What ATAR Do You Need for Uni in New South Wales? (2026)
In NSW there’s no fixed “ATAR cutoff”. What universities publish is the lowest selection rank — your ATAR plus any adjustment factors — that received an offer in each round last year. Because adjustments can lift your rank above your ATAR, students below a course’s listed figure regularly still get offers.
Selection rank vs ATAR
UAC combines your ATAR with any adjustment factors (educational disadvantage, particular subjects, elite athletes and performers, and university schemes like EAS) into a selection rank. Offers are made on your selection rank, not your raw ATAR — so the “lowest selection rank” a course reports is not a minimum ATAR you must reach.
Where to find the real numbers
UAC publishes the lowest selection ranks for each course after the December and January offer rounds. Every university also publishes an admissions-transparency ATAR profile (the lowest, median and highest ATAR of students who received an offer) for each course — the median is the most honest guide to what you realistically need.
Courses where ATAR isn’t the whole story
For competitive courses — medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, veterinary science — a high ATAR is necessary but not sufficient. They also require admissions tests (like the UCAT), interviews and subject prerequisites, and there’s usually no single “cutoff”. Always check the specific course at each university.
Know your own numbers first. See how your HSC subjects scale, then check those figures against a course’s cutoff.
HSC subject scaling →