It’s not a secret how the ATAR is calculated, but I can guarantee you that if you asked your friends, 9 out of 10 of them would not be able to tell you the whole process!
School Mark vs HSC Mark
Your final HSC mark is 50% of your school mark, derived from multiple school assessments (i.e. “internals”), and 50% of your mark from the final HSC exam out of 100 (i.e. “externals”).
Above is a sample image of what the final HSC marks report issued by NESA looks like. For example, your final HSC mark for Chemistry is the average of the examination mark (HSC exam mark) and the assessment mark (school mark). This number is rounded up if the average is not an integer.
Why Do Marks Need to be Adjusted?
What is Moderation?
What is Alignment?
What is Scaling?
How is Your Final ATAR Calculated?
Example of the Calculation Process:
Key Takeaways:
Appendix:
What a complicated process…why is the HSC like this?
The HSC chooses to consider your school marks because school exams test important and different skillsets than the final HSC exam. For instance, someone who is good at giving multimodal presentations may not be good at an extremely time-pressured, written exam (which is what the English HSC is).
This process is the reason why the external exam is VERY important, and even if you are unhappy with your internal results after trials, you should not be discouraged because you are only halfway there! I did not have a very good rank at school for chemistry. However, I studied consistently and effectively for the final HSC exam and ended up achieving full marks, pulling my whole school cohort’s chemistry marks up and state ranking 6th (moral of the story, the externals comeback is real 💯).
What is NESA?
What is the UAC?
References
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