Nope, Your ATAR Doesn’t Define You!
GET 1:1 EXPERT ADVICE FROM TEACHERS AND REAL STUDENTS ABOUT OPTIONS FOR EVERY ATAR, COURSES AND UNI LIFE.
Ah high school, a pressure cooker filled with ingredients like academic stress, puberty, and delicious future aspirations which rises to a rolling boil over five years. Ironically, for an experience with so many tangible and qualitative learning experiences, your parting gift at the end of this long and arduous journey is simply… a number!
Sixty-four, eighty-five: this is how adults in the real world address each other, with scaling levels of condescension based on their numerical ranking.
Obvious sarcasm aside, in the days following the completion of your VCE you will feel the relevance of your ATAR leave your body like a long sigh. But this doesn’t mean that your days toiling over Shakespeare or long division were for naught. Far from it: your journey to figure out just who the hell you want to be has only just begun!
A Double Digit Number Won’t Decide The Rest Of Your Life
Historically, the ATAR system was meant to control the supply and demand of finishing high school students into prospective placements at Australian universities. As you probably know, your final ranking isn’t just calculated by your marks on their own. Your score is ultimately adjusted by how well you do against your fellow students, meaning the system actively places you in direct competition with your friends.
If this feels Hunger Games-esque, that’s because it is! Unless your parents spliced your DNA with lion genes when you were a child, it is not normal or healthy to treat your participation in society like a competition.
Luckily, this simply isn’t how tertiary education works these days. At Swinburne, your pathways to greater learning are as diverse as your cohort, with options like the UniLink and TAFE entry programs that will give you fresh options if you reckon you’re missing the entry requirements for the study route you want to follow.
Meet People, Not ATAR Requirements
The transition from high school to the rest of your life is pretty insane. One minute, you’re hanging out with the same people you’ve known for years, the next you’re rubbing elbows with people from all walks of life.
Personally, while I’ve never met a single person that owes their achievements to their ATAR score, the ways people succeed in life are as broad as how you define it.
But making a decision about where you want your ATAR to take you can be a really tough choice to make in the heat of the moment. If you can’t even begin to imagine what university course fits you best, sometimes your best bet is to simply pick the brains of the people behind your degree.
At Swinburne’s Change of Preference Expo, you can have a one-on-one discussion with the academics behind the field you want to study, who can help you figure out how to change your preferences if you decide you want to switch things up once you officially receive your ATAR.
From sit-down career talks with professionals to sharing stories with the people who might have walked the path you want to take, Swinburne is ready to show you how your education will directly relate to your future career choice.
Take In A World-Class Education And Don’t Look Back
If you’ve already got a pretty good idea about what you want to achieve in this life, Swinburne is the place to make your dreams a reality. With a range of celebrated academics that help change the way you see the world and work placement opportunities that will give you hands-on experience in the very field you’re learning about, Swinburne is in the top three percent of Universities in the world for a reason!
If you’re a high achiever, or if you reckon that your best results are still in front of you, then there’s no reason not to start your tertiary education adventure on the right foot with guaranteed industry experience to help you find a job before you graduate, with a uni culture you’ll definitely brag about.
Follow The Path That Feels Right For You
ATARs are a little bit like getting your first tattoo: you can’t help but stress out over how something so permanent will define you now or even your future. But if you ask anyone out of high school what their ATAR means to them down the track, they’ll tell you that it’s all about the meaning you prescribe to your education that ultimately decides what it’s worth.
So, if you think that your ATAR doesn’t feel like you, know this: your education doesn’t have to be predetermined by a number assigned to you when you were a teenager.
Make Swinburne your #1 VTAC preference. Get more for your ATAR.