Which HSC Subjects Scale Best in 2026? (NSW)
In the latest (2025) HSC scaling, Mathematics Extension 2, Latin Extension and Latin Continuers scaled the highest, while English Studies Exam scaled the lowest. Here are the top and bottom 10 HSC courses, with a link to each subject’s full scaling table. The 2026 figures are released in December 2026 — until then, 2025 is the best guide.
Highest-scaling HSC courses
| # | Subject | Avg scaled mark /50 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mathematics Extension 2 | 43.4 |
| 2 | Latin Extension | 42.3 |
| 3 | Latin Continuers | 40.5 |
| 4 | Mathematics Extension 1 | 39.7 |
| 5 | Italian Extension | 39.5 |
| 6 | French Extension | 38.9 |
| 7 | German Extension | 38.4 |
| 8 | Japanese Extension | 38 |
| 9 | Chinese Extension | 37.3 |
| 10 | English Extension 1 | 36.1 |
Lowest-scaling HSC courses
| Subject | Avg scaled mark /50 |
|---|---|
| Industrial Technology | 17.7 |
| Electrotechnology Exam | 17.6 |
| Arabic Continuers | 17.5 |
| Construction Exam | 16.5 |
| Primary Industries Exam | 16.2 |
| Retail Services Exam | 16.1 |
| Aboriginal Studies | 14.8 |
| Automotive Exam | 14.1 |
| Mathematics Standard 1 Exam | 13.9 |
| English Studies Exam | 9 |
Should you pick a subject because it scales?
The pattern is consistent year to year: the most demanding courses scale up because they attract academically strong cohorts. But that doesn’t mean you should choose a subject just because it sits near the top of this list.
Scaling rewards how well you perform relative to everyone else in that subject. A strong result in a subject you’re genuinely good at will usually beat a weak result in a higher-scaling subject you find brutal. Pick courses you can excel in and enjoy — scaling follows performance, not the other way around.
Curious about a specific subject? Open its page from the full HSC scaling list, or read how the HSC ATAR is calculated.
HSC scaling FAQ
Ranked by avg scaled mark /50, from the UAC Report on the Scaling of the 2025 NSW HSC (Table A3). Percentile anchors from UAC’s Table A3. UAC states this is not a simple HSC-to-scaled conversion — for each HSC mark there is a range of scaled marks — so these figures are indicative of how the course scales, not a per-mark lookup.