Why a School's Median Study Score Is Not an ATAR (and Other Ranking Caveats)

A school ranking is a calculation, and every calculation makes choices. Knowing those choices helps you read a ranking for what it is: an ordering of published figures, not a verdict on a school or a forecast for a student.

Study scores, medians and ATARs are different things

A VCE study score is a result out of 50 in one subject. A school's median study score is the middle of all its students' study scores in a year. An ATAR is a separate rank that VTAC calculates for each student from scaled study scores. A school's median study score does not tell you where its students' ATARs sit. Our guides to study scores and VCE subject scaling explain the steps between them.

Averages of averages need care

Multi-year rankings often average each year's median, giving each year equal weight. That is reasonable, but it is not the same as the median of every individual result across those years. Similarly, averaging annual 40+ percentages is not the same as a rate weighted by cohort size.

Missing data and ties

Results can be blank or suppressed for small cohorts. A careful ranking leaves those out rather than counting them as zero, and says which schools lack enough data for a multi-year rank. Equal figures should share a rank rather than be split arbitrarily.

Read the method before the table

School Rankings Australia, a separate site run by the same owner as ATARMAxxing, sets out its approach in how its VCE school rankings are calculated: eligibility rules, the equal-weight four-year average, competition ranking for ties, the handling of missing results, and a section on what the figures cannot tell you. It covers Victorian VCE providers only.

What this means for students

Your own result depends on your subjects, your work and how you perform on the day, not on your school's position in a table. To see how your own scores might combine, try the study score calculator and the ATAR calculator, and read how the ATAR is calculated for the full picture.