I got a 97 atar, I work a McJob and I completely disagree with you. HSC marks don't mean a single thing in the real world because there are way to many Uni grads who can shit on hsc grads in terms of 'skills'. Also the atar only measures how good you were. If you did physics, chem, mx2 and eng adv, none of those subjects are useful in the real world unless you go to uni. If you did society and culture, english extension 2, visual arts and music, in those fields marks don't matter, it's all about social skills. Try asking any hsc grads if the 'skills' they learnt were not solely for the purpose of getting into uni (or maybe also for self interests) and were useless jobwise.