

Which subjects count towards your ATAR

Most states count a student's best four to six subjects towards ATAR eligibility, though the exact ATAR requirements, and how much English matters, depend on where you study. In most states, English counts toward ATAR. It's compulsory and must be included regardless of your other subjects. Not every subject counts either. Some unscored or non-ATAR subjects don't contribute to your result at all, so ATAR subject selection matters more than students often expect.

Do harder subjects give a higher ATAR? This is one of the most common ATAR myths. Scaling does account for subject difficulty to some degree, but it isn't a straightforward bonus for picking a harder class. The best subjects for ATAR results are usually the ones you can genuinely perform well in, not the ones that sound impressive on paper.

ATAR versus other results you'll see

Students often mix up ATAR with the numbers sitting underneath it. ATAR vs selection rank is a common point of confusion. Your selection rank is what some universities calculate after adding bonus points to your ATAR, for things like subject prerequisites or equity schemes, and it can end up higher than your raw ATAR. ATAR vs percentage, ATAR vs study score, ATAR vs HSC mark, and ATAR vs aggregate all come down to the same idea. These all feed into the ATAR calculation, but none of them are the ATAR itself.

What your ATAR score actually means

If you have an ATAR of 90, congratulations! You've outperformed around 90 percent of your reference cohort. An ATAR of 95 means roughly the top 5 percent. An ATAR of 99 means the top 1 percent of the state. 

So what is a good ATAR, or what is a high ATAR? It genuinely depends on what you're using it for. The average ATAR sits close to 70, since the scale accounts for the full cohort, including students who don't take an ATAR pathway at all. A course with a modest cutoff makes a mid-range ATAR perfectly sufficient, while a competitive course can make even a high-90s ATAR feel tight.

ATAR and university entry

Students often ask what ATAR do I need for university, or for my course specifically? University ATAR requirements vary enormously by course and by year, and a published university ATAR cutoff is usually the lowest ATAR that secured a place the previous intake, not a guarantee for the next one. Course entry requirements often include course prerequisites too, such as a required subject or a minimum subject score, so meeting the ATAR cutoff alone doesn't always satisfy university admission on its own. So, the answer to “can I get into university with my ATAR” is to check both the ATAR and the prerequisites for that specific course before assuming either way.

Bonus points or adjustment factors

Many universities apply ATAR adjustment factors (often called bonus points) on top of your raw ATAR to produce the selection rank actually used for university selection. These ATAR bonus points can come from completing certain subjects, your location, or schemes like SEAS, the Special Entry Access Scheme, which considers circumstances such as financial hardship or disruption during school. Some courses also set a minimum selection rank rather than publishing a plain ATAR cutoff. This is why checking a course's specific selection adjustments is worth doing directly, rather than assuming your raw ATAR is the only number that matters.

Improving your ATAR, and why results shift

If you've got a target ATAR in mind, the most reliable lever is consistent subject performance over the year, not last-minute subject swapping.

Your actual, final ATAR can come out different from what your marks alone suggested, because scaling and cohort-wide results are only finalised once every student's exams are marked. Additionally, your ATAR can be different from your marks or lower than expected because a high mark in one subject doesn't guarantee a high ATAR, while a slightly lower mark in a subject that scales well can sometimes contribute more than expected.

How accurate is an ATAR calculator?

No ATAR calculator, including this one, can predict your ATAR exactly. ATAR calculator accuracy has real limits, whether you're using an ATAR calculator from marks, one from study scores, or an ATAR calculator from aggregate. These tools use publicly available scaling patterns to produce a reasonable ATAR prediction, but they can't see the actual cohort-wide data used in the real scaling process, which shifts slightly every year. Treat any predicted ATAR or estimated ATAR here as a planning figure, not a locked-in result.

ATAR by state

ATAR differences between states come down to how each jurisdiction structures its final years and its own scaling process, not the ATAR scale itself, which stays consistent nationally. 

• NSW ATAR and NSW HSC ATAR results are built from HSC units and marks. 
• VCE ATAR results come from Victorian study scores. 
• Queensland ATAR, or QCE ATAR, uses QCE General subjects. 
• WA ATAR, or WACE ATAR, uses WACE courses. 
• SACE ATAR applies South Australia's SACE system. 
• TCE ATAR applies Tasmania's TCE
• The ACT ATAR and NT ATAR each run their own moderated processes. 

We have dedicated calculators for each state and territory that follow that system's actual method more closely than this general tool.

Who calculates your official ATAR

Your official ATAR isn't calculated by your school or by any calculator, including ours. It's issued by your state's tertiary admissions centre once final results are released: UAC in New South Wales, VTAC in Victoria, QTAC in Queensland, SATAC in South Australia, TISC in Western Australia, and TASC in Tasmania. These are the only official sources for a real ATAR result, and any figure shown here, or anywhere else calling itself a calculator, should be treated as an estimate until then.