Are You Hyperfocused on Your ATAR?

Getting caught up in the competitiveness of VCE and stressing out about your ATAR is, understandably, very common.

I did it. As a teacher I watched my students do it. And now as a career counselor it's one of the things I discuss a lot with the students and parents I work with.

The reality is that it's so common, you might not even know it's a problem for you because it feels like everyone else is doing the same thing.

In reality though, if you're worrying about your ATAR all the time, you're carrying a lot of stress in your mind and body that doesn't have to be there, and it's probably more likely to make you perform worse on your SACs, not better.

So how do you know if you're hyperfocused on your ATAR?

You're on ATAR calculators all the time, especially after a SAC that didn't go as well as you hoped.

Full disclosure: ATAR calculators drive me crazy. When I was teaching, I would see students on them all the time, trying to work out what ATAR they were going to get based on their most recent SAC results, and hoping that it would be high enough to get into the course they really wanted. The problem is, ATAR calculators are notoriously inaccurate, not necessarily just because of the calculations they do, but because you need to make so many guesses to put in before it even gets to the calculations!

The important thing to remember here is to think about how your ATAR is actually calculated by VTAC. This is what happens (or a simplified version anyway):

Your teachers mark your SACs and rank you against everyone else at your school who does the same subject.
Your teachers send the ranking into VTAC.
You sit your exam(s) for the subject at the end of the year.
VTAC matches your school’s range of exam results for the subject to your SAC rankings to give you a mark for your SACs.
They calculate your score for your subject based on their calculated SAC mark for you and your exam result.
All these marks are put into a bell curve for the subject and you get a study score based on your ranking within the subject.
Subjects are scaled against each other to make sure that getting a study score of 30 in one subject is equivalent to getting a study score of 30 in another subject.
All of your scaled study scores for each of your subjects are added together to get an aggregate score.
All of the aggregate scores of all the students across the state are put in order from highest to lowest, and you’re allocated an ATAR based on where you sit in that ranking.

Phew! That’s a lot of calculations and rankings. And hopefully it helps you see how difficult it is to get an accurate score out of an ATAR calculator when you have to guess all of your study scores for each of your subjects, and they depend on so much more than the SAC scores your teacher gives you.

You know the exact percentage each SAC is worth for each of your subjects.

So I can understand that sometimes it can help you feel better if you know that the SAC you’re walking into is only worth 7% of your final study score. It can take some of the pressure off if you’re feeling anxious and help you gain a bit of perspective around the level of importance this one SAC will have in your life.

However, can you see that if you have the bigger SAC that makes up 30% of your final score, or when you get to exams and realise it makes up 50% of your study score, it can actually add to the pressure instead.

You're choosing (or you chose) your subjects based on whether or not they scale up rather than what you enjoy.

When I’m helping students choose their subjects, the question of scaling almost always comes up. Students (and parents) often think that they should choose a language, or subjects like Maths Methods or Specialist Maths, because their final score will be marked up before it’s added to their aggregate.

What they often don’t understand is that you only get the benefit of subjects scaling up if you do really well in it. A subject will get scaled up more the closer that you get to a perfect study score of 50. So when you’re choosing VCE subjects, even if you are just focused on getting a good ATAR, you’re actually better off doing subjects you like, where you’re more likely to study and perform well in SACs and exams, than something you don’t enjoy in the hopes that you get a few extra points.

You consistently don't have time for activities you love because you "have to study".

School can get busy, and it’s understandable that every now and then you might need to stay home and do an extra hour of study when you’d rather be doing something else.

However, if this becomes the norm and you’re always at home studying, there’s a fair chance that you’ve lost some perspective about what’s important.

Spending time with friends, getting exercise, and doing things that you love will not only support your mental health, having a sense of who you are and what your life is about outside of school will also help you do better at school because you’ll be carrying around less stress and anxiety about each assessment task.

You're choosing tertiary courses based on the ATAR you think you'll get.

When it comes to choosing courses, we’ve come a long way in a short time. You’re no longer expected to choose a pathway that you’ll stay on for the rest of your life, and it’s great that it’s relatively straightforward to transfer between courses and follow a different path.

However, that doesn’t mean you need to start by settling for something you don’t really want to do right at the beginning.

When you’re looking at courses, you should be making a decision based on what lights you up. Ideally you will have a great sense of your interests, strengths and values, and you can use these aspects to make an informed decision about a course that will set you up for success for the beginning of your career.

If you have something in mind and you’re worried you won’t get the ATAR to get straight into the course, that’s where pathways come in. One of my favourite things to do is to show the students and parents that I work with all of the different ways that they can end up in their dream course or career, no matter what results they get. There really is always another way to get where you want to go.

So, are you hyperfocused on your ATAR?

If this is you, there’s a really simple solution. The only thing your ATAR is used for is to get into (some, not all!) tertiary courses. So you can take off a heap of pressure by taking some time to decide what you’d like to do and look at all the ways you can get there. In doing this, you’ll be able to see just how overrated ATARs are!

You don’t need a better ATAR. You need a better plan!

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! Grab these digital resources to get clear on what you want and what course and career options you have, or 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.