ATAR Compass

ATAR Compass can estimate your ATAR based on the HSC marks you are hoping to achieve. You might use this information when you are researching university degrees and the ATARs and selection ranks required to receive an offer to those degrees.

Of course, many students are just curious to see how their projected HSC results might translate into an ATAR.

You can estimate your ATAR using ATAR Compass in four steps:

1. Select all your HSC courses.
2. Enter the HSC marks you expect to receive from NESA, or results you've already received in recent exams or assessments.
3. Check your courses make you eligible for an ATAR – for example, you must include at least 2 units of English.
4. Click 'Estimate my ATAR'.

ATAR Compass will display your estimated ATAR based on those marks. If the courses you select don't make you eligible, you'll see an error message telling you what to fix.

Your estimate is based on averages of historical scaling statistics from the past five years, so use it as a guide only. Learn more about what the ATAR is and how it works.

No. ATAR Compass gives an estimated ATAR using scaling data from the past five years. Your actual ATAR may differ because scaling changes every year.

Even if you accurately predict the HSC marks you will receive, your actual ATAR will be calculated using your scaled marks and we can't predict what these will be. Scaling changes every year depending on the academic ability of students in each course. 

Because we can't predict how your HSC marks will be scaled, ATAR Compass uses averages of scaling statistics from the past five years. The result is therefore not as precise as the calculation that will be done to derive your actual ATAR.

The discrepancy between the result you get from ATAR Compass and your actual ATAR is likely to be greater in the following circumstances:

• your HSC marks are on the lower end (a small number of students achieve very low HSC marks)
• you are studying a course with a very small cohort (eg Classical Greek Extension, Dutch Continuers).

This is because in both these situations the small sample sizes (and large spread of marks achieved by students studying courses with small cohorts) reduce the accuracy of the estimate.

How your ATAR is calculated

You can enter any of the following marks in the ATAR Compass:

• HSC trial exams or assessment results
• Year 11 exam results
• marks you are aiming to achieve in the HSC.

Remember that the HSC marks you enter, and the result ATAR Compass gives you, are estimates and can only be used as a guide.

Yes, you can enter any of the following marks into ATAR Compass:

• HSC trial exam or assessment results
• Year 11 exam results
• marks you are aiming to achieve in the HSC.

Remember that the marks you enter are estimates, as is the result  ATAR Compass gives  you. Use the ATAR Compass result as a guide to help you plan your university application. You can also adjust your marks at any time to explore different scenarios and see how changes affect your estimated ATAR.

According to ATAR rules, if you complete Mathematics Advanced and then go on to satisfactorily complete Mathematics Extension 1 and Mathematics Extension 2, your results in Mathematics Advanced will not be included in your ATAR calculation, even if you have excelled in it.

ATAR Compass applies this rule.

If you are studying Mathematics Extension 1 and Mathematics Extension 2, select Mathematics Extension 2 first. ATAR Compass will then give you the option to enter a mark out of 100 when you select Mathematics Extension 1.

Scaling changes every year depending on the academic ability of students in each course. Because these mappings change from year to year, ATAR Compass uses averages from the past five years to help make these statistics more stable.

ATAR Compass uses two main sources of data when calculating your ATAR estimate:

1. the mapping between HSC marks and scaled marks (eg see Table A3 in the Report on the Scaling of the 2024 NSW HSC)
2. the mapping between the aggregate of scaled marks and the ATAR (eg see Table A9 in the Report on the Scaling of the 2024 NSW HSC).

Scaling of HSC marks is an important part of the process of calculating ATARs. Scaling allows a proper and fair comparison of students who have studied different courses. Because we can't predict how your HSC marks will be scaled, ATAR Compass draws on historical scaling statistics to calculate your ATAR estimate.

The ATAR produced by ATAR Compass is an estimation only. It's calculated based on averages of historical HSC and ATAR data (which you can find in the annual Reports on the Scaling of the HSC) rather than the precise data that was used to calculate your actual ATAR.

Access Reports on the the Scaling of the NSW HSC

Scaling is the process that allows a fair comparison of students who have studied different HSC courses. It adjusts your raw HSC marks to reflect the academic ability of students in each course, so your results can be compared with those of students who chose different subjects.

Because scaling statistics change every year, ATAR Compass can't predict how your marks will be scaled. Instead, it uses averages of scaling data from the past five years to make the estimate more stable.

ATAR Compass relies on two main sources of data:

1. the mapping between HSC marks and scaled marks
2. the mapping between the aggregate of scaled marks and the ATAR.

Both of these are published each year in the Report on the Scaling of the NSW HSC. Because your actual ATAR will use the scaling statistics from the year you sit the HSC, your real ATAR may differ from your estimate. 

How your ATAR is calculated

Yes, you can enter different marks to see what effect they have on your estimated ATAR. Follow the prompts to edit your course details.

Yes, ATAR Compass is based on historical NSW HSC scaling statistics, so it can only calculate ATAR estimates for NSW HSC students.

UAC calculates the ATAR for NSW HSC students and has direct access to the scaling data that powers the tool. ATARs in other states and territories are calculated by their respective admissions centres. If you're an ACT Year 12 student, your ATAR is calculated by the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies in consultation with UAC.

How the ATAR is calculated for NSW HSC students

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