Months ago, in an obscure newsletter by Roger Page, the principal of Nossal High School, we learned the Selective Entry exam was changing. For years provided by EduTest, the Selective Schools have instead contracted ACER to provide the exam for the foreseeable future.
Here is an overview of what to expect for the July 15 2023 exam:
The new examination will be approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes long.
There will be four multiple-choice sections:
There will be a 20-minute break after ‘Reasoning – Mathematics’ and a 5-minute break after ‘General Ability – Quantitative’.
Following this, there will be a Writing section after the final 5-minute break comprising two tasks over 40 minutes.
While it is unclear what precisely the two Writing tasks will comprise, it is plausible it will involve one persuasive essay and one creative piece.
However, in other exams in the ACER catalogue (i.e. the GAMSAT), the two Writing tasks are usually not divided along persuasive / creative lines. In the GAMSAT, in particular, ACER stipulates two prompts (canonically labelled Task A and Task B), which usually are politically and interpersonally-oriented respectively (i.e. Democracy for Task A; Love for Task B). However, ACER does not mandate any particular writing style.
Our safest recommendation here is to prepare for both persuasive and creative writing styles, while walking into the exam prepared for anything.
For comparison, the exam was previously a 2.5 hour exam comprising four multiple-choice sections (Verbal Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Mathematics, and Reading Comprehension) and a single writing section (Persuasive or Creative).
The exam will be held on Saturday, July 15 2023, across different venues across Melbourne. Parents will be notified via email about their venue allocation two weeks before the exam.
Other dates to keep in mind:
While it is unlikely that ACER will disclose the venues before June 27, the following venues have been known to be used by ACER in other exams:
All applications for the 2023 Victorian Selective Entry Examination are submitted online at: https://vic.registration.selectiveentry.acer.org/
Applying for the exam incurs a $160 fee, with late applications (June 3-16) incurring a $195 fee instead.
However, the fee is waived if ACER is provided with evidence of low-income status, or if the family identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (not requiring evidence).
For low-income families, simply submit a Centrelink Customer Reference Number (CRN) and primary cardholder name in the application. ACER will independently verify eligibility with Centrelink, then waive the fee.
If with a high degree of certainty you suspect you / your child will sit the exam, we suggest registering as soon as you are able to. Notwithstanding avoiding incurring late fees, the very act of applying for the exam can be the first psychological step towards readying yourself for the exam.
It is unclear how similar the new exam will be to the old one.
From a broad structural perspective, the subject areas generally appear to resemble the old exam:
However, certainly, the ACER exam will present with idiosyncrasies that will separate it from the EduTest exam. Using the rest of the ACER exam catalogue as a point of reference, there is an additional emphasis on testing psychometric skills: pattern recognition, visuo-spatial analysis, deductive reasoning, amongst others. Furthermore, it is not unusual for ACER to adjust the external appearance of the questions liberally from year-to-year.
The basic consequence of this fact is that this exam will essentially further separate two kinds of learners:
While, at Hatchery, we believe approach 1 was never a particularly good way to approach this type of exam, and strongly encourage skills-first development, it is doubly perilous to proceed like Learner 1 given the uncertainty around this exam and its new custodian, ACER.
ACER explicitly states on their website:
There is no need for your child to practice or revise for the exam.
At its core, ACER and the Selective Schools are not testing and are unconcerned with mastery of content. The student’s grasp of simultaneous equations, for instance, is only useful insofar as it represents competency in a core skill area. It is merely a signal.
Essentially, the schools are asking, in a coded fashion: “Is Student X capable of withstanding the (moderate) rigours of 3-4 years at our institution?”
This exam is simply the imperfect vehicle by which they address the question.
As a principle, every single way of engaging with the Selective Entry examination has been done to good and bad effect:
Therefore, we must accept that there is an aspect of this psychometric examination that is not rooted in traditional content, and does not lend itself to traditional ways of learning. Indeed, there is not a strong correlation between (a) time spent studying and (b) outcomes - at least, not as significantly as other kinds of exams.
Returning, then, to ACER’s perspective, they explicitly instruct you not to study for this exam, because variations in the amount of study performed and differential access to multi-thousand-dollar tutoring academies undermine their ability to equitably assess student competency.
This is a noble rationale, and one, in principle, we agree with.
However, from a pragmatic perspective, there are large subpopulations of families who, for one reason or another, have engaged their child in sustained preparation regimens for years - private tutors, tutoring academies and preparation courses, sometimes simultaneously. While, certainly, a student can perform well without preparation, the decision to study is fundamentally a risk-reward proposition only a parent can answer for their family.
As an aside, Hatchery was birthed from a frustration with the expensive and inefficient modes of preparation we feel have infected the Selective Entry exam, and skewed the exam in the favour of wealthy parents with the facility to drive weekly to a sometimes-distant tutoring centre. If you have found this guide useful, and would like to know a little more about us, feel free to check us out.
While we’ve attempted to distil the key pieces of information, you can find all the details in ACER’s candidate support booklet.