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Magicians never reveal their tricks. This is to preserve that sense of wonder, that awe, the anticipation for the reveal. When it comes to the “magic” surrounding the calculation of the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), the answer is in plain sight. However, the truth remains shrouded in mystery.
Playground gossip tends to echo the narrative that the school a student attended has a major impact on their ATAR calculation; at schools where students typically don’t perform well overall, high-performing students are disadvantaged, and at schools with higher HSC marks overall, all students’ marks are lifted. There is also the misconception that one’s ATAR may be lower if they attended a public or non-selective school, or if they had forgone tutoring.
As city parents spend a fortune on tutoring and sweat their selective school choices ahead of Friday’s entrance exam, I am here to tell you this: a regional, non-selective, non-tutored, public school student can achieve Band 6 results and an ATAR of 97.65. I know this because that student is me.
The mystery surrounding the equity and calculation of the ATAR is rife. I’d received mixed answers from my teachers on the “magic” going on behind the scenes and what they predicted my ATAR to be. My cohort held the misconception that the rank we would achieve would be ill-fated. We frantically applied for early entry schemes, believing alternative pathways were our only hope for tertiary studies.
Despite this, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) is transparent about how the ATAR is calculated. In its FAQs on the calculation, whether a student’s school affects their ATAR is clearly answered: “While your school and the students around you can influence your learning, the ATAR calculation itself does not consider the school you attended. Your ATAR is based solely on the marks you achieved, and no other information is used.”
NESA has affirmed this fact in several other instances in an attempt to squash the never-ending fallacies surrounding ATAR calculation. However, the myth prevails that cohort performance significantly affects a student’s ATAR. This is plausible, due to recurring statistics of schools with the highest-scoring HSC students having higher HSC marks across their cohorts, and these high-performing schools are often private or independent and/or selective schools. Some high-performing students also undergo tutoring to refine their studying, fuelling further misconceptions that tutoring is essential for a high ATAR.
Given that I didn’t make the cut for selective schooling and that I received no tutoring, it would have seemed I’d been dealt a pretty bad hand. My HSC journey was not without challenges: floods on the Mid North Coast led to my Kempsey High School cohort having about two weeks off school, and, due to timetabling restraints and small student numbers, I had no choice but to study advanced English and legal studies online via distance education through Camden Haven High School, which I am grateful I was able to do.
Regardless of my efforts, I was brainwashed into thinking my ATAR was doomed. I would have been happy with an ATAR above 70, and I anticipated an average score. You could only imagine my shock when I opened my email to see four Band 6 results, a high Band 5, and an ATAR beginning with a 9.
This was almost unheard of from my school. The success that once seemed so far out of reach was staring back at me from my phone screen, defying all that I had been told to expect. My principal confirmed that I had achieved the highest Higher School Certificate results for my school since 1995, and the results of my cohort led to Kempsey High School being recognised as having some of the most improved HSC performances for regional and rural schools in the state.
And here’s the trick: not a cent was spent on my education, only countless hours of dedication. The “magic” of getting a high ATAR isn’t which school you went to, whether it was selective, or how many hours of private tutoring you received.
The real secret is having a genuine and unwavering ambition to achieve high results and being passionate about what you do. I knew I wanted a high ATAR before I even selected my senior subjects, and I made sure to pick subjects I knew I would fall in love with. My passion for my studies inspired me to push myself harder with each assessment task and constantly improve. Studying didn’t feel like a chore but a way to better myself and achieve my goals. No matter your circumstances or privileges, if you are truly motivated, you won’t need any magic tricks to get the rank you want.
Layla Wicks is an arts/law student at Newcastle University and was the 2025 dux of Kempsey High School.
Layla’s top tips
- Start doing past papers as early as you can, whether these are trial exams or past HSC exams. The day you learn a syllabus dot point, do at least one question on it. This helps you learn how you may be asked to articulate an answer on content, and familiarise yourself with the structure and style of exam questions. For example, English paper one requires reading and responding to unseen texts and an essay. Well before your exams begin, you should be thinking: how fast can I read? How quickly can I pick out techniques? Can I split my time equally, or will I need to spend more time on the essay? How many words can I write within the time I am given?
Engaging with past papers can also help you predict what may be in your exam. When studying for the 2025 English Advanced exam, I noticed that there hadn’t yet been a Common Module essay question on the “particular lives and culture” facet of the syllabus. I paid particular notice to this, though not to the exclusion of other areas of the syllabus. Guess what the essay question was…
- That being said, do NOT rely on predictions. You really don’t know what you will be asked until you open that paper in October. You must prepare for everything – there is no shortcut to success. Ask yourself: have I answered and received feedback to a question on this dot point? Am I aware of the depth of knowledge required to answer a question on this dot point? Am I confident answering multiple-choice, short-answer, and long-response questions on this area? I can promise you that you would rather be a little disheartened that you studied too much than regretting not studying enough.
While HSC past papers are an excellent resource, they are finite, particularly for subjects such as English, where the syllabus changes frequently. This leads me to my next tip:
- Find your own resources. A substantial portion of the HSC study is done outside the classroom. I did two subjects online, and attended a school that lacked the resources available at private or selective schools. Finding my own resources and becoming efficient in doing so eliminated the need for me to seek tutoring, as I was virtually able to teach myself HSC content. It is incomprehensible that so many study guides, textbook excerpts, past student notes, and trial exam papers are so easily accessible on student forums and websites. My favourites included: thsconline.github.io/s/; atarnotes.com/; acehsc.net/; English tutorial and resources YouTube channel Jeddle.
The best part about these resources is that they are free.
- You must enjoy what you are doing and genuinely want a high ATAR. As I learned in PDHPE (now human movement science), extrinsic motivation is nowhere near as powerful or enduring as intrinsic motivation. I fell in love with all the subjects I did, and wanted to achieve high results in them because I was so passionate about them. I memorised entire poems of T.S. Eliot and extended my reading beyond the prescribed texts, because I really did enjoy his works. I would watch documentaries on Pompeii and Herculaneum on the treadmill, and I really did want to learn about everyday political and economic life in the ancient cities. Because I selected subjects I enjoyed, I was able to seamlessly integrate studying into my everyday life and routines in a way that didn’t feel like a burden. With this, the HSC was always kept at the forefront of my mind, and I excelled across all 10 units (and yes, only 10!).
- Make sure you give yourself a break. I worked two jobs throughout Year 11 and 12, which became quite stressful at times. But work became an escape from the gruelling demands of study. Don’t abandon your extracurriculars just for study: having those few set hours a week when you’re only playing a sport, volunteering, or working can be a great way to remain productive whilst having a break from homework.
Layla Wicks is an arts/law student at Newcastle University and was the 2025 dux of Kempsey High School.From our partners
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