How does scaling work and why does it matter? The ATAR explained

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The ATAR, or Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, is a standardised ranking system used to determine eligibility and competitiveness for university admissions for current Year 12 students.

Although it may look like a score out of 100, your ATAR is a number between 0 and 99.95 that simply ranks how students sit in comparison to their state or territories year group.

So an ATAR of 80 means that you are in the top 20 per cent of people aged between 16 and 20 in their state or territory.

An ATAR issued in one state or territory is equal to the same ATAR issued in another and the ATAR you receive in your home state/territory can be used to apply throughout Australia.

How is an ATAR calculated?

Each state and territory’s admissions centre has a unique way of calculating their students’ ATAR. But generally, during the final years of secondary school, Australian students undertake a range of subjects.

In each eligible subject, students will receive scores based on their performance. These typically consist of:

• An internal assessment score from work completed at their school
• A final exam score from an externally set and marked exam that students complete at the end of the year *note this does not apply for all states and territories and subjects*

To ensure the reliability and consistency of marks between schools, a student’s assessment score from their school is put through a process of moderation.

The raw scores are adjusted based on the performance of everyone at the school in the final external exams. While the exact calculations differ between states, generally if a student’s school as a whole performs better in the exams than in their assessments, their assessment marks will be increased.

Some states also standardise the marks to remove differences in exams from year to year. In other states, external assessments are quality assured through a separate process, and a student’s external assessment result does not impact their school assessment result. A student’s results for the school assessment are combined with their external assessments to generate the final result for that subject.

To account for differences between subjects, a student’s mark is put through the process of scaling. This creates a level playing field between all subjects, regardless of the differences in content and the level of competition within each subject.

Tell me more about scaling

To use chemistry as an example, authorities look at how every student who did chemistry performed in chemistry compared to how they performed in all of their other subjects.

• If the body of students that took chemistry performed well in all other subjects, then chemistry marks get scaled up.
• If the body of students that took chemistry performed poorly in all other subjects, chemistry marks get scaled down.

Scaling is designed to simulate what your mark would be if all students in the state took that subject.

After scaling, all of each students’ marks are added together to form what’s called an aggregate (the exact way this is done varies by state) and the entire state is ranked based on those aggregates.

From that ranking, students receive their ATAR.

Many students can have the same ATAR – the top 0.05% of aggregates (based on population data) will all receive 99.95.

How is the ATAR used?

For current Year 12 students, each university sets a minimum ATAR/Selection Rank for each course, the cut-off score is the mark of the person with the lowest ATAR/Selection Rank admitted to that course.

Selection Ranks can be the same as your ATAR, or they can consider various adjustment factors. Adjustment factor schemes vary across the different tertiary admission centres.

Students will submit a list of preferences for courses they would like to take at universities within each state, and they will receive an offer for the course with the highest mark within their ATAR highest-preference course for which they are eligible.

Some students will apply in more than one state, which is why it’s great that your ATAR is valid across all states!

But, as important as the ATAR is, Year 12s are not the only students seeking entry into university and the ATAR is just one of many pathways available.

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