A Practical Prep Timeline for Selective Entry Exams

Start with a baseline, not a study plan

The most common preparation mistake is starting with a schedule instead of a diagnosis. Before deciding what to work on, have your child sit one full timed test in each subject and treat the result as information, not a verdict.

You're looking for the pattern underneath the score: is it accuracy, or speed? Is one subject dragging the rest? Does performance fall off in the last ten minutes? Each of those has a different fix, and guessing wrong costs months.

Six months out: build foundations, untimed

• Prioritise accuracy over speedSpeed built on shaky reasoning collapses under exam pressure. Let your child take as long as they need to get questions right first.
• Work the weakest subject mostImprovement is cheapest where the gap is largest — usually verbal or quantitative reasoning, since neither is taught directly at school.
• Build a reading habitReading comprehension improves slowly and can't be crammed. Unfamiliar, demanding non-fiction does more than extra practice papers at this stage.
• Review every wrong answer properlyA question your child gets wrong and then understands is worth more than ten they get right. Reviewing matters more than volume.

Three months out: introduce time pressure

• Move to timed single sectionsPractise one section at its real time limit rather than full exams — it's less draining and isolates pacing problems.
• Teach a skipping strategyKnowing when to abandon a question and come back is a learnable skill, and often worth more marks than any content gain at this stage.
• Track by subject, not by totalA flat overall score can hide one subject improving while another slides.

One month out: full exam-condition rehearsals

• Run the full exam, in order, with real breaksStamina is a distinct skill. Many students lose marks in the final section purely from fatigue they've never practised through.
• Rehearse at the real time of dayVictoria's selective entry exam is typically held on a Saturday morning — practising then makes exam day feel routine.
• Fix logistics earlyConfirm the venue, travel time and what's permitted in the exam room now, so the final week has nothing administrative left in it.

The final week: taper

Athletes taper before competition, and exam preparation works the same way. The final week is for consolidating confidence, not adding capability.

• No new materialAnything learned this week is unlikely to stick, and discovering a weakness now only adds anxiety.
• Light, familiar review onlyShort sessions on question types your child already handles well.
• Protect sleepSleep in the two nights before the exam does more for reasoning under pressure than any additional practice test.

Signs you're pushing too hard

Preparation has a point of diminishing returns, and it arrives earlier than most parents expect. Watch for practice scores that plateau then decline, growing reluctance to sit down at all, or a child who reads a question and freezes rather than attempts it.

All three usually mean load, not ability. Cutting back for a week and returning to shorter, untimed sessions almost always recovers more marks than pressing on would have.