10 Selective Entry Prep Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Avoid Them)

The most common selective entry prep mistakes are: starting too late, practising only strengths, leaving writing until last, practising the wrong format, doing papers without reviewing them, never practising under time, relying on tutoring alone, sacrificing sleep and exercise, comparing scores with other children, and leaving exam-day logistics to chance. Each is easy to avoid once you know it.

The advice applies to the VIC selective entry exam (Year 8, for Year 9 entry) and the NSW selective test (Year 6, for Year 7 entry). Use it as a checklist, whether you are just starting or well into preparation.

Mistake 1: Starting Too Late

What the Mistake Is

Many parents assume a few weeks or a couple of months of practice will be enough to prepare their child for the selective entry exam. They underestimate the breadth of content, the depth of reasoning skills required, and the time it takes to build genuine exam readiness.

Why It's Costly

In Victoria, the exam covers Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning, Reading and Verbal Reasoning, and Writing. In NSW, it covers Reading, Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skills and Writing. Each part needs not just knowledge but the ability to apply it under time pressure. Skills like pattern recognition, inference, and logical deduction take months of consistent practice to develop. Cramming in the final weeks leads to surface-level familiarity rather than real skill.

How to Avoid It

Aim to begin structured preparation six to twelve months before exam day. This doesn't mean intensive daily sessions from day one — it means gradually building a routine that covers all exam areas with enough time to identify weaknesses, address them, and verify improvement through practice tests.

Action step: Map out the months between now and the exam date. Block out school holidays, busy periods, and any breaks. Then work backwards to build a realistic weekly schedule. Our step-by-step preparation guide provides a detailed timeline you can adapt to your family's situation.

Mistake 2: Focusing Only on Strengths

What the Mistake Is

It's natural to gravitate towards subjects your child enjoys and performs well in. If they love maths, it feels productive to do more maths. But selective entry preparation that leans heavily on strong areas while neglecting weaker ones is a common trap.

Why It's Costly

Places are decided on an overall result that combines every part of the exam. In NSW, the four parts are weighted equally at 25% each. A very strong maths result cannot fully make up for a weak reading or writing result, so a weak area usually offers the most room to gain marks.

How to Avoid It

Start with a diagnostic practice test to establish a baseline across all sections. Then allocate preparation time proportionally — more time on weaker areas, maintenance practice on stronger ones. Check in every few weeks with another practice test to see whether the gap is closing.

Action step: Have your child complete a full-length practice exam and record their scores by section. Identify the two weakest areas and give them more than half of the weekly practice time. For targeted strategies, see our guides on verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and reading comprehension.

Mistake 3: Ignoring the Writing Component

What the Mistake Is

Both exams include writing: two tasks in 40 minutes in Victoria, and one task in 30 minutes in NSW, where it is worth 25% of the result. Even so, many families treat writing as an afterthought, something to "get to later".

Why It's Costly

Writing is the one section of the exam that is not multiple choice. It requires a different skill set: the ability to plan, structure, and produce a coherent piece of writing under time pressure. Students who have spent all their preparation time on multiple-choice practice often freeze when faced with a blank page and a prompt, and writing improves slowly, so it cannot be fixed in the last fortnight.

How to Avoid It

Build regular writing practice into the weekly schedule from the start. Use a variety of prompts (persuasive, imaginative and informative) and practise planning in the first few minutes. Time each piece to match the real exam: about 20 minutes per task for Victoria, or 30 minutes for NSW. Then review it for structure, clarity and ideas.

Action step: Set a weekly writing exercise using a practice prompt. After each piece, review it together and focus on one improvement area at a time — first structure, then vocabulary, then persuasive technique. EduSpark does not mark writing, so a teacher, tutor or parent reading the work is valuable here. For NSW, see our selective writing tips.

Mistake 4: Not Understanding the Exam Format

What the Mistake Is

Some parents prepare their child using generic maths worksheets, comprehension passages from school, or outdated resources without understanding how the actual exam works. The format, timing, question styles, and delivery method of the selective entry exam are specific — and they differ between states.

Why It's Costly

In Victoria, the exam is set by ACER in three timed parts, and students record answers in an answer booklet. The format changed for the June 2026 exam, so older books and past-paper PDFs describe a test that no longer exists. In NSW, the Year 7 test is on computer: students answer on screen and manage time with an on-screen timer, and it includes a Thinking Skills test. A child who meets the conditions for the first time on the day spends exam time adapting instead of answering.

How to Avoid It

Check the current format for your exam before preparation begins: the parts, the time for each, the question types and how answers are given. Then ensure your practice materials mirror these conditions as closely as possible.

Action step: Read the official information for your exam (ACER for Victoria, the NSW Department of Education for NSW), then see our VIC exam format guide or NSW selective test guide. For NSW, make sure your child sits several full practice tests on a computer before the day.

Mistake 5: Poor Practice Test Strategy

What the Mistake Is

Some families treat practice tests as a numbers game — the more tests completed, the better prepared the child must be. They race through paper after paper without spending adequate time reviewing results, understanding mistakes, or adjusting the study plan based on what the data reveals.

Why It's Costly

Completing ten practice tests without reviewing the results is less effective than completing three tests with thorough analysis after each one. Without review, your child will keep making the same mistakes. They might even reinforce bad habits — guessing patterns, skipping certain question types, or rushing through sections they find boring. The practice test becomes a wasted opportunity.

How to Avoid It

Follow the test-analyse-study-retest cycle. After every practice test, sit down with your child and go through every incorrect answer. Group errors by topic. Identify whether mistakes were due to knowledge gaps, careless errors, or time pressure. Then spend the next few study sessions targeting those specific areas before taking the next test.

Action step: After your child's next practice test, block out 30–45 minutes to review the results together. Use our guide to analysing practice test results to structure the review and build a focused study plan from the findings.

Mistake 6: Neglecting Time Management Skills

What the Mistake Is

Many students can answer selective entry questions correctly — when given enough time. The problem is that the exam doesn't give enough time. Parents who focus entirely on accuracy without building speed are preparing their child for a test that doesn't exist.

Why It's Costly

In NSW, Mathematical Reasoning allows a little over a minute per question and Thinking Skills about a minute. Students who haven't practised under timed conditions regularly run out of time, leaving easy questions unanswered at the end of a section. Those unanswered questions are guaranteed zero marks — whereas even a quick educated guess has a chance of being correct. Time management is not a nice-to-have; it is a core exam skill.

How to Avoid It

From the midpoint of preparation onwards, every practice session should include a timed component. Start with generous time limits and gradually tighten them to match real exam conditions. Teach your child the skip-and-return strategy: if a question is taking more than 90 seconds, mark a best guess, flag it, and move on. They can return to flagged questions if time permits.

Action step: Time your child on a single section (not a full exam) and note how many questions they complete versus how many remain unanswered. If they consistently leave questions blank, practise the skip strategy in the next three sessions. For detailed mathematics timing techniques, see our mathematics preparation guide.

Mistake 7: Over-Relying on Tutoring

What the Mistake Is

Many parents default to hiring a private tutor or enrolling in a coaching college as their primary (or only) preparation strategy. The assumption is that a tutor will handle everything — diagnosis, content delivery, practice, and exam readiness — and the parent's role is simply to pay and transport.

Why It's Costly

Weekly tutoring over six to twelve months adds up to thousands of dollars. The bigger issue is that tutoring alone doesn't build the independent problem-solving skills the exam tests. A child who relies on a tutor to explain every question hasn't developed the ability to work through unfamiliar problems on their own — which is exactly what the exam requires.

How to Avoid It

Use tutoring strategically rather than as a default. A tutor can be valuable for diagnosing specific gaps, explaining difficult concepts, and providing accountability — but the bulk of preparation should be independent practice. Online practice with instant marking and explanations covers much of the routine practice for a fraction of the cost of weekly lessons (see selective tutoring costs).

Action step: Audit your current preparation spend. If tutoring is the largest line item, consider whether a combination of a practice platform for daily work plus occasional tutoring for specific problem areas would be more effective and affordable. See our comparison of free and paid practice resources to evaluate your options.

Mistake 8: Ignoring Health and Wellbeing

What the Mistake Is

In the push to maximise preparation, some families sacrifice sleep, physical activity, social time, and downtime. The child's schedule becomes wall-to-wall study — before school, after school, weekends, and holidays. Parents sometimes feel that any time not spent studying is time wasted.

Why It's Costly

Lack of sleep hurts attention, memory and problem-solving, which are exactly the skills the exam tests. A child who is exhausted, stressed, or burnt out will perform worse on exam day than a well-rested child who studied less. Burnout also leads to diminishing returns during preparation — a tired child spending two hours studying retains less than a rested child spending one hour.

How to Avoid It

Protect sleep, exercise, and free time as non-negotiable parts of the weekly schedule. Australia's 24-hour movement guidelines recommend 9 to 11 hours of sleep a night for children aged 5 to 13, 8 to 10 hours for 14 to 17 year olds, and at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day. Keep one day a week free of exam preparation. These aren't luxuries — they are performance strategies.

Action step: Review your child's current weekly schedule. If study sessions are happening after 8pm, if weekends are entirely consumed by preparation, or if your child has stopped their regular sport or social activities, it's time to recalibrate. Our parent's guide to selective entry preparation includes advice on building a sustainable routine that protects wellbeing while maintaining progress.

Mistake 9: Using Unrealistic Benchmarks

What the Mistake Is

Parents often compare their child's practice scores to the scores of other children, to online forum claims, or to the reported cutoff scores from previous years. They set targets based on what "top students" allegedly score rather than on their own child's starting point and rate of improvement.

Why It's Costly

Every child starts from a different baseline. A student who improves from the 50th percentile to the 75th percentile in six months has made excellent progress, but they might feel discouraged if they're comparing themselves to a peer who started at the 85th percentile. Unrealistic benchmarks create anxiety, erode motivation, and can lead families to make poor decisions — like abandoning a working study plan because progress doesn't look fast enough relative to someone else's claimed results. Online forums are particularly unreliable: parents tend to share only their child's best scores, creating a distorted picture of what is normal.

How to Avoid It

Measure progress against your child's own baseline, not against other students. Track scores over time and look for a consistent upward trend. Celebrate improvement in weak areas even if the absolute score is still below where you'd like it to be. Set process goals ("complete three timed verbal reasoning sections this week") alongside outcome goals ("improve verbal reasoning score by 5% next test").

Action step: Create a simple spreadsheet or use your practice platform's tracking feature to record scores after each practice test. Plot the trend over time. Share progress with your child in terms of their own improvement, not rankings.

Mistake 10: Not Preparing Exam Day Logistics

What the Mistake Is

All the preparation in the world can be undermined by a chaotic exam morning. Parents who focus entirely on academic readiness and forget about the practical logistics of exam day create unnecessary stress at the worst possible time.

Why It's Costly

Arriving late, forgetting required identification, not knowing where the test centre is, skipping breakfast, or wearing uncomfortable clothing are all preventable problems — but each one increases anxiety and takes your child out of the calm, focused mindset they need to perform their best. Exam anxiety is cumulative: a stressful morning compounds into a stressed first section, which compounds into panic when the timer starts. The academic preparation was there, but the conditions for accessing it were not.

How to Avoid It

Treat exam day logistics as part of the preparation plan, not an afterthought. In the week before the exam, confirm the test centre location and do a trial run of the journey at the same time of day. Prepare a checklist of everything your child needs to bring; the admission ticket and exam rules say what is and isn't allowed. Plan breakfast, clothing, and a calming morning routine. On the day, arrive at least 30 minutes early.

Action step: One week before the exam, create a detailed checklist covering: the admission ticket, permitted items, travel route and parking, breakfast plan, and a simple morning routine that avoids rushing. Run through the checklist the night before so everything is ready to go.

Bringing It All Together

The selective entry exam is competitive, but the format is published and the content areas are defined. The skills being tested — reasoning, comprehension, mathematical problem-solving, and written communication — can all be developed with the right approach and enough time. The families who achieve the best outcomes are not necessarily those who spend the most money or log the most hours. They are the ones who prepare steadily, keep a balance, and avoid the pitfalls above.

Here is a summary of the ten mistakes and their fixes:

• Starting too late — begin six to twelve months ahead
• Focusing only on strengths — allocate more time to weaker sections
• Ignoring writing — practise timed writing weekly
• Not understanding the format — research the exact exam structure for your state
• Poor practice test strategy — review every mistake before taking the next test
• Neglecting time management — practise under timed conditions and learn the skip strategy
• Over-relying on tutoring — combine targeted tutoring with an affordable practice platform
• Ignoring wellbeing — protect sleep, exercise, and downtime
• Unrealistic benchmarks — measure against your child's own baseline
• Unprepared logistics — plan the exam morning in advance

Start with a Baseline

A timed baseline paper shows which of these mistakes matter most for your family. The VIC and NSW sample questions need no signup, and Paper 1 in every EduSpark subject is free with an account (no card needed), marked instantly with an explanation for every answer.