Dr.ATAR: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the system

ATAR.

Most people hate it and some people...well it’s hard to imagine that anybody loves it.

With ATAR results coming out this week, it’s important to put things into perspective.

Whilst you’re at school, that insular thirteen-year slog of curriculums and classes the ATAR is something incredibly prominent. For some people it will inform every decision that they undertake during that time and for others it will be the spectre of anxiety that haunts them. This is something that culminates in nine short months of year twelve reaching its zenith in November. But is it really as significant as it is lauded to be? Perhaps not.

The best-case scenario is that come results day, with a great deal of relief, you have achieved the necessary score to attend your chosen course at your chosen University. This is all well and good and your work has paid off and you can commence planning the next steps you will take from this point with much congratulations from those around you. From here you have some easy options, commence a course, defer to work, travel or develop yourself or any other number of options.

However, conversely, the worst-case scenario is that you fall short of your goal by whatever margin. You will feel despondent, disappointed and those around you will likely, not knowing what else to offer you their sympathies. This however is only because everyone has been sucked into the cult of the be-all-and-end-all ATAR, the reality however is far different. Getting a low ATAR doesn’t mean the end of your chances for medicine or whatever course you may be interested in. It is in this case that planning becomes all the more important. If you seize the moment – you may even find yourself in a better position than you hoped to be.

Whilst schools and other institutions may lead you to believe that the ATAR you score at the end of year twelve is the sum of all your efforts and will in fact define your path from this point forward, this is irrevocably false. Quite the contrary – once you finish school the options available to you to enter into your preferred course are many.

Once you have come to terms with your results you have a single primary choice to make. Will you undertake a different undergraduate course or will you take the year to make another attempt at undergraduate entry into your preferred course by improving your ATAR.

There are merits to be noted for both options. The first allows you to perhaps study something that interested you but doesn’t feature in your most direct path. For example you might study Literature instead of going straight into undergraduate medicine. The potential benefits of this are many. You will develop as a person, meet people you otherwise would not have, develop a sophisticated knowledge  and understanding of a different subject and be exposed to possibilities you had not until this point conceived. Additionally you will be able to make attempts to transfer courses based on your undergraduate GPA (especially effective if you were to pick an area of study in which you are especially strong) or complete your bachelor degree (plus honours, masters or further as your heart desires) and aim for post-graduate entry a more developed person with a more sophisticated interpretation of the world around you with the added benefit of a wealth of relationships and experiences.
However, it is also possible you do not wish to delay undertaking your preferred course by up to three years or more. In this case further options exist. For example it is possible to re-take or undertake additional year 12 subjects part time through specialized courses that condense a week’s work into one three hour class per week over a year in order to boost your ATAR for a second attempt. Not only will this give you more time to dedicate to this one subject and so perform very well, but many of these institutions also provide bonus aggregate points (The points used to calculate your ATAR) merely for attending the institution in question, further boosting your score for no additional effort. Furthermore this will free up your time to work, travel or engage in self-development in any of its many forms with essentially no responsibilities – an opportunity you may never have again in your life without a significant contrivance.

A further group that this option may be appealing for is those whom will be graduating at a younger age than their peers. For better or worse. Much of the socializing and events held for new university students occur at eighteen-plus venues. As such if you were to enter university at seventeen or younger, you may find this obstructive to enjoying these events and socializing with your new peer group.

Something that I feel cannot be over emphasized is; the moment you step out of highschool, your ATAR will literally never matter again. It is a means to an end that can easily be manipulated and modified. Furthermore a perspective on time scale is valuable. Delaying entry into a course by a year may seem like a massive commitment or handicap – but this is not so. A delay of twelve months is barely a blink of an eye. To take a degree like medicine for example, after completion depending on the specialty, graduates can expect to take between two and ten years to simply gain admission to a specialty training program – when placed in contrast, twelve months is a short time.

So when results come out, whatever the outcome. Take it in your stride. It is one number and does not define you. Nor will it dictate the rest of your life. Instead think of it as opening a universe of options. Stop worrying and learn to love the system.