This paper investigates the average block error rate (BLER) performance of star 16QAM schemes considering the effective peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) criterion called a cubic metric (CM) for uplink discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-precoded orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). We clarify the best ring amplitude ratio for the (4, 12) and (8, 8) star 16QAM schemes from the viewpoint of the required average signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) that satisfy the target average BLER based on link-level simulations. We also validate the agreement of the best ring amplitude ratios with those maximizing the mutual information based throughput. Then, employing the best ring amplitude ratios for the respective coding rates of the turbo code, we show that (8, 8) star 16QAM achieves better average BLER performance compared to that for (4, 12) star 16QAM. Moreover, we show the effectiveness of the (8, 8) star 16QAM scheme compared to square 16QAM in terms of the required average received SNR considering the CM when the coding rate is low such as 1/3 for uplink DFT-precoded OFDMA.