Does VCE scaling affect my ATAR?

Andy Li
Oct 29
4 min read

Andy Li, 29/11/2025

Every year, Victorian Year 12 students hear about “scaling” — often with confusion or even anxiety. You might’ve heard that “specialist maths scales up” or that “health scales down,” but what does that really mean?

Understanding how VCE scaling works helps you make smarter subject choices, interpret your results correctly, and plan strategically for your ATAR. Here’s a clear guide to how scaling works and why it matters.

🎯 What Is Scaling?

In the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), your study scores are standardised so that results from different subjects can be compared fairly. This process is called scaling and it’s done by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) when calculating your ATAR (VTAC, 2025).

Scaling ensures that:

Students aren’t advantaged or disadvantaged by choosing harder or easier subjects.
A 30 in one subject represents the same level of performance as a 30 in another.

For example, if fewer students perform well in Specialist Mathematics compared to others, VTAC scales those study scores up to reflect the stronger competition.

Common Misconception: It is always the hard subjects that are scaled up.

THIS IS NOT TRUE. Whilst many subjects that happen to be scaled up are indeed notoriously harder - think specialist mathematics or latin, it is not simply because they are difficult. Subjects are actually scaled because of how competitive the cohort that takes them are. What does this mean? Typically, students taking specialist maths are on average, more academic. So, students taking that subject are competing with heaps of above average students to get a higher study score in specialist maths (remember study scores are a bell curve). Therefor scaling is needed because a student shouldn't get a lower study score simply because a subject has more academic students.

This is at the core of how scaling works. more details on this idea are below:

📊 How Study Scores Are Calculated

Before scaling happens, your school and VCAA (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority) calculate a raw study score for each subject.

Study scores are out of 50.
They show how well you performed compared with other students in that subject across Victoria.
A 30 is the average (mean) score, achieved by about half of students each year (VCAA, 2024).

Then, VTAC scales those scores to account for the strength of competition in each subject.

⚖️ How does VCE Scaling Work and how does it affect my ATAR?

VTAC looks at how all students in each subject performed across their other VCE subjects.

If the average student in a particular subject also did very well in their other subjects, that subject’s scores are scaled up.
If the average student performed lower across their other studies, the subject’s scores are scaled down.

For example:

Specialist Mathematics often scales up significantly (a raw 30 might become ~41).
Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematical Methods also scale up slightly.
Health and Human Development, Business Management, and some Arts subjects may scale down a few points.

This isn’t because some subjects are “better” or “worse,” but because scaling adjusts for relative strength of the cohort.

Each year, VTAC publishes updated scaling reports showing these changes (VTAC Scaling Report, 2024).

💡 Why does scaling matter?

1. VCE scaling affects your ATAR

Your ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) is calculated using scaled study scores, not raw ones.That means the subjects you choose and how they scale will influence your final ATAR outcome — especially if your scaled scores differ greatly.

2. It promotes fairness

Scaling ensures that no one is punished for taking a subject with stronger competition. A student who excels in a high-scaling subject is recognised for their achievement compared with similarly strong peers.

3. It discourages “gaming the system”

Because scaling equalises performance, picking a subject “just because it scales well” rarely pays off. You’ll always perform best in subjects you enjoy and are confident in — and scaling can’t make up for low performance.

🧭 Choosing Subjects Wisely

When selecting your VCE subjects, focus on:

Interest and enjoyment: You’ll work harder and perform better in subjects you like.
Prerequisites: Some university courses require specific subjects (for example, Chemistry or Mathematical Methods).
Balance: Choose a mix of subjects that play to your strengths while keeping options open.

Scaling should inform your understanding — not dictate your choices. As VTAC notes, scaling “does not reward or penalise subjects but allows fair comparison across studies” (VTAC, 2025).

🧮 Example of Scaling in Practice

Let’s say you earned these raw study scores:

Subject	Raw Study Score	Approx. Scaled Score
English	32	32
Specialist Mathematics	30	41
Chemistry	31	34
Health & Human Development	34	31
Business Management	30	28

Even though you scored the same raw 30 in Specialist Maths and Business Management, Specialist Maths contributes more to your ATAR because its scaled score is higher.

This illustrates how scaling balances subject performance fairly across different cohorts.

🧠 Key Takeaway

Does VCE Scaling affect my ATAR? Yes, yes and yes.

However, scaling isn’t something to fear — it’s there to ensure fairness. The best ATAR strategy is still to:

Choose subjects that genuinely interest you.
Understand how scaling affects your final scores.
Aim for consistent high performance across all studies.

At Academic Peak Tutoring, our experienced tutors help students understand how scaling impacts their study goals and tailor preparation plans that maximise performance in both high- and low-scaling subjects.