The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is a ranking system used in Australia to measure a student's academic performance relative to their peers in the same graduating year. It is a score between 0 and 99.95 and is used by universities and other higher education institutions to determine admission to undergraduate courses.
To be eligible for an ATAR, you need 5 General subjects, 4 General subjects and 1 Applied subject, or 4 General subjects and 1 VET qualification at Certificate III or above. You also need a C or better in an English subject, such as English, Literature or Essential English.
You can study more than 5, but only your best 5 allowed results count.
For QCE subjects, your raw result in a General subject is a mark out of 100, made up of internal assessments and an external exam. Applied subjects get a letter grade. QTAC then scales each result to produce a scaled result, so results can be compared fairly across subjects. How much a result moves depends on the subject and the year.
Your best 5 scaled results count, from the allowed combinations. English is required to be eligible, but it only counts if it's in your best 5. General and Applied English can't both count, and neither can General and Applied Maths.
Your ATAR is based on your aggregate, which is your best 5 scaled results added together, out of 500. QTAC ranks students on their aggregates and places them into 2,000 ATAR bands.
It estimates a scaled result for each subject using QTAC's ATAR Report 2025, then adds your best 5. QTAC doesn't publish a way to convert an aggregate to an ATAR, so that step is our own estimate from the same report, which we compared with QTAC's ATAR Navigator. Scaling changes every year, so treat the result as a guide.
If you have more questions about ATAR, you should check out our blog where we cover everything you need to know. For one-on-one help, talk to our QCE tutors
