The ATAR Part 1: Unlock the weird inner-workings of ATAR calculations

Think you’re too busy with mid-year exams to bother reading about ATARs, ranks and the conspiracy that is scaling?

GUESS AGAIN.

Actually ‘getting’ how the HSC works and how the ATAR is calculated is going to be your key to nailing this year.

It’s going to help you realise exactly how important your mid-year exams are, what your exact goals should be and what to do after these exams.

There are about 10,000,000* different articles on how ATARs are calculated and it’s just as easy to get super confused as it is to get caught up with elaborate strategies on how to “win the HSC game”. The main thing to remember is that none of these strategies are more important than studying smart to get your best results but, you can use them to make smart decisions about your study.

This is a big one to tackle so we’re going to break it up into two parts for you, starting with: exactly what you need to know about ATAR calculations.

*This may be an exaggeration

ATARs

If you’ve ever looked up exactly what an ATAR is, chances are that you’ve come across something like this: “The ATAR is a rank based on an aggregate of scaled marks”.

😬 😬 😬

Okay… Well, if you aren’t a fan of complicated equations or confusing words, here are the three most important things to know about your ATAR.

Your ATAR is a rank

This means that any marks you’re getting back from assessments aren’t an indication of what your ATAR will be. It’s all about how well you are doing in comparison to every other student in the state so, for example, an ATAR of 90 means that you’re in the top 10% of students in the state. Easy right?

Your final HSC mark is the average of your exam mark and assessment mark

You’re going to get a Final HSC Mark for each subject and these marks are the basis of your ATAR - the good news is that working them out is actually an easy average of two numbers.

Take the mark your HSC examination mark, add it to your school assessment mark from the rest of year 12, divide by two and boom → that’s your final mark.

It’s seriously that easy.

If you have an HSC assessment mark of 85 in General Maths and then get an examination mark of 91 based on your final HSC exam, your subject mark for HSC maths will be 88.

Exam Mark: 91/100. Assessment Mark: 85/100. Final HSC Mark: 88.

Your ATAR comes from the final HSC mark for each subject

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as just taking an average of all your subject marks because of a little gem called: scaling.

Every year 12 student hears a lot about scaling, but it’s still a tough one to wrap your head around. Basically, once you’ve locked down your final HSC mark for each subject, the wizards at UAC start combining those marks in a way that recognises it’s harder to do well in some subjects than it is in others.

Here’s a sneak peak behind the scenes:

• You’re given a UAC score out of 50 for each one of your units and that basically rates what subject it is, and how well you did. Example: A 90 in physics might give you a UAC score of 46 but a 90 in senior science might give you a UAC score of 42.
• The UAC scores for each subject are added together to give an “aggregate” or overall total out of 500. (Remember, only 10 units count and each of them was given a UAC score out of 50).
• Now, every student starts to get allocated an ATAR based on where their “aggregate” ranks in the state- so the highest 0.05% of all the total marks will be given a 99.95 ATAR and the top 10% of total marks in the state mean those students will all have an ATAR of 90 and above.

What you really need to know is there aren’t any “bad” or “good” subjects - it’s just a system to compare marks from completely different subjects. There's nothing wrong with doing lower-scaling subjects, you just have to really focus on getting the best marks you possibly can so you're less likely to have results scaled down.

Ranks

So it all comes down to two marks for each subject: your HSC exam mark and your assessment mark from your school

It’s not too hard to figure out where the HSC exam mark comes from - it’s the score out of 100 that the Board of Studies markers give you for your HSC exam (just remember that it's not the raw mark, it's an aligned mark that you are given).

It starts to get a bit dicey when you try to figure out where that HSC assessment mark came from, especially because all the schools in NSW have pretty different standards of assessment. The only chance to really compare schools happens during that HSC exam which is the same for every student. So to cut to the chase, your actual assessment marks mean nothing and instead, your school ranking is all important.

Instead of using the exact assessment mark, the Board of Studies actually assigns you a mark based on your school rank and the school’s results in each subject. This part can be tricky to explain so let’s look at an example of the 48 economics students in one hypothetical school - Riverdale.

• The school is going to rank each student from 1 - 48 based on how well they do in their assessments, mid-years, trials etc. and shoot that over to the Board of Studies.
• All the students will sit the same HSC economics exam as every other kid in the state and earn an exam mark.

So, let’s say the top mark from Riverdale students in the HSC exam was a 96, the average was 84 and the lowest mark was a 72.

Betty was ranked #1 at Riverdale and scored a 92 in the HSC exam. Now, that #1 rank is worth the highest exam mark from all Riverdale students and her assessment mark is going to be a 96. Here are her final results:

Exam mark: 92. Assessment mark: 96. HSC mark: 94.

And it works like that for every rank. See, Archie was ranked #25 and scored 85 in the HSC exam. That means his mid-range rank is going to be worth about the average exam mark of the school, maybe an 83. His results are:

Exam mark: 85. Assessment mark: 83. HSC mark: 84.

And, you guessed it, whoever - let’s call her Cheryl - was ranked #48 at Riverdale economics is going to have an assessment mark of the lowest exam mark: 72.

The bottom line is that your assessment mark is always going to be taken from your school’s range of scores in the HSC exam so just remember, the actual marks you’re getting in your assessments don’t mean anything, it’s all about that rank.

Cool story but how do I actually get a better ATAR?

That’s the real question!

There’s no point wasting time by learning how HSC marks are calculated if you can’t use it to supersize your ATAR without a ton of extra work.

We’ve given you a lot of information for now and there are still those pesky mid-years to study for so we’re going to give you a bit of a break before we get into the really important stuff.

Keep an eye out for a new post over the next few days on: The three ways to make the ATAR calculations work for YOU.