Adjustment Factors and SEAS Explained: How Bonus Points Work

Every state runs some version of an adjustment factors scheme, and Victoria’s is called SEAS — the Special Entry Access Scheme. The details vary, but the idea is the same everywhere: if your circumstances (financial hardship, a disrupted school environment, disability, or similar) likely affected your results, a university can add points on top of your ATAR when it decides who gets into a course.

The part students most often get wrong is thinking these points change the ATAR itself. They don’t. SATAC’s Equity and Language/Literacy/Maths schemes, VTAC’s SEAS, and the equivalents run by UAC, QTAC and TISC all produce a separate number — usually called a selection rank — that’s your ATAR plus whatever points you’re eligible for. Your actual ATAR, the one that gets reported and used everywhere else, stays exactly the same. You can see this modelled directly on the SACE ATAR calculator, which shows your estimated ATAR and your estimated selection rank as two separate figures after you add adjustment points.

A second common mix-up is between an adjustment factors calculator and an SEAS calculator: they’re not competing tools, they’re the same concept under different state names. If you’re applying through VTAC, look for VTAC’s own SEAS application process rather than a generic adjustment factors calculator built for another state’s scheme, since eligibility categories and point values differ by admissions centre.

If you completed the IB rather than an Australian Year 12 certificate, adjustment factors work a bit differently again — see the IB to ATAR converter for how SATAC handles IB results specifically.