What is an Edutest scholarship exam, how hard is the test and should your child prepare?

If you have applied for your child to sit a scholarship or are planning to so, you may be advised that it will be an Edutest scholarship exam. Edutest provides scholarship tests to around 180 schools across Australia (Sydney Morning Herald, 2018). There are significant financial rewards as parents can save $14,748 each year from a 50% fee remission scholarship to over $30,000 with a 100% scholarship each year.

However, one of the major hurdles in getting a scholarship is the dreaded private school scholarship exam.

So what is an Edutest scholarship test and more importantly, how do you prepare your child for it?

Edutest is one of the 3 major test setters in Australia along with ACER and Academic Assessment Services (aka AAS and formerly known as Robert Allwell & Associates).

An Edutest scholarship test for Year 7 entry generally has 5 parts being verbal reasoning (30 minutes), numerical reasoning (30 minutes), reading comprehension (30 minutes), mathematics (30 minutes) and written expression (15 minutes). Each of these test parts will be explained in more detail below (time, format, what it tests exactly).

How hard is an Edutest scholarship exam?

Like most scholarship exams, Edutest scholarship exams are difficult because they test things that your child DOESN'T learn at school. Reasoning and problem solving feature heavily for verbal and numerical reasoning.

However, anecdotal evidence from our past students who have done Edutest, ACER and Academic Assessment Services exams during the February - March testing period have found Edutest to be the 'easier' or more 'straightforward' of the exams. Especially for mathematics where they have year-level appropriate mathematics questions.

However, this doesn't mean it is an easy test as there is the problem of the very short time limit – usually 60 seconds to complete a multiple-choice question and 15 minutes to write a full-length essay.

As a guide, your child should be performing 1-2 grades above their current grade in both Maths and English. This means an A to A+ in order to be considered baseline competitive as candidates who sit the exam are most likely to be at that level already.

Edutest scholarship exams are even harder in selection compared to their exams for selective schools (Edutest also produce the Victorian Selective Schools Test that is held in June each year). This is because a scholarship may provide 1-3 spots a year while selective schools often have 225 spots or more.

Should you prepare? Even though Edutest representatives say that it doesn't make a difference?

Our short answer is "Yes". Not because we work in test preparation but because it makes sense to prepare. It is an exam afterall.

Fiona Sherry, the Edutest operations manager says that “the tests aren’t curriculum based” but also agrees that "a practice test may be useful" (Sydney Morning Herald, 2018).

We believe the reason why exam companies discourage preparation is because they want their exam to select students fairly, however, in the real world, people do prepare and students who do prepare can get an advantage. I have personally seen instances where naturally gifted students missed out to someone who was prepared because they had poor exam technique.

Another reason why we believe companies discourage preparation is because it isn't good practice to be seen encouraging students to be competitive and to engage in coaching that stresses students out.

However, if parents take this advice and their child doesn't prepare at all, they're at a disadvantage because they're competing with students who did prepare.

The thing with preparation is that it can be done in a sensible way - preparing early and making it part of a regular habit is a way of preparation that doesn't cause unnecessary stress and can be effective.

It would be unfair to put your child into the Edutest exam without preparation. It is a time-driven exam and totally different from what they get at school.

Get them help so they go into the test knowing what to do and how to do their best.

What’s in an Edutest scholarship Year 7 exam – test format, number of questions and time limit?

An Edutest year 7 scholarship exam has 5 parts - 4 parts are multiple-choice questions and 1 part is an essay. This is the general structure although schools can customise for their own needs.

Additionally, the Edutest test format has 2 ability tests (these are about thinking and problem solving), while their test for reading comprehension, mathematics and written expression are achievement based (i.e. more based around what you get taught at school). This differs from other exam providers like ACER where mathematics is heavy on the reasoning side rather than what your child learns at school.

The 5 parts along with their description (including time limits and estimated number of questions per test *) are shown below:

﹡ The number of questions and time limit have been estimated from the Edutest website and other publicly available information. Please note that the authoritative body can change the number of questions and time limits from year to year so please refer to their websites for the most up to date information. Time per question is calculated by taking the time limit divided by number of questions.

﹡﹡ Calculated as the identified cost of private school tuition fees of $36,870 per year for inner suburb of capital city multiplied by 50%.

As you'll see, the scholarship test revolves heavily around thinking skills rather than curriculum – this means you’ll need test preparation that teaches logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is unfamiliar to many parents but it can be taught and is a study area under ‘logic’ a branch of study under philosophy. Our courses and test questions are developed by one of our exam experts who majored in philosophy and studied logic reasoning from a logic professor at the renowned University of Melbourne.

Your child needs support and expert programs designed around building skills in reasoning that they don’t teach you at school. These are the skills that will help your child answer those hard questions they get the high marks for. Most children can answer the easier questions but it’s the harder questions that help your child get selected for a scholarship.

How Do You Prepare Your Kid For the Edutest Scholarship Test?

The savings for a scholarship can be more than $44,244 over 6 years from Grade 7 – 12, the stakes are high because of the financial reward and so is the competition. Many children commonly put in 168+ hours of preparation 6 months ahead of test date.

Your child doesn't need to do years and years of preparation to be competitive. They just need to do targeted and 'smart' test preparation. That's test preparation that's effective.

So how can your child prepare?

The first step is to do sample question papers and to figure out what areas your child needs to work on.

Edutest does produce a range of practice questions here that can be purchased on the Edutest website.

However, according to their website, the practice tests that Edutest provides are:

• not designed to be too difficult for students to complete. Most students get between 75 to 100% of practice test questions correct.
• not designed to be used as a coaching tool.
• not intended to duplicate the scholarship material.

This means that in order to properly prepare for your test, you need practice questions that are designed at a scholarship level (hard questions) + coaching. Exam Success provides both through our teaching test bank - under test papers.

Practicing on questions that are difficult like the scholarship exam and knowing how to answer the question and similar questions is the key to being fully prepared. Having a strategy and process on how to answer questions is crucial for success.

We have found that there are a limited number of ways you can test reasoning and have created our own set of questions with detailed solutions that explain, step-by-step how your child can get the answer correct.

These have been used by students to prepare for an Edutest exam and successfully gain a scholarship.

You can sign up for the teaching test bank (under test papers) here.

When we do private tuition, the process we use to help students gain a scholarship involves just 5 steps!

For Edutest verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, reading and mathematics:

1. Do a practice test disregarding the time limit. Focus on getting the question right and find out what your score is in the end.
2. For any question you didn’t get correct, figure out what should be the correct answer (and check it with your answer key).
3. For those same questions, come up with strategies so that when you’re faced with a similar question next time, you’ll be able to answer it. Hone your strategy over time so that you reduce the number of steps it takes to get to the answer (and so that you can answer the question more quickly).
4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 until you get a score of 95-100%. Each time you repeat it, if done properly, your child should be seeing a higher score in their practice test.
5. Then do practice tests within the time limit. What you’ll find is that working in a time limit is easier, once you have a process to answering various questions correctly.

While they look like 5 easy steps, going through each step does time a long time if done properly and coming up with strategies takes time. The strategy that has the least step is the quickest way there but it requires clear thought and understanding around logical links. You can develop these strategies yourself, or you can do our courses where these strategies are provided.

Written Expression is a bit trickier as there are so many ways where your writing can lose marks (we’ve identified 52!).

Based on our experience helping students get scholarships, we’ve found that students improve dramatically and quickly through targeted feedback. Writing improves quickly when you have experts providing feedback. Your child shouldn’t have to sit in class and learn grammar rules, but rather, they should:

1. Write their essay
2. Get customized feedback.
3. Repeat steps 1-2 again. Using the feedback, overtime, students see an improvement in their essays. They stop making the same mistakes and their writing is better.

A scholarship is much sought after – it provides parents and children with access to the most prestigious and top schools at a reduced price (savings usually $40,000 over 6 years). It is a lifetime opportunity that provides your child with endless benefits.

Here's test preparation designed for your child's success