At Australia’s oldest university Vice Chancellor Michael Spence suggests Y12 completers should chill over the ATAR. “The results of the HSC and the ATAR are not tattooed to your forehead: they are a measure of your academic performance over a particular 18-month period and no more. This might facilitate your options for a university degree if you would like one, but it does not determine the course of the rest of your life,” the University of Sydney VC says.

In contrast, the marginally younger University of Melbourne will go hard tomorrow to celebrate the ATAR, hosting an elite-event “for many of Victoria’s highest-achieving VCE students” who will receive a chancellor’s scholarship to study there, (CMM December 11).