NCEA to ATAR

[Dr Pepper]

Hi guys, I'm currently a year 12 student in New Zealand (year 11 in Australia) and I am unsure about how NCEA is converted to ATAR. Since we apply to Australian Medical Schools in around September of our final year of school, how do we send in our application with our ATAR if we haven't sat any of the exams for level 3 yet? Do they make a mock ATAR based on solely your current level 3 grades from internals or do they also look at grades from the previous year (level 2)? Hopefully somebody has an idea on how this works. Cheers.

Hi PJ990
Australian unis will be able to access your NCEA results and converted ATAR once the results have been released by NZQA around Jan 12th-ish. Which unfortunately means NZ applicants will miss the first offer round since their results are not available.

 

[JJ2024]

Hey guys,

I was recently sick during one of my externals and applied for derived grades, does anyone know if this will effect the final weighting when converting to ATAR?

 

[richbabyh1tman]

Hey guys,

I was recently sick during one of my externals and applied for derived grades, does anyone know if this will effect the final weighting when converting to ATAR?

It won't, your derived grade will go towards your atar calculation.

 

[stellarflare100]

im taking in level 3 psychology, literature, calc, bio, and chem. is there any way i can get at least a 99.90 atar with these subjects? i usually see people who achieve high atars with at LEAST 5 subjects, and even when it is just 5 subjects, they have physics where i've got psychology.

 

[Sashank]

Hey guys I’m year 12 student in New Zealand. I was thinking maybe I should try take the level 3 externals for calc this year and take level 3 stats in year 13. I am also gonna take the three sciences and eng in year 13 do you think this is smart for a high ATAR? If not should I just take 5 subjects eng cal and three sciences in year 13. What is smarter for a higher atar?

 

[richbabyh1tman]

im taking in level 3 psychology, literature, calc, bio, and chem. is there any way i can get at least a 99.90 atar with these subjects? i usually see people who achieve high atars with at LEAST 5 subjects, and even when it is just 5 subjects, they have physics where i've got psychology.

iirc psychology doesn't have any externals, which might limit your atar. If I were u I would try swap out psychology for something else. It is hard to predict yur ATAR purely based on your subjects, but 99.90 might be a bit difficult- you should aim to get everything at E

Hey guys I’m year 12 student in New Zealand. I was thinking maybe I should try take the level 3 externals for calc this year and take level 3 stats in year 13. I am also gonna take the three sciences and eng in year 13 do you think this is smart for a high ATAR? If not should I just take 5 subjects eng cal and three sciences in year 13. What is smarter for a higher atar?

as a y12 I would do as many externals this year as possible- try do calc+stats. No pressure + any E that you get is an external you don't have to do next year. Doing l3 in y12 is def a good way to get a high ATAR

 

[plee1647]

Hi. I'm currently taking Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, Korean, Business studies. How many E credits do I need to get an ATAR score over 99.5? In which subjects do I need to get more E credits?

 

[Bethl]

Hi. I'm currently taking Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, Korean, Business studies. How many E credits do I need to get an ATAR score over 99.5? In which subjects do I need to get more E credits?

It isn't calculated on how many E credits you have.
ATAR scores are based on each student's best 90 level; the best 90 credits are identified by a statistical process to calculate the relative difficulty or each standard (and version) and result pair.
There are also adjustments based on intra subject and cohort comparisons that may increase the relative difficulty.

IE my ATAR is 99.55- I have 111 Excellence credits and 44 Merit Credits (in addition to my 6 subjects, I sat additional subjects outside of my school with TEKURA distance learning) Its impossible to determine what are the 'best' credits, as for my results some of my Merit credits IE lets say in Calculus externals, will likely have a statistical advantage than my excellence credits in say history internals.

it may be that the subjects you have chosen, dont produce a strong 90 credits. You want to maximise your chances. Externals are often worth the most points in the conversion. You may also find that subjects that have a smaller cohort produce less points - IE foreign languages are typically worth less in the conversion, as fictionally, lets say across NZ there's maybe 200 students in total, of which 50% of the cohort gets excellence. VS say something like Chemistry where there may be say 5000 students, of which 20% get excellence. If you get my drift.
You want a large cohort subject, which is hard to get excellence in. Chem, Physics and Calc will likely score very well.

When I was going through this process I got in touch with the Psychometrics, Reporting and Statistics team via NCEA who supplied me with a document from the previous years that showed the average stats of each standard - cohort size vs grade and loosely based my subjects off this, while also enrolling in additional standards to increase my likelihood. You cant guarantee it'll be the same but if trends follow suit it will give you an idea!

Hope that all make sense! sing out if you have any questions!

 

[Sashank]

Hi everyone,


I’m currently in Year 12 and this year I’m planning to sit the Level 3 Calculus externals, but I won’t be taking the internals. I recently found out that for a course endorsement, all credits (internal + external) must be gained in the same year. This means I won’t be able to get a Calculus endorsement this year.


Next year (Year 13), I’m planning to take Triple Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), Statistics, English, and possibly Economics if my school allows.


My questions are:

1. How do universities, especially Australian ones, view the fact that I’m taking Level 3 Calculus externals this year without an endorsement? Will it still show clearly on my transcript that I studied Level 3 Calculus?
2. Does missing the endorsement affect my application at all, or do universities mainly consider the credits and grades achieved?
3. For planning next year, is it realistic to combine Triple Science, Stats, English, and maybe Economics while also managing any catch-up or optional Calculus internals?
4. Also is there any Recomandations for replacments of any of the subjects which could yeild a better ATAR

I’d really appreciate any advice from people who have been in a similar situation, especially regarding how it looks for Australian university applications.


Thanks in advance!

 

[A1]

How do universities, especially Australian ones, view the fact that I’m taking Level 3 Calculus externals this year without an endorsement? Will it still show clearly on my transcript that I studied Level 3 Calculus?

I can only help with this part^.
My understanding is as long as you graduate with an NCEA Certificate and NZQA converts your grades to an ATAR equivalent, that's all the Aus unis/TACs (Tertiary Admissions Centres) care for this purpose. Doesn't matter what subjects you have done for the NCEA Certificate.

However individually several unis require you to have done English, which you will do so no problem. Monash/UTas/Curtin Medicine require Chemistry, JCU Maths+Chemistry, Adelaide one of Maths or Chemistry or Biology. It looks like JCU Maths could be the only concern. Google JCU Maths prereq to see what type they require.

See more info in this table
> [Undergrad] - (2023 Updated) Med schools Selection Criteria Y12s & Non-standards

 

[Sashank]

Hey everyone, I’m trying to get an idea of what ATAR my NCEA subjects/credits might convert to if I got all of these at Excellence. Here’s my breakdown:

• Biology: 9E externals + 6E internals
• Chemistry: 15E externals + 3E internals
• Economics: 14E externals + 10E internals
• English: 8E externals + 11E internals
• Calculus: 17E externals + 4E internals
• Statistics: 8E externals + 11E internals
• Physics: 16E externals + 3E internals

That’s 135 Excellence credits in total (87 externals, 48 internals).
If these are all guaranteed at E, what kind of ATAR range do you think this would amount to?

 

[Overfitting]

Hello. I don't think anyone from the past will see this but I wanted to thank the people who have been here before me and posted their results and ATAR conversions from NCEA historically. This has been the single best resource for understanding how NCEA does their conversions and what it takes to get a high ATAR conversion. I would chip in my own two cents regarding results.

I orginally had a 99.90 ATAR conversion which got bumped up to a 99.95 after a single Bio paper got reconsidered (5 credits from merit to excellence)

Overall I obtained 174 Excellence Credits at level 3 (about 14 merits) (I took 4 L3 subjects in y12 and 5 in y13) (I retook some externals because I wasn't happy with y12 results) In order of subject difficulty / importance (subjective slightly)

Calculus - 17E externals + 10E internals (3 ext)
Physics - 16E externals + 9E internals (3 ext)
Chemistry - 5E externals + 9E internals + 10M externals (pretty terrible at chem) (3 ext)
English - 8E externals + 13E internals (2 ext)
Biology - 9E externals + 11E internals (2 ext)
Statistics - 8E externals + 10E internals (2 ext)
Economics - 4E externals + 10E internals + 4M externals (2 ext)
Digital Technologies - 3E externals + 17E internals (1 ext DCAT)
Electronics - 16E internals

Borderline of 99.90 - 99.95 sits somewhere in the range of 68-70 external excellence credits (In relatively difficult subjects) (Good subject internals to fill into 90)

Just adding on at the end, even if you are not aiming for med and a 99.95 ATAR, a 99.90 ATAR does make you eligible some scholarships based on academic results so it is 100% worth it. Good luck to anyone in the future aiming for a high ATAR!