How your Year 12 qualifications are assessed

If you’ve completed an Australian Year 12 qualification (eg NSW HSC), your admission to most tertiary courses is based on your selection rank, which is usually your ATAR. However, if other factors are considered, these will be combined with your ATAR to adjust your selection rank and make it higher than your ATAR. These adjustments used to be called ‘bonus points’.

Some courses specify course prerequisites (eg completing, or achieving a specified standard in, a particular HSC (or equivalent) course), which you have to satisfy before you can be considered for an offer.

Most universities also use other criteria when selecting students, such as a personal statement, a questionnaire, a portfolio of work, an audition, an interview or a test, which are considered together with (or sometimes instead of) your selection rank.

You can find details of any prerequisites or additional selection criteria in the course descriptions via the course search.

For each course, UAC publishes an ATAR profile. Where relevant, this will include:

• the lowest ATAR that resulted in an offer to the course in semester 1, 2024
• the lowest selection rank that resulted in an offer to the course in semester 1, 2024.

These ATAR profiles will be updated in August 2025 to show data relating to semester 1, 2025.

A small number of institutions indicate a guaranteed ATAR or guaranteed selection rank. If you achieve this ATAR or selection rank then you are guaranteed an offer to that course for semester 1, 2026.

Use all ATAR profile data as a guide only to your chances of receiving an offer; it provides a broad overview of the ATARs and selection ranks of previous Year 12 students admitted into that course. ATARs and selection ranks required for entry in 2026 may be different. If you are unsure about including a course among your preferences, contact the relevant institution.

The ATAR profile data published in the UAC course descriptions is in line with Commonwealth Government transparency requirements. It is based on offers to recent school leavers who were selected solely or partly on their ATAR. Note that some institutions publish different information on their websites.

Lowest ATARs

Don’t assume that the published lowest ATAR for a course is the ATAR you require to be made an offer to that course. The applicant who received that ATAR may have been eligible for adjustment factors and had their selection rank increased, making them eligible for an offer.

Lowest selection ranks

We used to refer to the lowest selection rank for a course as the course ‘cut-off’. It includes any increase to an applicant’s selection rank made as a result of adjustment factors (which used to be called ‘bonus points’).

Three factors determine lowest selection ranks:

• the number of places available in the course
• the number of applicants for the course
• the quality of those applicants.

These three factors mean that lowest selection ranks change from year to year and are impossible to predict before applicants are selected for a particular course in a particular year. The lowest selection rank for any course can increase, decrease or remain the same. It does not represent the average ability of the students accepted for the course and does not reflect the difficulty or quality of the course.

Lowest ATARs and selection ranks are not known until all offers have been made. Therefore, the course search shows the courses available in 2025 and 2026 but the lowest ATARs and lowest selection ranks of previous applicants offered a place in each of those courses.

Read about selection rank adjustments

Compare your Year 12 courses and results to NSW HSC courses and results to check that you meet any course prerequisites or assumed knowledge and to determine if your selection rank will be adjusted if you perform well in a course.

• ACT and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents
• Queensland and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents
• South Australia/Northern Territory and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents
• Tasmania and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents
• Victoria and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents
• Western Australia and NSW Year 12 result and course equivalents

Non-standard Year 12 programs of study include those completed through:

• Australian Christian Education
• Rudolph Steiner Education
• home schooling
• the Queensland Senior External Examination.

UAC assesses the Queensland Senior External Examination. For all other non-standard Year 12 studies to be assessable by UAC, you must provide proof of completion of an accredited Year 12 program of study and have sat the American Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) (results from which will be assessed by UAC).

UAC will also assess results from the Skills for Tertiary Admissions Test (STAT). Contact the admissions offices of the institutions you are applying to for information on acceptance of STAT and on how they will consider your non-standard Year 12 studies. Find out more about STAT at stat.acer.edu.au.