ATAR Compass

No. ATAR Compass can only estimate your ATAR based on the HSC courses and marks you enter. 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

Both the HSC marks you enter, and the result ATAR Compass gives you, are estimates. You might want to enter the marks you:

• received in your HSC trial exams or assessments
• achieved in Year 11
• are aiming to achieve in the HSC.

Remember that any estimated ATAR that ATAR Compass gives you can only be used as a guide.

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.

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 draws on historical scaling statistics to estimate your ATAR.

ATAR Compass uses two main sources of data:

1. the mapping between HSC marks and scaled marks (eg see Table A3 in the Report on the Scaling of the 2023 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 2023 NSW HSC).

These mappings change from year to year, so ATAR Compass uses averages from the past five years to help make these statistics more stable.

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

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.

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

ATAR Compass is simply a tool that 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 HSC results might translate into an ATAR.

If you are having trouble seeing all the information on your phone, try viewing it in landscape mode. This should allow you to select your courses and marks more easily.

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