HSC and ATAR (1 of 10) - University Entry and ATAR

This series of blogs on HSC and ATAR tries to give an easy-to-understand explanation on the various processes of determining the HSC result and calculation of ATAR based on the understandings from various documentations from the NSW Board of Studies (BOS) and Universities Admission Centre (UAC).

Every year, over 50,000 Year 12 students in NSW finish their high school studies, sit for an open High School Certificate (HSC) examination and apply through the UAC for admissions to universities to begin their tertiary education. As spaces for university entrance are usually limited, entries to some particular courses in particular universities are very competitive. As such, UAC has to rank the applicants using their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) to allow selections to take place.

ATAR is a number between 0.00 and 99.95 with increments of 0.05. It is a rank (not a mark) that indicates the position of a student in the HSC in relation to all other students of his same year group. e.g. A student with an ATAR of 80.25 indicates that his performance in the HSC is better than 80.25% of all students in his same year group.

Admission to particular courses in a particular university is subject to selection on the basis of ATAR. In general, student has to achieve a minimum ATAR (called the ATAR cut-off) in order to be considered for admission. To give some idea, the ATAR cut-offs of some courses in the University of New South Wales in 2013 are as follows:
               Course                            ATAR cut-off
               Arts                                        78.00
               Actuarial Studies                      97.00
               Commerce                               96.30
               Economics                               93.00
               Combined Law                         99.65
               Science                                    83.05
As shown above, a student has to achieve an ATAR of at least 99.65 before he can be considered for admission to study for Combined Law degrees in the University of New South Sales, i.e. his performance in the HSC has to be better than 99.65% of all other students.
  
The ATAR is calculated by UAC from the HSC result provided by BOS, and is based on the student's academic achievement in the HSC (consisting of 50% from HSC examinations and 50% from school assessments) in relation to that of all other students.

                HSC Result
             HSC examinations   ----------->   ATAR
             School assessments            
                                   
                    BOS                                     UAC