NCEA to ATAR

[Dr Pepper]

Does anyone know if English would count for the ATAR conversion or is it just the best 5 subjects?

Have read somewhere English is included in the conversion since it’s mandatory from most Unis.
Not sure of that is true though.

 

[Chickuns]

Does anyone know if English would count for the ATAR conversion or is it just the best 5 subjects?

Hey, I've been in touch with NZQA about this. They take your best 90 credits, with max 24 from any one subject. They determine how 'good' credits are through a standard by standard weighting based on their internal statistics. English credits will count if they are in your best 90.

 

[Crow]

Is there anyone who actually went to australia for studying medicine from NZ with NCEA?

Yes.

 

[skyy]

Does anyone have a recent NCEA results from 2021 who are currently doing medicine in Australia starting this year??
If they do, can you please share your results and your converted ATAR?

 

[Chickuns]

Does anyone have a recent NCEA results from 2021 who are currently doing medicine in Australia starting this year??
If they do, can you please share your results and your converted ATAR?

2021 data won't be too helpful to predict ATARs for this year because of the UEGs for Auckland and the north last year which nearly doubled the amount of people who got 90+ E credits and significantly changed the excellence rates for externals that year which meant that all the weightings are very different. I've seen a response to an OIA which contains some information you might potentially find useful (copied out below).

Number of people with ATAR 99.50 to 99.95

Year	Number
2019	323
2020	327
2021	332

Min, Median, Max ATARs of people with 90+ Excellence Credits:

Year	Min	Median	Max
2019	74.95	99.35	99.95 (sorta obvious)
2020	52.50	99.45	"
2021	79.15	99.20	"

 

[Mango!]

anyone else want to share their NCEA Level 3 results or have some newfound insight into how the conversion works?

 

[Chickuns]

Hopefully this should shed some more light on how the ATAR conversion works.

NZQA will weight all your credits based on an internal difficulty calculation using the following equation:



It compares every possible result in every standard against every other possible standard to calculate a relative difficulty percentile (Di). The higher the Di, the more difficult a standard is and thus the higher weight it carries. Any Di above 1 is adjusted to 1 and any below 0 is adjusted to 0.

For people who have earned more than 60 Level 3 credits in the past 2 years, NCEA will calculate an ATAR. Starting with University Entrance Achievement Standards (and using UE Unit Standards and then non-UE AS and US if needed), NZQA will take your top 90 credits (those with the highest Di as calculated above) with a maximum of 24 credits per subject (with subjects appearing to be determined by the UE list) to generate a ranking. If you have resat a standard, your best Di will be taken.

To calculate the ranking NZQA will multiply the number of credits for each standard by the Di for the grade you received in that standard and sum the Di*credits. If there is an ‘over-hang’ situation (for example if NZQA have used 89 credits so far and your next best standard is worth 3 credits) the last standard will be pro-rata-ed so the sum of credits is 90. The Di*credits sum is then divided by 90 to give each candidate a score ranging from 0 to 1. For example:

Candidates are then ranked from highest score to lowest with ATARs being assigned in the order of this ranking. The number of candidates per ATAR bracket (eg. 99.95) is 0.05 percent of the cohort (typically the number per bracket appears to be between 30 and 35).

More info on these calculations can be found in: Coxon, D (2011) ITARs and Related Calculations and Johnston, M, Lillis, D, (2011) Statistical Modelling and analysis of NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data. These are not readily available but may be acquired by contacting the Psychometrics, Reporting and Statistics department of NZQA or filing an official information request with the chief executive of NZQA.

 

[Mango!]

Hopefully this should shed some more light on how the ATAR conversion works.

NZQA will weight all your credits based on an internal difficulty calculation using the following equation:

View attachment 5277

It compares every possible result in every standard against every other possible standard to calculate a relative difficulty percentile (Di). The higher the Di, the more difficult a standard is and thus the higher weight it carries. Any Di above 1 is adjusted to 1 and any below 0 is adjusted to 0.

For people who have earned more than 60 Level 3 credits in the past 2 years, NCEA will calculate an ATAR. Starting with University Entrance Achievement Standards (and using UE Unit Standards and then non-UE AS and US if needed), NZQA will take your top 90 credits (those with the highest Di as calculated above) with a maximum of 24 credits per subject (with subjects appearing to be determined by the UE list) to generate a ranking. If you have resat a standard, your best Di will be taken.

To calculate the ranking NZQA will multiply the number of credits for each standard by the Di for the grade you received in that standard and sum the Di*credits. If there is an ‘over-hang’ situation (for example if NZQA have used 89 credits so far and your next best standard is worth 3 credits) the last standard will be pro-rata-ed so the sum of credits is 90. The Di*credits sum is then divided by 90 to give each candidate a score ranging from 0 to 1. For example:
View attachment 5278
Candidates are then ranked from highest score to lowest with ATARs being assigned in the order of this ranking. The number of candidates per ATAR bracket (eg. 99.95) is 0.05 percent of the cohort (typically the number per bracket appears to be between 30 and 35).

More info on these calculations can be found in: Coxon, D (2011) ITARs and Related Calculations and Johnston, M, Lillis, D, (2011) Statistical Modelling and analysis of NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data. These are not readily available but may be acquired by contacting the Psychometrics, Reporting and Statistics department of NZQA or filing an official information request with the chief executive of NZQA.

HOLY
Thank you so much Chickuns. I have no idea where you got this info from. It's similar to what I hypothesized from various websites, but your explanation is much more detailed and professional. I haven't exactly read through all of it yet, but I'm so excited and just wanted to thank you. Also, just saying - but I may ask you further questions about your explanation which would probably sound really dumb. I'm in NZ and am a year 9 in 2022(but I'm going to year 11! I'm going to skip a year , so I found difficulty in reading that. Apologies for any dumb questions or clarifications I ask later on.
Just wanted to say THANK YOU

 

[DouglasBaxter12]

Is NCEA more favourable in comparison to CIE when converting to ATAR?

 

[adawdea]

Is there anyone here who completed NCEA Level 3 in 2021 who would be willing to share their converted ATAR, which standards they took and which grades they received?

Hi, I've seen a few of your really detailed posts about the ncea to atar conversion but I'm still a little bit confused on how NCEA determines

Hopefully this should shed some more light on how the ATAR conversion works.

NZQA will weight all your credits based on an internal difficulty calculation using the following equation:

View attachment 5277

It compares every possible result in every standard against every other possible standard to calculate a relative difficulty percentile (Di). The higher the Di, the more difficult a standard is and thus the higher weight it carries. Any Di above 1 is adjusted to 1 and any below 0 is adjusted to 0.

For people who have earned more than 60 Level 3 credits in the past 2 years, NCEA will calculate an ATAR. Starting with University Entrance Achievement Standards (and using UE Unit Standards and then non-UE AS and US if needed), NZQA will take your top 90 credits (those with the highest Di as calculated above) with a maximum of 24 credits per subject (with subjects appearing to be determined by the UE list) to generate a ranking. If you have resat a standard, your best Di will be taken.

To calculate the ranking NZQA will multiply the number of credits for each standard by the Di for the grade you received in that standard and sum the Di*credits. If there is an ‘over-hang’ situation (for example if NZQA have used 89 credits so far and your next best standard is worth 3 credits) the last standard will be pro-rata-ed so the sum of credits is 90. The Di*credits sum is then divided by 90 to give each candidate a score ranging from 0 to 1. For example:
View attachment 5278
Candidates are then ranked from highest score to lowest with ATARs being assigned in the order of this ranking. The number of candidates per ATAR bracket (eg. 99.95) is 0.05 percent of the cohort (typically the number per bracket appears to be between 30 and 35).

More info on these calculations can be found in: Coxon, D (2011) ITARs and Related Calculations and Johnston, M, Lillis, D, (2011) Statistical Modelling and analysis of NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data. These are not readily available but may be acquired by contacting the Psychometrics, Reporting and Statistics department of NZQA or filing an official information request with the chief executive of NZQA.

Hi, I've seen a few of your really detailed posts about the ncea to atar conversion but I'm still a little bit confused on how NCEA determines the 90 best credits. Are the 90 best credits determined by the N/A/M/E grade (e.g all excellence credits are counted before any merit than achieveds...) or are the 90 based on your 90 credits with the highest Di? Because I've seen a few posts that describe the process slightly differently.

Also, I just need a >96 atar to accept my scholarship, is this gonna be difficult/how many excellence credits would I need roughly?

I'm really sorry to bother you, I'm sort of just stressing about the conversion, thank you so much for the help

 

[Mango!]

Hi, I've seen a few of your really detailed posts about the ncea to atar conversion but I'm still a little bit confused on how NCEA determines

Hi, I've seen a few of your really detailed posts about the ncea to atar conversion but I'm still a little bit confused on how NCEA determines the 90 best credits. Are the 90 best credits determined by the N/A/M/E grade (e.g all excellence credits are counted before any merit than achieveds...) or are the 90 based on your 90 credits with the highest Di? Because I've seen a few posts that describe the process slightly differently.

Also, I just need a >96 atar to accept my scholarship, is this gonna be difficult/how many excellence credits would I need roughly?

I'm really sorry to bother you, I'm sort of just stressing about the conversion, thank you so much for the help

Hi adawdea
I can't answer all of your questions (I'm excited for any answers to your question as well), but I found this:

Scribd

www.scribd.com

Page 9 may give you a sense of how many excellence credits you need to get >96 ATAR. I'm not too sure on how they prioritise the 90 'best' credits (my current understand is that they choose subjects in which you have the most excellence credits. They prioritise the externals over internals, so all your externals would count (even if some are merit) in subjects in which overall (externals + internals) you have the most excellence credits. They continue to take credits from your best subjects (also those subjects have to be UE approved. And each subject they only take a max of 24 credits) until it fills the 90 credits. However, that's just my current understanding. I'm still looking into it), anyways - I think that out of the 90 'best' credits they do choose, you'd need 89-90 excellence credits to get a 99.95/99.95+ ATAR. And to get a 99.90 ATAR, you'd usually need 85-86 excellence credits out of the 90 credits they choose. I have tested my theory of how ATAR is calculated as well as the amount of excellence credits you'd normally need to get that ATAR on the NCEA results posted here, and I think it works out. So if for every -4 excellence credits you don't have, you get a -0.05 ATAR, then that means you'd need at least >62 excellence credits out of the 90 credits they do count to get a >96 ATAR. *I do want to just note that this may be inaccurate and you may need a bit more excellence credits because I'd imagine NCEA results to form a bell curve graph, but I don't actually know if ATAR calculation takes into account of that.
Anyways I have no idea if that answered your question or if it helped. I hope it did. I wish you all the best with your ATAR score - and perhaps you would keep us updated when your ATAR does come out? I don't want to sound like a creep here - but I would want to know your NCEA results and the ATAR you got. Also, it's so okayy to stress. I was year 9 last year and started to look into university and stuff half-way through the year. I'm year 11 this year (jumped up a grade) and somehow feeling a bit stressed about university stuff when it's still like 3 years away. ANyways I digress. I hope what I wrote helped. If it didn't help - I'm so sorry if it just made you more confused. All the best with your future

 

[adawdea]

Hi adawdea
I can't answer all of your questions (I'm excited for any answers to your question as well), but I found this:

Scribd

www.scribd.com

Page 9 may give you a sense of how many excellence credits you need to get >96 ATAR. I'm not too sure on how they prioritise the 90 'best' credits (my current understand is that they choose subjects in which you have the most excellence credits. They prioritise the externals over internals, so all your externals would count (even if some are merit) in subjects in which overall (externals + internals) you have the most excellence credits. They continue to take credits from your best subjects (also those subjects have to be UE approved. And each subject they only take a max of 24 credits) until it fills the 90 credits. However, that's just my current understanding. I'm still looking into it), anyways - I think that out of the 90 'best' credits they do choose, you'd need 89-90 excellence credits to get a 99.95/99.95+ ATAR. And to get a 99.90 ATAR, you'd usually need 85-86 excellence credits out of the 90 credits they choose. I have tested my theory of how ATAR is calculated as well as the amount of excellence credits you'd normally need to get that ATAR on the NCEA results posted here, and I think it works out. So if for every -4 excellence credits you don't have, you get a -0.05 ATAR, then that means you'd need at least >62 excellence credits out of the 90 credits they do count to get a >96 ATAR. *I do want to just note that this may be inaccurate and you may need a bit more excellence credits because I'd imagine NCEA results to form a bell curve graph, but I don't actually know if ATAR calculation takes into account of that.
Anyways I have no idea if that answered your question or if it helped. I hope it did. I wish you all the best with your ATAR score - and perhaps you would keep us updated when your ATAR does come out? I don't want to sound like a creep here - but I would want to know your NCEA results and the ATAR you got. Also, it's so okayy to stress. I was year 9 last year and started to look into university and stuff half-way through the year. I'm year 11 this year (jumped up a grade) and somehow feeling a bit stressed about university stuff when it's still like 3 years away. ANyways I digress. I hope what I wrote helped. If it didn't help - I'm so sorry if it just made you more confused. All the best with your future

Hey my results came out today, and I ended up getting a 99.90( from 114 excellence credits and 8 merit at level 3).
I'm really happy with it because I ended up getting my engineering coop and I think I also get the scientia but I'm not sure.

I'm still not really sure how the best 90 excellence credits are decided, but I have heard that the NCEA to ATAR conversion is very favourable, it seems a lot easier to get straight E's rather than a perfect atar.

I got about 65 of my E credits from externals and the rest from internals, taking Calc, Chem, Phys, Bio, Stats and Music if that helps!

I also did some extra credit english internals over the summer to boost my grade, which I think is a big advantage of the ncea system.

 

[igcsefood]

Hey my results came out today, and I ended up getting a 99.90( from 114 excellence credits and 8 merit at level 3).
I'm really happy with it because I ended up getting my engineering coop and I think I also get the scientia but I'm not sure.

I'm still not really sure how the best 90 excellence credits are decided, but I have heard that the NCEA to ATAR conversion is very favourable, it seems a lot easier to get straight E's rather than a perfect atar.

I got about 65 of my E credits from externals and the rest from internals, taking Calc, Chem, Phys, Bio, Stats and Music if that helps!

I also did some extra credit english internals over the summer to boost my grade, which I think is a big advantage of the ncea system.

That's really interesting. Congrats on your ATAR! I also got 99.90. I've emailed them about it and they say it's because certain standards are weighted higher than others in terms of difficulty. I got 155 excellence credits and no merits (78 external credits).

I took english, calc, chem, bio, physics, comp sci, accounting. I didn't take stats which I feel may have impacted my atar because maybe stats externals are harder than accounting externals??? comp sci has no externals so I don't think that made a difference.

 

[adawdea]

That's really interesting. Congrats on your ATAR! I also got 99.90. I've emailed them about it and they say it's because certain standards are weighted higher than others in terms of difficulty. I got 155 excellence credits and no merits (78 external credits).

I took english, calc, chem, bio, physics, comp sci, accounting. I didn't take stats which I feel may have impacted my atar because maybe stats externals are harder than accounting externals??? comp sci has no externals so I don't think that made a difference.

Yeah I definitely think that, once you've got over the 90 E credits, the individual external/internal weightings are essentially what decided whether or not you get a perfect ATAR. Because with your straight excellences, the only points that you could have lost must've come from NCEA's private weighting system.

Did your results end up being sent to the unis on time to be considered for the first round offers?

Mine didn't, so I'm guessing I won't receive my offer until the next round??

 

[igcsefood]

Yeah probably. Nah I knew we weren't gonna get main round offers in time. Just gotta wait for 2nd or 3rd rounds hopefully.

 

[Mango!]

Congrats to you guys both! You must be so happy about that! There isn't much to say anymore, but good luck with admission you two!

 

[anarkushnov]

While I'm not going to be a med student, I thought it would be useful to share my ATAR score here.

My results for level 3:

Calculus: 18E 6M (7E from 2 internals, 11E from 2 externals, 6M from 1 external)
Physics: 15E 4M (3E from 1 internal, 12 E from 2 externals, 4M from 1 external)
English: 15E 6A (7E from 2 internals, 6A from 1 internal, 8E from 2 externals)
Geography: 14E 4M (14E from 4 internals, 4M from 1 external)
Statistics: 12E 8M (4E from 1 internal, 8M from 2 internals, 8E from 2 externals)
Chemistry: 13E 8M (3E from 1 internal, 3M from 1 internal, 10E from 2 externals, 5M from 1 external)

Total of 87 Excellence credits (38 from internals, 49 from externals) with 30 Merit credits and 6 Achieved credits (125 total).

I received an ATAR of 99.85

Hope this helps

 

[TC_Guy]

I'm not doing med either, but managed to get an ATAR of 99.90 with only 85E. Took calculus, stats, physics, chem, and English.

I had no subjects with straight E's, with 22M and 4A overall.

Seems like conversions are relatively favorable for us

 

[iluvcookies]

My results for level 3:

Biology: 15E 4M (2 E externals, 1 M external, 2 E internals)
Chemistry: 21E (3 E externals, 2 E internals)
English: 10E 8M (2 M externals, 3 E internals)
Statistics: 19E (2 E externals, 3 E internals)
Physics: 23E (3 E externals, 2 E internals)
Calculus: 23E (3 E externals, 2 E internals)

Overall: 111 E credits, 12 M credits, and 123 credits total
I took L3 calculus in 2021 and the rest in 2022.

I got an ATAR of 99.90

 

[ewsome]

Have been applying for aus med and dent with NCEA this year - got an atar of 99.45 with 95E.

I took Bio, Chem, Physics, English, Chinese, and Stats in 2022.

I only had straight E's in Chinese, and overall had 95E (45 from externals and 50 from internals), 21M and 4A. Would've loved to have my grades convert to a higher ATAR but managed a couple interviews and just waiting to see if I can snag an offer in the later rounds. Good luck to anyone planning to try out the aus pathway - it looks like u should probably take level 3 calc lol