VCE ATAR: How It Is Calculated, Scaled and Ranked (VTAC)

Your VCE ATAR is a percentile rank that VTAC (not VCAA) calculates from your scaled study scores. VTAC scales each Unit 3 and 4 study score for the competition in that study, adds your English-group study and your next three best (the primary four) plus up to two increments of 10% of your fifth and sixth, then ranks the total against the whole Year 12 age group. To see your own numbers, use the VCE ATAR calculator. If you do not have study scores yet, the VCE study score calculator estimates one from your marks for each graded assessment, and that result feeds the ATAR calculator. Everything both show is an estimate, not an official result, and the ATAR figures use VTAC's 2025 scaling.

This guide describes the VTAC ATAR and Scaling Guide 2026, written for students completing Year 12 in 2026, and the figures in VTAC's 2025 Scaling Report. Scaling is recalculated every year, so your own scaled scores will differ from the 2025 ones. For the study score itself, see how the VCE study score is calculated. If you are still picking studies, see Choosing VCE subjects. For results day and ATAR statements, see VCE results. For the wider certificate, see what the VCE is.

What is the VCE ATAR?

The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) is a number from 0.00 to 99.95 in steps of 0.05. It shows where your Year 12 achievement sits compared with the age group that year. An ATAR of 75.00 means your results were above 75 per cent of the age group.

VTAC calculates it, and only for institutions that use it to rank applicants into some courses. VTAC states that there is no pass or fail ATAR, that everyone who gets one has passed the VCE, and that not all courses use it. Other states' ATARs are treated as equivalent.

Who can get a VCE ATAR?

To get an ATAR through VTAC you must qualify for the VCE and have study scores in at least four permissible Unit 3 and 4 studies, one of them from the English group. A few details decide whether a study counts:

• VCE Vocational Major studies give no study score and cannot be used, so VM students can apply straight away only for courses that do not use the ATAR.
• You must pass Units 3 and 4 of a study for it to be included.
• Studies from any year can be used. A Unit 3 and 4 sequence done in Year 11 is scaled in the year you did it and can still count.
• Notional ATARs exist for applicants with other qualifications, such as the International Baccalaureate or interstate studies. VTAC treats them as equivalent to a normal ATAR. VCE results covers how to get the statement.

How does English count in the VCE ATAR?

English always counts. The English group is English, English as an Additional Language (EAL), Literature and English Language. Each has its own VCE hub: VCE English (including EAL) and VCE Literature. Your primary four must include your scaled score in one of them, so it is not a prerequisite you can leave out of the sum.

If you take more than one English-group study, the highest-scoring one fills the English place. A second one can still fill one of the other three places, subject to the study area grouping limits further down.

How is the aggregate worked out?

Your aggregate is the total of your primary four and up to two increments, each built from a scaled study score. Scaling starts from the study score VCAA reports, which is covered in how the VCE study score is calculated. Until you have one, the VCE study score calculator estimates it from your graded assessment marks. Here is how the pieces fit.

1. The primary four. Your scaled score in one English-group study, plus your next three highest permissible scaled scores. These can be VCE Unit 3 and 4 studies or VCE VET sequences with a scored assessment.
2. Up to two increments. For scored VCE studies, an increment is 10% of your fifth and sixth highest scaled scores. Other increment types exist (non-scored VCE VET, VE3 block credit, an approved higher education study worth 3.0 to 5.0 depending on your average mark, and credit for interstate studies). VTAC's guide has the rules for each.
3. A maximum of six results. If you have more than six permissible results, VTAC uses the six that give you the highest ATAR. The rest stay visible to selection officers on your application.

To try your own set, the VCE ATAR calculator takes your study scores, shows the scaled score for each study, builds the aggregate with the primary four and increments, and gives an estimated ATAR. It is an estimate based on VTAC's 2025 scaling, not an official ATAR.

Which studies can I combine?

VTAC limits how many studies from the same study area grouping can count, to keep a VCE program varied. The limits are:

• At most two results from one grouping in the primary four.
• At most three results from one grouping in the whole aggregate, the third being an increment.
• Non-scored VCE VET results from a grouping count only after all scored results in that grouping have been used.

The groupings are English, Mathematics, Music, History, Information Technology, Contemporary Society and Language, plus a set of VET industry areas that VTAC treats as groupings. Examples: Methods and Specialist are both Mathematics, Revolutions and Ancient History are both History, and Applied Computing and Algorithmics are both Information Technology. VTAC's list has no grouping for the sciences, so Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Psychology do not limit each other.

Equivalent studies count once. Studies with significant overlap are equivalent, such as English and EAL, the same language taken at different levels, or an old study and the revised study that replaced it (Food and Technology and Food Studies). If you end up with two, only one goes into the aggregate: the one that contributes the most.

How does scaling work?

VCAA hands VTAC study scores that are already standardised so every study averages 30. VTAC then checks how the students in each study performed in their other studies. If they did better than average elsewhere, the competition was stronger, and the study's scores are lifted. If they did worse elsewhere, scores are lowered. The adjusted result is the scaled study score, from 0.00 to 55.00.

VTAC's own simplified example: if Chemistry students average 35 across all their studies, Chemistry scores are recalculated around 35, because getting 30 in Chemistry was harder than getting 30 in their other studies.

Two studies have extra rules. The four mathematics studies (Specialist, Methods, General and Foundation) are scaled against each other as well as against all other studies, and the higher of the two scales is used. Each language has five added to its initial scaled average, which VTAC says does not mean five points on your ATAR. The boost shrinks as your study score moves away from 30.

What do scaled scores look like?

This table reproduces a selection of figures from VTAC's 2025 Scaling Report, which gives the scaled study score (rounded to a whole number) at a study score of 20, 30, 40 and 50.

Source: VTAC, 2025 Scaling Report (VTAC reference licence). Figures describe the 2025 scaling population only. VTAC's full report covers every study and also gives scores at 25, 35 and 45.

Between the published points, a scaled score is an estimate. VTAC uses two decimal places in the real calculation.

Which VCE studies scale the highest?

In VTAC's 2025 Scaling Report, the studies with a selection of the highest scaled scores at a study score of 30 and of 40 were:

Source: VTAC, 2025 Scaling Report (VTAC reference licence), scaled scores rounded to whole numbers. 2025 cohort only.

Most of these are languages, which carry the five-point boost described above, or mathematics studies that are also scaled against each other. The advantage also shrinks near the top: 81 of the 95 study rows in VTAC's 2025 data scale a study score of 50 to 50, and the 14 that go higher are Algorithmics, Methods, Specialist and 11 language rows. At a study score of 30, 36 of the 95 rows scale up, 55 scale down and 4 stay at 30.

To see any study, including ones not in these tables, open the scaling mode of the VCE ATAR calculator. It lists every study VTAC publishes figures for, at study scores from 20 to 50. For how to use this when you pick studies, see Choosing VCE subjects.

How does the aggregate become an ATAR?

Once every aggregate in the cohort is calculated, VTAC puts them in order on a percentile scale in steps of 0.05. The highest aggregates get 99.95. An ATAR below 30.00 shows as "less than 30" on your statement, and the exact number is in the online results service.

The aggregate can range from 0 to over 210. The table below shows the minimum scaled aggregate that gave a particular ATAR in 2025, from VTAC's report, selecting ten of its rows.

Source: VTAC, 2025 Scaling Report, p. 3 (VTAC reference licence). VTAC says the table is for roughly checking a calculation. The aggregate needed changes each year with the cohort.

If your aggregate falls between two rows, your ATAR is an estimate between them. The VCE ATAR calculator does this step for you, in estimate, scaling and reverse modes, using the 2025 figures. To compare an ATAR with courses, the course ATAR list for Victorian universities shows the lowest selection rank that got an offer for 2026 entry. Those are last year's cut-offs, so treat them as a guide only.

Choosing VCE subjects

VTAC's rules leave you a few fixed points and a lot of freedom. Work through them in this order.

1. Pick your English-group study first. You need a study score in English, EAL, Literature or English Language, and it always sits in the primary four. English and EAL count as equivalent, so taking both does not give you two results. How English counts has the detail.
2. Count the places. You need at least four permissible Unit 3 and 4 studies, and at most six results count. The first four are counted in full. A fifth and sixth add only 10% of their scaled scores, so a fifth study that scales to 40 adds 4.0 to your aggregate. So a fifth or sixth study moves the aggregate only a little.
3. Check the grouping limits before a third study from one area. At most two results from one grouping can sit in the primary four and at most three in the whole aggregate. Methods and Specialist are both Mathematics, and Ancient History and Revolutions are both History. Which studies can I combine? lists the groupings.
4. Check each course's entry requirements yourself. The sources used for this guide do not list course prerequisites, so confirm the studies a course asks for against its own entry on VTAC or the institution's site before you lock in your program.
5. Choose studies you can score well in. Your scaled score comes from your own study score, so a strong result in a study that scales down will most likely beat a weak result in one that scales up, as VTAC puts it.

Why a study's scaling is not a reason to choose it

A study's scaled score reflects the cohort that took it. VTAC lifts a study when its students did better than average in their other studies, so a high scaled score marks a strong cohort. VTAC says this is about the strength of the competition, and not about the study being harder or easier.

Scaling is also recalculated every year from that year's cohort, so the 2025 figures in this guide describe 2025 only. VTAC's own examples show the risk: a student who chose studies that had scaled up before, and was not good at them, finished on 57.15, while another with five of six studies scaled down finished on 95.65. Use the scaling figures to estimate your result once you have chosen, not to decide what to choose.

Common mistakes about the VCE ATAR