Across Victoria this week the 2025 VCE results were announced.
A record number of 65,586 students completed the VCE and of these 49,310 received an ATAR (Tertiary Admission Rank) score.
Others opted instead for VCE Vocational Major or Victorian Pathways Certificate instead.
Private schools tend to dominate the highest-performing ATAR brackets (e.g. many students scoring over 95 or 99), and this year is no exception.
Some Government schools also produce high achievers, but as a group they usually don’t have as many students in the very top ATAR brackets state wide, compared with many top private schools.
Though there are exceptions with selective government schools like Melbourne High and Macobertson Girls, reported among the highest achievers.
Interestingly recent reporting on Victorian schools shows that in many high-performing schools, a high percentage of students come from LBOTE(language backgrounds other than English) or migrant families.
Some top schools reporting that over 70 per cent of their students are from language backgrounds other than English.
For those who achieved the score needed for the tertiary course of their choice it is undoubtedly a time for celebration.
But for others who have not received the required score what matters most is that you don’t give up on your dreams.
ATAR is just one of many steps that can take you to the course for the career you have your heart set on and often not even the most important one.
Remember that because the ATAR score is just a rank and not a measure of intelligence, effort, the difficulty of your subjects or exam performance It only measures your position in the overall distribution of students.
It measures performance in a few subjects under exam pressure relative to that year’s cohort.
In other words ATAR tells universities roughly where you sit academically compared to everyone else.
Moreover it does not measure potential, intelligence, creativity, work ethic, or long-term capability.
Some students complete VCE without receiving an ATAR score.
And often eventually end up doing the university course of their choice.
A low ATAR score is only one moment in time and doesn’t need to define your life from here on.
In fact a score that is short of what is needed for a chosen course may be a blessing in disguise.
Although there are those who have been lucky to find an early passion to aim for, this is not the case for many who may be still unsure of what they want to do with the rest of their lives or may have felt the pressure of family expectations to perhaps follow in the family’s traditional professions.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus – William Ernest Henley.
Henley’s defiant tone here has inspired generations. Ambition here is inner strength in the face of setbacks.
Those disappointed by their scores should also be assured that in Australia there are multiple pathways into every career.
Many students complete a Certificate IV, a Diploma and then move into the second year of a bachelor degree.
Then there are those who may want a break after 12 years of schooling and decide to delay university until later applying as a mature age student.
As Tennyson says, it’s never too late.
Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world…
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson Ulysses
Creative fields (media, design, visual arts, writing, architecture) often don’t care about ATAR scores and judge your talent instead.
And some may not realise that Universities accept thousands of students every year without the required ATAR.
This is because many courses have lower unpublished actual offer ATARs after adjustment factors.
Medicine, law, teaching, engineering, psychology, nursing, IT, creative arts — they all have recognised alternate pathways.
TAFE or diploma entrants often skip first-year subjects and can transfer after doing well in another course, even if their ATAR was low.
And when you think of it, some of Australia’s strongest performers academically, professionally or creatively didn’t get a high ATAR so didn’t go straight to university.
Or maybe never pursued a university qualification but learnt their skills or craft through experience.
I turned left
when tradition said right.
Not out of rebellion,
but recognition—
a quiet knowing
that my footsteps
belonged somewhere
unwritten
That affable, slightly eccentric science communicator and doctor Karl Kruszelnicki failed maths and chemistry and didn’t get into his preferred degree the first time, entering university later through an alternative entry, then completing multiple degrees and becoming one of Australia’s best- known science educators.
Similarly maths wiz Eddie Woo (educator and YouTube maths teacher) only managed an average ATAR score but is now one of Australia’s most influential educators.
And Bob Brown failed Year 12 science, repeated, and came through a non-linear pathway into medicine.
In fact there are many doctors who took the ‘back-door’ pathway through a science or paramedic degrees.
This is extremely common but often not publicised.
Burns specialist and inventor Fiona Woods grew up in remote WA with limited schooling access and took an atypical steps into medicine.
Now world recognized for her developing the spray–on-skin technology.
Then there are the countless designers, writers, filmmakers and musicians who never relied on ATAR at all.
Creative fields often admit students through portfolios, auditions or work experience — not ATAR.
The list is impressive and includes high achievers such as comedian Hannah Gadsby, composer Tim Minchin and Oscar winning designer Catherine Martin.
Film director Peter Weir, artist Ben Quilty and many, many more.
Olympic champion swimmer Ian Thorpe has spoken about struggling academically and not completing traditional Year 12 because swimming dominated his teenage years but later completed university as an adult.
And next time you hold a ten dollar note in your hands have a close look who is on it: David Unaipon – inventor, writer who had almost no formal schooling , was self-taught in physics and engineering and invented sheep shearing tools and prototyped early helicopter design concepts.
Tech Entrepreneurs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes are known for Atlassian started their tech company with $10,000 from a credit card.
Both finished school but rejected standard graduate science/tech pathways, teaching themselves much of the tech behind early Atlassian products.
All the above examples (and there are many more) show that the ATAR score is not the be all and end all of everything.
If your score was less than you anticipated, it can be seen as a positive temporary roadblock to allow you to change your direction or to find a detour.
In his poem The Road Less Travelled Robert Frost talks about coming to a fork in the road and being faced with two roads and having chosen one he imagines how in the future he will be looking back on that choice.
The poem is usually quoted to show how choosing a different path in life can make a difference but the poem is really about choices and how we look back on the choices we have made.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Hopefully the choices made will be ones that will lead to meaningful and fulfilling careers.
In the words of Langston Hughes:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
Langston Hughes Dreams
