Many unis offer Early Entry pathways that do not have a minimum ATAR requirement, which means you can get into your dream university based on your Year 11 grades!
Your Year 11 results
Your studies this year do matter. Not only are they the foundation for your Year 12 courses, if you apply for admission to university through Schools Recommendation Schemes then the institutions will base part of their assessment on your Year 11 results.
Do year 11 subjects count towards your ATAR? No, your ATAR is based entirely upon your performance in your Year 12 studies, unless you decide to take a Year 12 subject early.
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.
The Mature-age Entry Scheme is an entry pathway for students who haven't completed any tertiary study or who did not receive an ATAR, or if it was below 70.
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.
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.
It's based on overall HSC results and is designed to be a predictor of your first-year performance at university. 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.
Studying a VET course may suit you better if you haven't completed Year 12 and desire to study something more specific that aligns with your career goals, which can then potentially help you get into your desired course at your chosen university.
When you apply for college in the fall of your senior year, your junior year transcript will be the recent ones available to colleges. Your junior year grades are essential: it's the grade a college will look at most, along with your senior year. Your grades predetermine your academic performance for your final year.
An ATAR score of 70 out of 100, for example, means you are in the top 30 percent for academic achievement in your cohort. Only 30 percent of people around your age completed secondary education and achieved better grades.
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.
Most students do at least 3 hours of study per day. Conscientious students will do at least 3 hours study per evening. This means that students will need to do between 15 and 18 hours of study each week!
If you have failed a subject, the credit points won't count towards your degree, but it may affect your WAM. You will need to repeat the subject, in the case of a core or compulsory subject; or 'replace' the subject with a different subject.
Year 11 will raise the bar in terms of difficulty and the challenges you will face. However, it is the prelude to your HSC year so its purpose is mainly to prepare you for year 12.
Where can you get into uni without an ATAR (early entry)? 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!
How can I study postgraduate Medicine in Australia? Instead of taking ATAR and UCAT ® scores into account, graduate programs generally use GPA (from the previous degree/s) and GAMSAT ® scores plus an interview score - Some graduate entry medical schools also require a portfolio submission.
You can use the Senior External Examination if you: Have no formal Year 12 qualifications. Previously completed Year 12 but your results were not high enough for tertiary entry. Need to satisfy subject prerequisites for entry to a program.
Your ATAR is a rank, not a percentage
An ATAR is a rank given in increments of 0.05 between 0.0 and 99.95, meaning that a score of 75 puts you in the top 25 per cent of your state. This rank provides an easy method of comparison for institutions when selecting students for course entry.
Ravenswood student Maria Yang is one of the 48 students in NSW who has received the perfect ATAR of 99.95 in 2022.
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.
In fact, a study of students at Victoria University showed many low-ATAR students achieved high marks in their first year, particularly when they were appropriately supported by the university to succeed.
One Flinders student, Laura Webb, achieved the highest possible ATAR of 99.95.
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.