With no ATAR, or a low rank, there are essentially three ways to get into university. You can do an appropriate VET training qualification, gain and present general evidence of learning, or do a pathway program organised by a university. Let's explore each of these alternative pathways.
Special consideration programs – such as the Educational Access Schemes in NSW or the Special Entry Access Scheme in Victoria – allow students with a low ATAR or even no ATAR to apply for a course that may have an ATAR requirement they don't meet.
Here's just a few: Study a course through an RTO, such as TAFE. A Certificate III is roughly equivalent to year 12, and certificate IV or diploma courses can be used for University entrance.
Talk to your career adviser before the end of the school year about a back-up plan. They may be able to help you look into alternative universities or other course options. Call your Tertiary Admissions Centre to re-prioritise your course preferences to those that you have qualified for.
Universities use the ATAR to help them make decisions around admissions to their courses. The ATAR score helps students and course administrators feel confident that they'll be academically able to meet the demands of higher study. ATAR is only one part of getting into a chosen course of study.
An ATAR of 50 is a fair achievement but won't help you get into university. Scoring 50.00 means that you did about as well as average.
The ATAR is a number from 0 and 99.95 in intervals of 0.05. The highest rank is 99.95, the next highest 99.90, and so on. The lowest automatically reported rank is 30.00, with ranks below 30.00 being reported as 'less than 30'.
The short answer is: No. Your Year 11 grades do not count towards your ATAR! Essentially, the ATAR is a percentile number that's calculated using your HSC Marks — aka, your Year 12 marks. This uses your final HSC marks and your Year 12 internal assessment grades.
The Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) is a number between 0 and 99.95 given to all Australian students upon graduation from high school. It's important to note that the ATAR is not a score, but a rank. It serves as a measure of each student's overall academic performance relative to the rest of their cohort.
TAFE has partnerships with universities across the state and beyond. This means that you can get yourself a graduate qualification from your local TAFE campus. Case in point - the Certificate IV in Tertiary Preparation (TPC). This will give you a Tertiary Entrance Score which can then help you enrol at university.
There are eight universities that offer early entry pathways and do not have a minimum ATAR requirement. This means that you can be accepted into university purely based on your Year 11 performance!
If your child is unhappy with their current school, they may choose to complete their senior studies at a different school or through an alternative provider such as an RTO. Students who do not wish to finish Year 12 must either enrol in a tertiary course at an RTO, TAFE or university, or find full-time employment.
The ATAR is a commonly used criterion for admission to undergraduate study. It is a nationally comparable percentile rank (given between 0 and 99.95 in increments of 0.5) signifying a student's position relative to other students.
Rank, not a score
So an ATAR of 70 doesn't mean you got 70 percent – it means that you're in the top 30 percent of your year group.
Note: If you score 30.00 or below, but you'd still like to pursue a tertiary qualification (including a degree), then there may well be a way you can do this. Speak to universities about the alternative pathways available.
Is year 12 content much more difficult than year 11? To be completely honest, the really overwhelming and difficult part of year 12 tends to be the pressure and the intensity of the study that you might come up against. The difference between the difficulty of the actual content is going to vary between subjects.
Year 11. In Year 11 your child will be expected to work harder and be more proactive in their study. It's a big step up from Year 10.
You haven't faced a year of schooling like this before – so some tips on how to get a good ATAR might be just what you need to face the challenges ahead. Luckily, we've got advice from 12 graduates who received a UQ Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship in 2022 by getting an ATAR of 99.90 or 99.95.
In general, most students consider an ATAR of below 30 to be bad. This is because the actual ATAR score is not reported for an ATAR less than 30, it is just stated as <30. Still, this ATAR may be good and all that is required for a student who wants to pursue a trade or enrol in TAFE.
In Australia, the lowest minimum ATAR required by a medical program is an ATAR of 90 (Monash University) or adjusted ATAR of 90 (University of Adelaide). If you're a rural student, you could also apply to La Trobe's medical program, which has a minimum unadjusted ATAR requirement of 80.
Your rank is based on how you went compared to other Year 12 students. So even if your test scores are lower than you'd hoped, if you're still ranked in the top 20% of students, then you'll receive an ATAR of 80. As long as you try your best with what you have, chances are, you'll do better than you expect.
16 December 2022
One Flinders student, Laura Webb, achieved the highest possible ATAR of 99.95. Laura is one of 33 Queensland students to achieve a 99.95, out of a total 27,245 students who received an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank.
All you need to get 70 (pretty much), is get roughly 30 for each subject. So around the C+ and the B mark for exams and SAC's.
In NSW in 2020, the minimum aggregate required to score an ATAR of 90 or above was approximately 370, corresponding to an average scaled score of 37 per unit across 10 units.