This blog provides a data driven insight into what it takes to achieve a high ATAR by exploring a handful of habits, strategies and approaches that former students employed to achieve their ATAR goal.
First things first: what the ATAR means (in plain English)
The ATAR is a percentile rank that compares your performance to the whole Year 12 cohort. A 99 ATAR means you’ve performed as well as or better than 99% of students. If you’d like the full breakdown across VCE/HSC and how scaling works, read What is the ATAR? (highly recommended before you plan your strategy).
How top students hit 99+ ATARs: the data-driven habits
At Learnmate, we’re data-driven. We don’t want to provide students with the same tired advice, ideas and anecdotes you have heard 1,000 times before or seen on Tik Tok. So we surveyed Learnmate’s former students and tutors to identify what each of them did day-to-day, including:
- study habits
- study-life balance
- sleep and eating habits
- extra-curricular activities
- extra-support received
Having compiled the data, we sorted the participants and their answers by ATAR; essentially, who did what and what did they achieve. And here’s what the data tells us about the top 3 habits, strategies and approaches they took in Year 12.
1) Put in the hours (consistently, not chaotically)
Year 12 is a marathon. Our respondents who achieved 99+ typically studied ~2+ hours on school nights and added longer, deeper blocks on weekends. The point isn’t heroic cramming; it’s steady work, spaced practice, and proper rest.
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Our research highlighted a high correlation between the number of hours a student studied on weeknights and the weekend and the ATAR result they received. Almost every participant who achieved an ATAR above 90 ensured that they completed extra study on school nights, with 80% of students who achieved a 99+ consistently doing over 2 hours per night and over 4 hours on weekends.
Suffice it to say Year 12 requires a consistent effort throughout the year if you want to outperform 99% of your cohort. Simply put, you probably need to put in more effort than them to achieve a better result.
For information how they spent their time studying, it was clear that hard work needs to be directed in the right way, which we cover in more detail below.
2) Train with practice exams in every subject
While there is no escaping a year of hard work, you need to ensure that your hard work is directed in the right way. For the highest achievers, the path to success involved going beyond just note preparation and rote learning to working on your exam technique well ahead of assessment time.
So, what does this look like? Well, while most students all ensured they prepared a concise set of notes for their subjects and understood them well, students who achieved an ATAR of 99+ had one thing in common: they completed practice exams for their subjects. And, as your ATAR is the product of your performance across all your subjects, 88% of those students ensured they completed practice exams for all their subjects, Unsurprisingly, the fewer practice exams a student completed and the fewer subjects they maintained this practice for, the lower their ATAR was.
From our data, it is clear that practice exams – particularly official exams set in prior years – provide the best bedrock for success at exam time. And this makes complete sense - practice exams help you to understand how examiners would and have assessed students previously, they allow you to discover patterns in questions and answers, and to refine your technique to ensure you complete exams within the allocated time. Practice makes perfect.
3) Identify and fix weaknesses early
While the saying goes that "practice makes perfect", everyone has a subject, topic or other miscellaneous trait or behaviour that could be improved. Whether that’s a particular subject, a specific topic or unit in Maths Methods or an issue such as suboptimal sleep patterns or exam anxiety. Although it may be difficult and uncomfortable at first, recognising and being aware of areas for improvement can be highly rewarding at exam time.
For instance, do you notice that your mind is wondering in certain subjects? Perhaps your energy levels are low and you’re struggling to get enough sleep. Or perhaps you are putting in the hours but it’s not paying dividends or you struggle to finish exams on time.
One way to address what you are experiencing is to reach out to others who have overcome what you are going through before or have experience with it. This may be a friend, your teachers or a tutor who can help you with specific strategies to improve and overcome anything which may prevent you from achieving your full potential.
Our data showed that a significant proportion of the highest performers all sought help during year 12 and didn’t ‘go it alone’. Specifically, 70% of students who achieved a 99+ ATAR had 1 or more tutors for Year 12 and 66% sought outside of class support from their teachers.
Help is always available, we just need to ask for it. We encourage everyone, not just those aiming for the highest results to be self-aware and self-assess to ensure you have the support you need to be your best. Browse VCE tutors or HSC tutors to compare profiles, reviews and rates, then build a week-by-week plan.
Your weekly checklist for a 99-ATAR study rhythm
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Plan your week with a realistic timetable (classes, homework, practice sets, sport, sleep). Use Learnmate’s free Study Timetable Template and stick to it.
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Active study > passive reading: retrieval practice, spaced repetition, teaching a peer, and exam-style writing.
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Past-exam reps: complete timed tasks and mark against examiner reports; log mistakes and re-train weak skills. Head to our VCE Past Exams Hub for more.
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One improvement per week: pick a bottleneck (e.g., quoting effectively in English, multi-step proofs in Specialist) and close it.
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Sleep & stress: protect 7–9 hours; short movement breaks; deliberate wind-down before bed.
- ATAR Calculators: Model your projected VCE subject scores or test how your study habits correlate with ATARs. Try Learnmate's VCE ATAR Calculator and the Study Habits ATAR Calculator to see how behavioural changes influence outcomes.
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Complete ATAR Guide: Read Learnmate's comprehensive How to get the ATAR you need guide - a mindset and strategy playbook to complement the tactics in this article.
Conclusion
There are no hacks — just smart, sustained effort. If you plan your week, practise under exam conditions, and fix weak spots early, you’ll give yourself the best shot at a 99+ result.
FAQs
Aim for about 2+ focused hours on school nights and longer, targeted blocks on weekends; quality and consistency matter more than sheer volume.
Choose subjects that match your strengths and genuine interest; scaling helps, but outperforming in subjects you like is more reliable than chasing scales.
As many as you can properly complete and review — ideally multiple papers per subject, marked against examiner reports with errors logged and re-trained.
Not mandatory, but targeted one-to-one help can accelerate progress by closing gaps faster and sharpening exam technique. Our data suggests 7/10 students who achieved a high ATAR had 1 or more tutors in year 12.
Audit your weak skills, ensure you build a cadence of daily work, including completing official past exams for your subjects, and fix one bottleneck or weakness per week while frequently returning to your strengths so they aren't neglected and become weak-spots.
