How to get a 99 ATAR (what the data says, and what you can't control)

What a 99 ATAR actually means

The ATAR is a rank, not a mark. VTAC says it directly: it is "not a score out of 100" but a rank that shows your achievement in relation to other students ^[3]. A 99.00 in Victoria means your results were above 99 per cent of the Year 12 age group ^[4]. UAC's technical report for NSW describes it the same way: an ATAR of 80.00, for example, places you 20 per cent from the top if every HSC-aged person in the state had been ATAR-eligible ^[2].

That's why a 99 ATAR is not 99%. Your ATAR isn't an average of your marks either. In NSW, UAC says plainly that the ATAR "is not an average mark" and that raw marks, not the aligned HSC marks on your results, go into the calculation ^[2]. It runs from 0 to 99.95 in steps of 0.05 ^[2][4], and there's no 100, because it's a percentile ranking and the top student can't outperform themselves ^[4].

One more thing worth knowing: an ATAR of 85.00 in NSW or the ACT is equivalent to an ATAR of 85.00 in other states ^[1]. So a 99 means the same thing wherever you sat your exams.

How many students get a 99 ATAR

Here are the latest published numbers, from UAC's report on the 2025 NSW HSC and VTAC's 2025 ATAR release.

In NSW, 1,045 of the 60,432 students who received an ATAR in 2025 were on 99.00 or above, which is 1.7% ^[2]. That share has barely moved in five years: 1.7%, 1.8%, 1.8%, 1.8% and 1.7% for 2021 to 2025 ^[2]. For context, 8.7% got 95.00 or above and 17.3% got 90.00 or above in 2025 ^[2].

You may ask why it's 1.7% and not 1%. It's because a 99.00 is defined against the whole HSC-aged population, not just the students who receive an ATAR. UAC explains that an ATAR of 99.00 doesn't represent the top 1 per cent of the ATAR cohort, but it does represent the level of achievement needed to be in the top 1 per cent if everyone of HSC age had been ATAR-eligible ^[2]. Only some of that age group gets an ATAR: the combined ACT and NSW participation rate was 56.6 per cent in 2025 ^[2].

In Victoria, VTAC reported 42 students on the top rank of 99.95 out of 49,310 who received an ATAR, and an average ATAR of 69.48 ^[5]. VTAC's 2025 results release, scaling report and ATAR profiles don't give the share of Victorian students on 99.00 or above, so I can't give you that number for Victoria.

Here's the part that surprises people. The number of students on each ATAR isn't set by how hard the exams were. UAC's model sets a target for each ATAR band, with about 1/2000th of the population on 99.95 (a target of 55 for the ACT and NSW combined in 2025, and 53 NSW students plus 3 ACT students landed there) ^[2]. So a hard paper doesn't create more 99s or fewer. What decides who lands on 99 is where your results sit in the ranking.

Where I'm coming from

When I was young I needed occupational therapy just to hold a pencil, and I sat near the bottom of my classes. So I did what everyone told me to do: I worked harder, got a tutor and studied for hours every night. I once studied 38 hours for a chemistry exam and got 47%. I once worked on one essay for a full year and got 60%. Then someone sat down with me and taught me how to learn, how to remember and how to study. I sat the same chemistry after 12 hours of study and got 94%. My 60% average became a 98.25 ATAR when I finished the HSC in 2018, with 89 in Physics and 90 or more in English Advanced, Maths Extension 1 and PDHPE ^[21]. It was the same kid with the same brain. I'd learned different skills.

I'm going to be straight with you about this page. I can't promise you a 99, and nobody honestly can. What I can do is show you what the data says about how the ATAR works, what the research says about studying, and which parts of this are yours to control.

How the ATAR is calculated in NSW

UAC calculates the NSW ATAR from an aggregate of scaled marks in 10 units of HSC courses: your best 2 units of English plus your best 8 units from the rest ^[1]. You need to complete at least four subject areas to be eligible, even though the aggregate can be based on fewer ^[1]. If you want the full rules, including extension courses and repeats, they're on our HSC guide.

Each HSC mark is the average of your exam mark and your school assessment mark ^[9]. Your school assessment isn't simply your teacher's marks. NESA moderates school assessment marks using how the school group performed in the HSC exam, so marks can be compared across schools ^[9][10]. That process keeps the rank order of your school's students in a course the same ^[2].

Then comes scaling, which is the step most people find confusing. UAC's stated principle is that you should be neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by choosing one pattern of study over another ^[1]. The scaling algorithm estimates what your marks would have been if all courses had been studied by all students and had the same mark distribution ^[1]. Your scaled marks, not your HSC marks, are used for the ATAR, and for most courses your scaled mark will be lower than your HSC mark ^[1]. Scaled marks are never reported to students ^[1].

Last, the scaled marks are added into an aggregate, aggregates are turned into percentiles, and those are truncated to the nearest 0.05 to give ATARs ^[2].

How the ATAR is calculated in Victoria

In Victoria it starts with study scores. VCAA gives each Unit 3 and 4 study a score from 0 to 50 built from SACs, SATs and exams, ranked within the study and converted to a scale with a mean of 30 and a standard deviation of 7 ^[12]. School-based assessment contributes 50% of the study score in many studies ^[12]. VCAA statistically moderates SAC marks against external results, and that doesn't change the rank order your school gave you ^[11].

VTAC then takes over and scales each study score. Scaling adjusts for the fact that it's more difficult to get a high study score in some studies than others, not because those studies are harder, but because they attract a more competitive cohort ^[4]. Your aggregate is your best scaled English-group score, plus your next best three scaled scores, plus 10% of your fifth and sixth scores if you have them ^[3]. Aggregates are ranked on a percentile scale and become ATARs from 0 to 99.95 ^[3][4]. More detail is on our VCE guide, and the other states are covered on the ATAR overview.

What you can control: how you study

None of the studies below measured ATARs. They measure how much people remember, and remembering is what an exam asks of you. With that said, this is where the evidence is strongest.

Start with practice testing, which means trying to pull the answer out of your head before you check it. In Roediger and Karpicke's experiments, students either re-studied a passage or took recall tests on it. On a test five minutes later the re-studiers did better, but at two days and one week the students who'd practised recalling it remembered substantially more, even though re-studying had left them more confident ^[15]. A later meta-analysis found practice tests were more beneficial than restudying and every other comparison condition the studies used ^[16].

A large review of ten popular techniques rated practice testing and distributed practice (spacing) as high utility, and rated highlighting and rereading as low utility ^[17]. If your current method is mostly reading your notes and highlighting them, that's the single biggest thing to change. Our guide on active recall shows the exact steps.

Spacing matters just as much. A review of 317 experiments found that the best gap between study sessions grows the further away the final test is ^[18]. That's the reason cramming works worse than it feels like it should, and why starting early gives you more room to space things out. See spaced repetition and how to stop cramming. The same review gave interleaved practice (mixing topics) a moderate rating and said its benefits had only just begun to be explored ^[17], so I'd treat it as an extra once recall and spacing are in place: interleaving.

What you can control: past papers and timing across Year 11 and 12

Past papers are recall in the exact format of the exam. NESA publishes past HSC papers with marking guidelines and feedback ^[13], and VCAA publishes past VCE exams and external assessment reports that show how students performed ^[14]. Do them closed-book, mark them against the official guidelines, and keep a log of what you got wrong. Our how to study for exams guide has an eight-week countdown built around this.

Timing matters because of what actually gets ranked. In NSW the ATAR is built from your HSC courses ^[1]. In Victoria it's built from Unit 3 and 4 study scores, and a study score needs an S in both Units 3 and 4 in the same year ^[12]. So the results in your final year do the ranking. Year 11 is where you build the content knowledge and the habits that make Year 12 manageable. (There's an exception in NSW, where UAC says you can accelerate by attempting HSC courses while in Year 11 ^[1]. Check with your school if that applies to you.)

Here's the rhythm I'd suggest, built on the evidence above (the schedule itself is my suggestion, not a study result):

1. Year 11: build the habit. Make recall and an error log your default way of studying, even when nothing is due.
2. Early Year 12: review each topic again after a gap, and lengthen the gap as exams get closer.
3. Mid Year 12: mix topics in your practice, and start timed past-paper sections.
4. Final weeks: full timed papers, then work only on your error log.

It's also worth knowing how small differences add up. UAC's report follows two students who took the same courses. Their HSC marks differed by only 5 per unit in every course, yet their ATARs were 58.10 and 78.10, a gap of 20 ^[2]. That isn't a reason to panic over one mark. It's a reason to treat steady improvement across every subject as the job, because the ATAR adds them all together.

What you can control: sleep and health

I'd be careful here, because this is where a lot of ATAR advice gets preachy. The honest summary is that sleep is cheap to protect and modestly related to school results.

Australian guidelines recommend 8 to 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night for 14 to 17 year olds, and suggest avoiding screens for an hour before bed ^[19]. A meta-analysis of school-age studies found sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness were all significantly but modestly related to school performance, with sleepiness the strongest link ^[20]. The authors call for longitudinal and experimental studies, which means these are associations. They don't prove that more sleep raises marks ^[20].

So my advice is simple. If you're short on time, don't trade sleep for more hours of rereading. Swap the rereading for recall.

What you can't control

This is the part most 99 ATAR guides skip, and it's the part I most want you to read.

• It's a rank against your year. The ATAR is about position, not the level of your marks ^[2]. Your results are compared with everyone else's in your age group, so how well other students do matters, and you don't get a say in that.
• Your courses set the competition. UAC says a good rank is harder to obtain when you're competing against students of high academic ability ^[1]. Its report shows two students at the 50th percentile in every one of their courses, with identical average HSC marks per unit of 40.0. Their ATARs were 60.00 and 80.00, because of the strength of the competition in the courses they chose ^[2].
• Your school's marking doesn't set your mark. In NSW and Victoria, school assessments are moderated against the exam results of your school group, so an easy or hard marker doesn't give you a permanent edge or penalty ^[10][11]. The flip side is that the rank you hold within your school is what carries through ^[2][11].
• The number of 99s is set by a model. About 1/2000th of the population gets the top ATAR, however the papers went ^[2]. That means the top ranks are always a small, fixed-size group, whatever the cohort does.
• Most students won't get a 99, and that's fine. The median ATAR in NSW in 2025 was 70.75 ^[2], and the average in Victoria was 69.48 ^[5]. VTAC puts it clearly: there's no pass or fail ATAR, everyone who receives one has passed the VCE, and in most cases the ATAR is only one of many criteria used for selection ^[4]. VTAC's CEO said in the 2025 release that "your ATAR only tells part of the story" ^[5].

To be fair, the year you sit in moves things less than you'd fear. UAC's report re-runs one student's HSC marks, the same marks in the same courses, through each year from 2015 to 2025, and the ATAR lands between 57.10 and 61.00 ^[2]. That's a few points, not tens. The pool of students you're ranked against is still something you can't change.

Choosing subjects: what UAC and VTAC say

I'm not going to tell you which subjects "scale well", and both admissions centres tell you not to chase it.

UAC's report says: do not choose courses on the basis of what you believe are the likely effects of scaling. Let your interests, your demonstrated abilities and the value of the courses for your future career plans decide ^[2]. VTAC says choosing a study you're not good at or engaged in simply because it may be scaled up "would be a mistake" and that students should freely choose studies they like or are good at without worrying about their ATAR ^[4]. Its guide includes worked examples where students who chose by what they were good at and interested in did well, including one whose studies were mostly scaled down and still placed in the top six per cent of the state ^[4]. These are VTAC's own illustrations, not averages.

If you want to compare how each state handles scaling, start with the ATAR overview.

When 2026 ATARs are released

• Victoria: the VCE results and ATAR service opens at 7am on Thursday 10 December 2026 ^[3][6]. The official digital ATAR statement is issued on 15 December at 9am ^[6], for current paid VTAC applicants ^[3].
• NSW: NESA releases 2026 HSC results on Wednesday 16 December 2026 ^[7], from 6am, and UAC releases ATARs on its website from 9am the same day ^[8].

Other states and territories release in December too. Check your own admissions centre for exact times.

Where to go from here

If you want to build the habits above, start with active recall, then spaced repetition, then use past papers as in how to study for exams. If time is the problem, there's a guide on managing your study time, and one on exam anxiety if nerves are what get in the way. If you'd like a quick read on your own study habits, you can try the Study Scorecard.