How Are ATARs Calculated?

Prefer to listen instead? Check out the podcast episode explaining how ATARs are calculated.

In my last post I discussed what an ATAR is and how ATARs are used by tertiary institutions to select students for their courses. These tertiary institutions are realising more and more that other methods of selection are far more valuable, so we’re moving towards a better system, but right now having a higher ATAR does give you more options for courses in the year or two after you finish high school (after that you can apply as a mature-age student and there are different selection criteria). So as much as you might want to, it’s pretty hard to ignore while you’re in the thick of your final year of school. Let’s look at how ATARs are calculated and which parts are important if you’re interested in playing the game, so that you can forget about it and get on with having a great year.

Every state and territory in Australia has a different system, meaning that your ATAR will be calculated differently depending on where you’re studying. There are, however, a few key features that are universal:

There’s at least one compulsory subject (usually English)
Assessment tasks are written by your teachers throughout the year, and an external exam is completed by all students across the state/territory at the end of the year
Final scores or rankings for your subjects are calculated and meshed together to give you an aggregate score.
All the aggregate scores are listed from highest to lowest to create a ranking which becomes your ATAR.

When someone gets an ATAR of 70.00, it means that their results were above approximately 70% of their Year 12 age group. An ATAR of 93.50 means their results were above approximately 93.5% of their Year 12 age group. (See below for more information about this.)

So what this tells me, is there are a few things that you want to focus on when you’re preparing for your final year(s) of school:

If subjects are compulsory, they will definitely be used in the calculation of your ATAR. So even if English is your least favourite subject, if you want to do as well as possible, you need to do as well as you can in it.
If the assessment tasks I do throughout the year are different to what someone is doing at another school, then the exam at the end of the year is likely to be more important than each separate assessment task. So don’t stress so much about your result on each separate assessment task. You want to use each one to see where you’re at with that topic, and then to get as much understanding as you can out of it to help you prepare for the exam at the end of the year.

That’s it. If you focus on those two things, and study efficiently and effectively in all your subjects, the rest will get sorted all by itself.

If you’re interested in understanding the entire process, keep reading!

I’m doing VCE. How will my ATAR be calculated?

Infographic explaining the steps to calculating your ATAR

Step One: How do SAC rankings affect your study score?

In each of your subjects throughout the year, you'll do a series of SACs. The purpose of these assessments is partly to establish your school's ranking of students in the subject. Your initial SAC marks aren't directly used in the final study score calculation; VCAA statistically moderates the school-based assessment results while maintaining the students' rank order.

step two: school exam results

At the end of the year, you’ll do external exams for each of your subjects, and the results of these exams are used in a couple of different ways.

Firstly, a percentage of your exam result will go towards your study score for the subject.

Secondly, the external assessment results for the students in your moderation group are used to statistically moderate your school's SAC results. This might seem a bit strange, but the reason is that your SACs were written and marked by your teachers, and the SACs at every other school were written and marked by their teachers too. We therefore need a way to compare the results from different schools because the difficulty of the assessments and the way they are marked might not be the same across the board.

So the range and spread of the exam results for the students at your school are matched up against the range and spread of the SAC rankings, and the SAC score that will be allocated to you depends on where you sit in the SAC rankings.

Step three: study scores

Your exam result and the SAC result calculated for you are put together to create an aggregate score for the subject, and then these aggregates are ranked across the state for everyone who did the subject and mapped to a bell curve. Your raw study score tells you where you ranked against the other students in Victoria who completed that subject. A raw study score is reported on a scale from 0 to 50, with 30 representing approximately the middle of the state-wide group.The highest raw study score you can get for a subject is 50. A study score of 40 means that you finished in the top 8% of the state.

Step 4: Scaling

If you’re reading this before you’ve picked your subjects for your final year, you will have heard about scaling and you need to know why you should ignore it.

Once you get your study score for each subject at the end of the year, some will get scaled up or scaled down when they’re put into the the ATAR calculation by VTAC that works out your aggregate score. VTAC scales all VCE study scores before using them to calculate your aggregate. The scaling happens to make the results in two different subjects comparable, and it’s based on how well each group of students in each subject did across all their subjects. So yes, theoretically if you choose a “hard” subject it will get scaled up, and if you choose an “easy” subject it will get scaled down.

What you need to take into consideration though, is all of the issues around choosing the “hard” subject. If you love it, go for it! If you don’t, you’re setting yourself up for a very painful year. Firstly, you will need to put in extra effort mentally to make yourself interested enough to study for that subject and to get over the mindset that it’s super hard and you can’t do it. Secondly, all that extra effort will take away from every one of your other subjects, so it’s highly likely that your other results will suffer because you chose a subject that scaled up hoping to get a couple of extra points on your aggregate score. And thirdly, if you don’t end up doing well in that subject, the extra couple of points might still be a low number to add to your aggregate score.

Save yourself the heartache and choose subjects that you’re actually interested in.

Step 5: Your ATAR is a ranking

Your primary four scaled study scores are used first. This includes your highest scaled study score in one of English, English EAL, Literature or English Language, plus your next three highest permissible scaled study scores. Up to two additional increments can then be added to create your aggregate. For many students, these increments are 10% of their fifth and sixth highest permissible scaled study scores.

Your aggregate is then converted into an ATAR, which is a percentile ranking showing your performance relative to the Year 12 age group.

but The ATAR calculator says I’m going to get…

Are ATAR calculators accurate? Not really — they're estimates based on assumptions about results, scaling and your eventual position in the ATAR distribution.

STEP AWAY from the ATAR calculator. If you haven’t come across one yet, a quick google search will help you find one, but let’s think about what you’re doing here - you’re making a guess about the mark (or ranking, which is even more impossible to guess) you’ll get for each of your 5 or 6 subjects, and entering them in so that a “calculator” can make another guess about how each of these subjects will be scaled and put together to make your aggregate score, and then another guess about where in the ranking you’ll end up with that score to get your ATAR. You might as well go and get your tea leaves read. I know it’s not easy, but if you are focusing too much on your ATAR, I encourage you to take a step back and try to get some perspective instead of leaning in. Use the time to prepare for your exams instead.

Frequently Asked Questions About ATARs

How is an ATAR calculated in Victoria?

VTAC uses the scaling process on your VCE study scores, and adds your primary four scales study scores to the increments from a 5th (and 6th if available) subject to calculate your aggregate score. Your aggregate is then turned into a ranking compared to everyone else in Year 12 that year, and that becomes your ATAR.

How do SACs affect your ATAR?

SACs are used by your school to create an internal ranking of all the students completing the subject at your school. Once you have completed the external exams, VCAA use statistical moderation to give each student SAC scores that will used in the calculation of your ATAR.

Does scaling affect your ATAR?

Your raw VCE study scores are scaled by VTAC so that they can say that a 30 in one subject is equivalent to a 30 in another subject. It’s important to understand that scaling is not linear. Your study score will get scaled up more (or down less) the better you do in a subject. Because of this, I always recommend that students choose subjects they enjoy and are good at. A higher study score in a subject you like that gets scaled down slightly is better than a lower study score in a subject you struggle in that gets scaled up slightly, and the higher results will lead to a better ATAR.

Are ATAR calculators accurate?

No. ATAR calculators require you to guess your study scores for each of your subjects, and then the calculation the calculator uses is based on historical data not the actual data from your year level. Play on it if you like, but don’t spend hours on a calculator that could have been spent studying or taking a break.

The final word

It’s really hard to forget about the ATAR when you hear about it everywhere, but to actually achieve the best ATAR you can, your best bet is to focus on studying well in subjects you enjoy. Be smart about it, and don’t make life hard for yourself trying to beat the system.

Last updated: September 2026

The VCE and ATAR systems can change over time. This article has been updated to reflect the current Victorian VCE and ATAR system. Always check the latest information from VCAA and VTAC for current requirements.

Kim Whitty, Career Counsellor for High School Students and Parents

Author: Kim Whitty

Ready to create a plan for your future, no matter what ATAR you get? That’s what I’m here for! Learn more about the personalised career counselling packages I offer. I spent 13 years working in schools as a VCE teacher and qualified careers counsellor before starting Roadmap Education. Learn more about me.