Forty-three students got perfect ATARs. Maths was their secret weapon

September 2, 2026 — 7:30pmForty-three students achieved a perfect ATAR of 99.95 last year and each high achiever boosted their end-of-school mark through top scores in the two toughest maths subjects.All 43 students who topped the state in 2025 selected mathematical methods and specialist mathematics, both of which are scaled up due to their difficulty.Georgios Pirpiris is studying medicine at Monash University after achieving an ATAR of 99.95 at Melbourne Grammar School. Eddie JimThe third most common subject students completed to achieve top marks was chemistry – chosen by 37 students – followed by English, which is compulsory, and counted towards 24 perfect scores.Victoria’s 43 top performers were among 49,310 VCE students who received an ATAR last year and all have earned praise from Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) chief executive officer Teresa Tjia.“The breadth of achievement of these students is reflected in the broad range of studies students have chosen across the VCE, including the 28 different studies undertaken by those achieving a 99.95 ATAR,” she said.VTAC calculates the ATAR, a percentile rank between 0 and 99.95, from up to six subjects.Tjia said VTAC’s scaling process meant students are not advantaged or disadvantaged by their subject choice.“My advice to younger students who are thinking ahead to their VCE study plan is to choose subjects you’re interested in and are good at,” Tjia said.“This is the best way to maximise your ATAR.”The most popular subject combination in 2025 – selected by 369 students – comprised English, biology, health and human development, general mathematics and psychology. In total, 24,291 unique combinations of VCE subjects were recorded.Victorian students who achieved 99.95 favoured STEM subjects, including physics (18 students) and biology (13 students). However, language subjects also contributed to a high proportion of perfect scores.Georgios Pirpiris was one of five boys at Melbourne Grammar School to achieve at ATAR of 99.95 in 2025.Pirpiris studied units 3 and 4 of modern Greek, French, Latin, English, specialist mathematics, mathematical methods and chemistry over two years.His perfect year 12 score earned him a spot on Monash University’s medicine program, where he received a scholarship worth $32,000 over four years.Five Melbourne Grammar School students received ATAR scores of 99.95. From left are Nicholas Wang, Tahj Kumar, headmaster Philip Grutzner, Daniel Gao and Andison Zhang. The fifth student was Georgios Pirpiris.Pirpiris said VCE students preparing to sit exams next month should be confident their years of schooling will pay off.“It’s not just year 12 that they’ve been at school, it’s all the years beforehand that they’ve been developing small skills,” he said.“So trust that the things you might not have thought were useful back then have taught you the skills to learn or the info you have now... and don’t worry about one silly exam.”Of the 43 Victorian students who achieved perfect ATARs in 2025, 14 of them were female, including three students from Fintona Girls’ School.Haileybury College and Haileybury Girls College had five perfect ATARs, while Melbourne Girls Grammar, Ruyton Girls’ School, Camberwell Grammar School, Balwyn High School and Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School all had two.Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Caulfield Grammar School, Parkdale Secondary College, St Kevin’s College, Mentone Grammar, Hume Anglican Grammar, Strathcona Girls Grammar, Brighton Grammar School, Beaconhills College, Tintern Grammar and Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar each celebrated one student with a perfect ATAR.Elevate Education chief operating officer John Varvarigos said students wanting to do well in VCE should choose subjects they are genuinely interested in, as they’ll be spending a lot of time thinking about the topic.“What not to do is to do something for scaling purposes or do something for the marks,” he said.Elevate educators travel to hundreds of private and public schools around Victoria to run workshops with students that teach good study habits for VCE.“Capability follows repetition,” Varvarigos said.Varvarigos said students were also more likely to engage in a subject if they knew why they were studying it. So if maths wasn’t necessarily their favourite subject, but it was a prerequisite for their chosen further study, they’d be more likely to engage.He said students who succeeded in VCE typically did two things.“The number one thing that separates middle-performing students from top-performing students is the number of past papers that they complete before their assessments because it turns understanding into application,” he said.“And what typically happens in VCE is students are juggling a lot, and they don’t allocate their time effectively. So time management is essential, and making sure they have a fixed methodology of how to apply themselves to study.”Language and performance examinations, including dance and theatre, will kick off the end-of-year exams for VCE students from October 5.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. 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