You don't need one. Not a good one, not a bad one, not any one at all.
An ATAR is a rank for getting into university. It has no other job. Nobody in a recording studio has ever asked to see one, and nobody ever will, because the people who hire audio engineers and producers aren't running a university admissions office. They're trying to find someone who can make a record sound right. If you didn't get an ATAR, or you got one that closed the doors you were told mattered, none of that touches the actual industry.
So this isn't going to be a list of foundation courses that get you back into the queue. It's what the industry asks for instead, and the routes into it that never go through a university gate.
I've taught Sound Production at university level. I've also spent twenty-five years in commercial studios, on records for Sony, Mushroom, Netflix and Eurovision. I've sat on the side of the desk that reads applications, and the side that hires, and only one of them has ever cared about a rank.
What an ATAR actually is
The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank is a number between 0 and 99.95 that says where you sit against everyone else who finished Year 12 in your year. It's national in name, but each state works it out from its own certificate. In Victoria that's the VCE, through VTAC. Queensland only switched to it in 2020, after years of its own system.
Here's the thing to hold on to: it's a queue number. Universities have more applicants than places, so they need a way to order the line. That's all the ATAR does. It's not a measure of whether you can hear a kick drum sitting wrong against a bass. It was never designed to be.
If you're not joining that queue, the number doesn't exist. There's no ATAR check at a studio door, on a label's books, or in an artist's head when they're choosing who to trust with their record.
What the industry asks for instead
Every time I've hired an assistant or brought someone into a session, I've wanted to know three things, and none of them are on a certificate.
Can you hear. Not whether you have a good ear, which is a compliment people hand out for free, but whether you can tell me what's wrong with a mix and roughly where it lives. That's learnable, and it's learned by listening to a lot of records on purpose.
Can you work. Turn up early, stay late, keep the session moving, patch a headphone mix without being told twice, and don't touch the console when the artist is mid-take. This is most of the job for the first two years and it's the part school can't teach.
Have you made anything. Even something rough. A track you produced for a mate, a live recording of a band at the pub, a mix you did over and over until it stopped sounding like a demo. The work is the application form. It always has been.
The routes that don't go through the gate
Start free, this week. Before you spend a dollar, find out whether you actually like the work rather than the idea of it. There are free short courses at academyofaudio.com that will tell you inside a weekend. No form, no rank.
A short intensive. Ten days in a real studio, taught by people who make records for a living. The one I run doesn't ask for an ATAR, a certificate, or a folio. It asks whether you've made things and hit a ceiling, because it moves too fast for someone who's never opened a DAW. If that's you, it's here. If it isn't yet, start with the free courses and come back.
The studio floor. Studios still take people on. Not many, and not through a job ad. You write to a studio whose records you admire, you say what you've made and what you can do, and you offer to be useful. If they say yes, you'll spend a year making coffee, wrapping cables and watching, and you'll learn more than any course can give you. Nobody in that conversation will ask about school.
A vocational diploma. This is the honest other direction, because some people genuinely need a nationally recognised certificate, for a visa, an employer in broadcast, or as a pathway into a degree later. A diploma is a vocational certificate, and vocational courses don't use the ATAR. Whether one is worth it at all is a separate question, and I've answered it honestly. RMIT run one, and there are no prerequisite subjects, no ATAR and no minimum academic entry requirement for it. What they do ask for is a selection task, which is a small piece of work they assess to see whether you're suited to it. That's the right test, and it's the same one the industry uses. If a certificate is what you need, go and get it there.
If you still want the degree
Fair enough. Some people do, for the academic route, for research, for a career in broadcast or teaching where the degree is on the job ad. And a missed ATAR doesn't close that either. It just means you don't go in through the front door.
Every university has non-school-leaver entry, and whether you need the degree is worth asking before you chase it. Ask them for it by name. The common routes are a completed diploma, which counts as a pathway, and mature-age entry once you're a little older. Do the diploma, make records for two years while you're at it, and if you still want the degree at twenty-one, you'll walk in with a certificate and a body of work that no eighteen-year-old with a 95 can match.
What I'd do this year
If I'd just finished school with no ATAR and wanted this, here's the year I'd have.
- Make ten things. Bad ones. Record a friend. Mix a song you've got the stems for. Do it again. The tenth will be listenable, and it will be worth more than any piece of paper.
- Learn signal flow and gain staging properly. The two things every beginner gets wrong and every studio notices. They're the same in a free course as they are in a lecture hall.
- Get in a real room. An intensive, a studio, a rehearsal space with a live desk. Anything where the gear is real and the clock is running.
- Write to three studios. Not asking for a job. Offering to be useful. One of them will say yes eventually, and that yes is worth more than the rank you didn't get.
The ATAR is a number that orders a queue you don't have to join. Everyone who's ever hired me got there by listening, not by asking for a rank. That's still how it works, and it's the best news in this whole industry for anyone who was told the door was shut.
