An ATAR is the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, a number between about 0.00 and 99.95 that shows how your Year 12 results compare with other students in your age group, not a raw “score” out of 100.

Basic idea

  • ATAR is a rank, not a mark or percentage.
  • It tells universities where you sit in the state-wide age group (for example, an ATAR of 80.00 means you performed as well as or better than about 80% of students your age).
  • Its main purpose is to help unis decide who gets into which courses when there are more applicants than places.

How the number works

  • The ATAR is usually reported between 0.00 and 99.95 in steps of 0.05 (for example, 70.00, 84.35, 99.95).
  • In some states, anything below a certain point (often around 30) is just reported as a single low “mystery mark” rather than the exact rank.
  • A higher ATAR simply means a higher percentile rank, not that you “got more questions right” than someone else in a simple way.

What it’s used for

  • Universities set minimum ATAR “cut-offs” for many courses; if your ATAR meets or beats that number (plus any bonus/adjustment points rules), you are more competitive for an offer.
  • Different states calculate ATARs slightly differently, but an ATAR of, say, 85.00 in one state is treated as equivalent to 85.00 in another when unis compare applicants.
  • Outside uni entry, people sometimes use ATAR as a rough shorthand for academic performance at the end of school, but that’s not its official purpose.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.