What is Atar (Atar)?
William Burgess
Updated on March 03, 2026
What is Atar (Atar)?
ATAR (previously known as TER) is a ranking which reports your position relative to all people in the Year 12 school leaving age population in Western Australia. For a technical explanation of the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) .
How is the percentage rank converted to an ATAR score?
Finally, the percentage rank is converted to an ATAR score. The ATAR is an estimate of the percentage of the population that you outperformed. So if you receive an ATAR of 60, it means you performed better than 60% of students that year. The ATAR is a number from 0 and 99.95 in intervals of 0.05.
When are the first Atar-based offers made?
The first ATAR-based offers will be made in January Round 2 on 26 January 2022. The ATAR is a rank, not a mark. The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is a number between 0.00 and 99.95 that indicates a student’s position relative to all the students in their age group (ie all 16 to 20 year olds in NSW).
How is the Atar calculated by VTAC?
The ATAR is calculated by VTAC based on up to six VCE scaled study scores. Study scores are scaled up or down by VTAC according to the performance of students in a study in a particular year – which means scores change each year, making ATARs difficult to predict. The ATAR is calculated from an aggregate, produced by adding together:
