Like?? Is it calculated through my grade? My GPA? My exams?? The uni I wanna go to needs an 80 ATAR but how do I make sure that happens if I can’t find a straight answer on it??
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You can’t calculate your own Australian Tertiary Admission Rank score because it is a comparative ranking. Scores in all your subjects are scaled according to difficulty and then added together, forming a score which is compared against your peers.
This means to get an 80 ATAR you would need to do as well or better than 80% of your peers. You can’t know how well your peers will do in advance so you can’t know what your score needs to be. All you can do is your best.
ATAR is the ranking used for entry into Australian tertiary institutions. We don’t use GPA in Australia.
The specific calculation depends on which state you are in. In Victoria, the ATAR is derived from the **aggregate** of your English units, your three next best (scaled), and 10% of your 5th and 6th subjects if you did any. This aggregate is then ranked across the state to give the ATAR score (e.g. 95.00 – the top 5% of the state).
If you are in a different state, you can check your state education authority for fact sheets, or ask your school.
Typically, your unit/subject scores are based off a combination of your school-assessed coursework, with a large portion made up by the exam. The specific formula is far more complex, but this is the ELI5 version.
For reference, an ATAR of 70 is average (given that many do unscored), which is in the C+/ B band. If you’re aiming for an 80 ATAR, you should be achieving at least B / B+ in your assessments, but this is very broad and subject dependent.
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