How the QCAA ATAR Works (QCE): TEA, Scaling and Choosing Subjects

The Queensland ATAR is calculated by QTAC (not QCAA) from your best five scaled QCE results, and you need a C or better in an English subject to be eligible. QTAC scales each subject's raw results onto a common 100 point scale, adds your best five scaled results into a Tertiary Entrance Aggregate (TEA), and ranks it against the potential Year 12 population on a scale from 99.95 down to 0.00. QTAC publishes no table that turns a TEA into an ATAR, so every estimate is a range. To try your own results, use the QCE ATAR calculator, which gives an estimate based on QTAC's 2025 scaling, not an official ATAR.

This guide describes QTAC's ATAR Report 2025 (published February 2026) for the 2025 cohort, and the 2025 syllabuses, which the 2026 Year 12 cohort is the first to be assessed on for Units 3 and 4. Scaling is recalculated on each year's results, so your own scaled results will differ from the 2025 ones. For subject results, the ATAR distribution and release dates, see QCAA results (QCE). For the certificate itself, see how the QCE works. For past papers and practice in each subject, start at QCAA past papers (QCE).

How is the Queensland ATAR calculated?

QTAC does three things to your QCAA subject results.

1. Scales each result. A General subject gives a raw result out of 100, and QTAC maps it to a scaled result on a 100 point scale (see the scaling sections below).
2. Adds the best five into your TEA. The TEA is the combination of your best five scaled results, so with five results at 100 it is out of 500. Only results attained in the last five years are used (2021 to 2025 for the 2025 ATAR).
3. Ranks the TEA. The ATAR is a rank from 99.95 (highest) to 0.00 in steps of 0.05, and it shows your position relative to the potential Year 12 population, not a percentage of marks. An ATAR of 30 or less is reported as "30 or below". The highest ATAR is 99.95 and 37 students were at that rank in 2025.

Because the rank is against the potential Year 12 population, not only the students who received an ATAR, the share of ATAR-eligible students in each band is not even. The 2025 band table is in QCAA results (QCE), so it is not repeated here.

Who can get a QCE ATAR?

You need a C or better in one of five QCAA English subjects: English, English as an Additional Language, Literature, English and Literature Extension, or Essential English. QTAC's report does not say the English result has to be one of your best five, so the C is a hurdle and not a guaranteed inclusion. This is separate from the QCE's own literacy requirement, which has other routes. How the QCE works explains the difference.

Your TEA can be built in one of three ways, and you need Units 3 and 4 results in each General or Applied subject:

Source: QTAC, ATAR Report 2025, Table 11, p. 16 (QTAC reference licence). The VET option means a completed qualification at Certificate III or higher.

Of the 59,919 students whose results QTAC considered in the 2025 scaling, 30,167 (50.35%) were ATAR eligible. QTAC lists the reasons for ineligibility, which include not enough subjects, not meeting the required subject combination and not meeting the English requirement. The report also says there are further rules on certain combinations, repeated subjects and getting a new ATAR, which are on QTAC's website and not in the report. Check QTAC for those.

How does QTAC scaling work?

QTAC describes inter-subject scaling as a way to compare results across subjects. It maps each QCAA senior subject, and each completed VET qualification, to a common scale. The scale reflects how students performed in a subject and how those same students performed across their overall studies, so it represents the relative difficulty of achieving a given score. The scaled result is on a 100 point scale to two decimal places.

A few details from the report:

• General, General Extension and Senior External Examination subjects have 100 result categories, one per raw mark out of 100.
• Applied subjects have 5, the letter grades A to E. QTAC gives each a number first (A is 90, B is 70, C is 50, D is 30, E is 10).
• A VET qualification is scaled by level. Every Certificate III is scaled together, and so on.
• Small subjects are sometimes grouped with similar subjects when there is not enough data for reliable scaling. The ATAR Technical Committee on Scaling decides the final grouping.
• It is calculated again every year. QTAC's algorithm ran 40 iterations to reach its 2025 solution.

What do QCE scaled results look like?

QTAC's report prints, for every subject with at least 50 students, the raw and scaled results at the 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 99th percentiles of that subject's results. Each cell below reads "raw / scaled": the raw result at that percentile, and the scaled result QTAC gave it. So in Specialist Mathematics, a raw result of 82 (the median) scaled to 95.3. This is a selection of 15 General subjects, ordered by scaled median so you can scan it. The scaled values are rounded to one decimal place.

Source: QTAC, ATAR Report 2025, Tables 2 and 6, pp. 3-4 and 8-14 (QTAC reference licence). "Results" is the number of 2025 results QTAC considered. Figures describe the 2025 scaling only.

Between those points a scaled result has to be estimated, and below the 25th percentile QTAC gives no point at all. The scaling lookup in the QCE ATAR calculator does that for every subject, including the ones not in this table, and for any raw result. It is an estimate, and the further a result sits from QTAC's printed points the rougher it is.

The same raw result is worth different amounts in different subjects. A raw result of 70 is 88.9 in Specialist Mathematics and 62.7 in Business, because the table reads along each subject's own row. A raw 74 is 77.9 in Accounting and 61.6 in Physical Education.

Which QCE subjects scale highest?

Reading the table by the 50th percentile, the highest scaled medians in 2025 were Specialist Mathematics (95.3), Chemistry (90.4), Physics (89.8), Mathematical Methods (89.6) and Economics (88.1). The lowest of the 15 were General Mathematics (59.5), Physical Education (61.6) and Business (62.7). That is the answer to "highest scaling subjects" for 2025, and it is not advice.

Three limits stop the table working as a shopping list.

1. You scale from your own result. A student at Chemistry's 25th percentile (raw 76) scaled to 77.1, below the 77.9 that a median Accounting student got. Where you finish in the subject decides the number, so a subject you can do well in beats a subject that scaled well for someone else.
2. It is one year. The figures are QTAC's 2025 scaling. They are recalculated on each year's results, so the order can move.
3. Only five count. Your TEA takes your best five scaled results, so a lower scaled result in a sixth subject does not pull it down.

How do Applied subjects and VET scale?

An Applied subject has one scaled result per letter grade. A completed VET qualification has one per level. These are 2025 figures.

Source: QTAC, ATAR Report 2025, Tables 8 and 9, pp. 12-14 (QTAC reference licence). QTAC leaves D and E blank at its printed percentiles, and it leaves out the Advanced Diploma value (8 results), so neither is shown. Religion and Ethics has no printed C.

Applied subjects differ a lot from one another. An A in Essential English (38.9) or Essential Mathematics (41.3) is below the 25th percentile scaled result of every General subject in the table above, while an A in Sport and Recreation (50.5) is close to the bottom of that range and an A in Religion and Ethics (72.5) is well above it. A Certificate III is a flat 38.00 for everyone who completes one. The calculator includes every Applied subject and VET level.

How does the TEA become an ATAR?

QTAC does not publish the step from a TEA to an ATAR. The report gives the number of ATAR-eligible students in each ATAR band, but not which TEA lands in which band.

So the AusGrader QCE ATAR calculator fits that step to QTAC's ATAR Navigator, QTAC's own public estimator. We recorded Navigator's estimate for hundreds of sets of results, and fitted a curve and a range to them. QTAC says Navigator's estimates are not predictions, so ours are not either. On 59 sets we held back, the calculator's estimate differed from Navigator's by 1.8 ATAR points on average, with the largest gap 6.7. This is what it gives for a few TEAs, as an illustration of the size of the range.

Source: AusGrader's QCE ATAR calculator, fitted to QTAC's ATAR Navigator on 25 October 2026. These are estimates, not QTAC figures and not an official ATAR.

Use the range, not the middle. To get one for your own results, put them into the QCE ATAR calculator, which also works backwards from a target ATAR to the scaled results it would need. To compare an ATAR with courses, see the course ATAR list for Queensland universities, which shows last year's lowest selection ranks and is a guide only.

How do I choose QCE subjects?

These are the points the sources support. None of them is a ranking of subjects.

1. Plan for an English with a C. One of English, English as an Additional Language, Literature, English and Literature Extension or Essential English, at a C or better. If you can pass none, you have no ATAR, however your other subjects scale.
2. Count to five. The ATAR uses your best five Units 3 and 4 results. Most students (70.46% of the 2025 ATAR-eligible group) used five General subjects. A sixth subject is a spare, since only the best five count.
3. Decide whether the fifth is General, Applied or VET. All three are allowed, with at most one Applied or VET result. The tables above show the 2025 scaled values for each, and a Certificate III is fixed at 38.00. A VET qualification has to be completed, at Certificate III or higher, to count.
4. Check what does not count. QCAA's handbook says Short Course results do not contribute to the ATAR, and that when an Applied (Essential) subject and a General subject are from the same learning area, only one may contribute.
5. Look at the exam weighting. In the 2025 syllabuses, the external exam is 50% of the result in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, General Mathematics, Mathematical Methods and Specialist Mathematics, and 25% in Accounting, Business, Digital Solutions, Economics, Engineering, English, Legal Studies, Literature and Physical Education. How to prepare for QCAA external exams covers what that means by exam time.
6. Check course requirements separately. Prerequisite and assumed subjects are set by each university course and are not in QTAC's ATAR report or in QCAA's documents. Look them up on the course page and with QTAC before you choose. The course ATAR list flags courses that also select on something other than the ATAR.
7. Choose subjects you can score well in. A strong result in a subject that scales lower can still beat an average result in one that scales higher, as the Accounting and Chemistry figures show.

Common mistakes about the QCE ATAR