How To Get Into Melbourne High, Mac.Robertson, Nossal or Suzanne Cory

if you want to get into melbour high mcro nosul or Susanne Corey then in this video I'm going to share all the key information you need to know about how the admissions process works for entry into these schools and just before we get into that a quick bit about me why do I know about this process and it's because I went through it myself so when I was in year seven I applied for admission into the selective schools the first year I wasn't successful and it was only the second year when I reapplied again that

I ultimately got accepted into melin high so I've been through the process myself over last year I've helped more than 500 students prepare for the selective entry admissions exams and so I've got a good understanding of how the process works now how it's changed over the last few years and what you can do to give you or your child an edge in that process as well and so really in Victoria there's four key selective entry schools there's mcrob Melbourne High nosel and suzan Corey these are the ones which you'll be applying for when you sit

The Selective entry admissions exam now really the reason why these schools are so popular is they have some of the highest median atar scores in the state so Melbourne High for example last year had a median atar score of 94.7 which what that means is that the average student at the school scores a 958 which means the average student is in the top 5% of students in the state so obviously that's significantly higher than most public schools even most private schools these selective schools are generally in the top 5 to 10 schools in the state

mcrob as well similar has a median at of 95 which again again means the average student of mcrob is in about the top 5% of students in the state nosul median atar is 93 suzan Corey median atar is just below 92 as well and so really the benefit of going to these schools is that the median atar of these schools is significantly higher than in most schools for example before I got into Melbourne High the median atar the school that I was at was about 78 and so at the time I was aiming for an

ater around 8085 cuz I thought I was a little bit above average I'll aim for about 808 that was considered really quite impressive at the school I was at but once I got into mbin high then I bumped up my aim started aiming for about 95 and ultimately I ended up getting an atar just below 98 of 97.65% these schools is that they have some of the lowest admissions fees out of any school so these here are the top 10 schools from last year ranked by median atar and you can see four of the selective

Schools they're all there in the top 10 and their yearly fees are essentially free so there's a voluntary contribution of $500 to $1,000 or you you don't have to pay it compared to other schools in the top 10 Cora halb BAC they're 35 now a lot of these schools are going to be upping their fees to more than $40,000 every single year and so you can see why these schools are so popular they have really high median atar scores just as high or higher than most of the best private schools and yet their fees are

essentially free now the other key thing is it really does give your child the best chance or gives you the best chance of getting into top degrees so really the reason why AAR scores even matter is because in Australia this is the number one thing that universities look for to determine what degrees you can get into so if you want to get into medicine law engineering Commerce biom medicine computer science all these top degrees they don't really look at anything else mainly they just look at your atar score so for example for me getting into

to Melbourne High getting an atar just below 98 allowed me to get accepted into law but then I had a lot of friends who got into medicine who got into Commerce engineering computer science all these top degrees because they had a high atar because they attended one of these schools and so we kind of know well why are these schools so popular but then the question is how does he admissions process actually work for entry into these schools and the key thing is Melman high mcrob nosul and Suzanne Cory they only accept new students from

year 9 and so you can't study at these schools in year seven or year eight only from year 9 can you actually start studying at these schools the way that it works is if you want to start studying at them in year 9 your child or you have to sit an entrance exam in about halfway through year eight so it's normally in June or July of year 8 where you'll sit this exam if you do well then that will allow you to gain admission into these schools for the year after now typically at least 4

to 5,000 students apply every single year what we saw last year is that it looks like there was significantly more students than that back when I set the exam which was about 13 14 15 years ago I think now all the exam were held in the one venue so was all at the one venue every single student could fit in the one venue last year there was about four or five venues and so we don't know the exact number of students that apply it was about 4 or 5,000 when I sat it and everyone was

in the one venue I think it's probably significantly more than that now some people have been saying it's probably closer to 10,000 which means the success rate the percentage of students who sit the exam and succeed is probably more about 10 to 15% so the schools have released more places which generally means there's probably more students applying there's slightly more places available which means I'd probably say the most accurate indication is probably about a 10 to 15% chance of success from passing this exam now for most students the key thing is that the only thing

the schools look at is how you do on the exam they don't really actually look at other things for example school reports co-curricular achievements leadership capabilities for 85% of the places into these schools it just comes down to the exam performance and so if your child does well on the exam they'll get accepted into one of these schools but if they don't do well on the exam or they haven't prepared properly for the exam then they're not going to be able to get into one of these schools so that's for 85% of places for the

other 15% of places they do consider other things 5% are what's called principles discretion places which means your child's just missed out their score was just not high enough and so they invite them in for an interview your child will have to submit an application their school report other supporting documents as well to try and gain admission through that pathway otherwise for about 10% of students they can get in through the equity consideration pathway which means if there was some sort of inequity or disadvantage in the application process for you or you came from a

disadvantage background then you can potentially apply through this pathway here um and then in that case they do look at other factors as well they do look at school reports other co-curricular achievements they look for other supporting documents so overall there is some students who get in where they do consider those other things but for 85% of the places which is the most direct the most in your control way of gaining admission into these schools they just look at the exam and so really the key thing is if you want to maximize your child's chances

of getting into these schools you want to be sitting the exam and you want to be doing really well on that exam now in terms of when is the exam like I mentioned the selective entry exam is in about June or July of year eight so students will sit in year eight hoping to gain admission for year 9 the only key thing to consider is for a lot of students that's not the first exam that they've set because ultimately The Selective Schools they're probably four of the the most prestigious the most elite high schools here

in Victoria but there is other opportunities available for you which if your child's a little bit younger if they're in year four or the year five or the year six or year seven or you're in those year levels now then there's other opportunities that it's worth exploring before the selective entry high schools the reason for that is best case it gives you more opportunities which you can consider or think about taking advantage of or if not it just gives you exam practice and exam taking preparation before the selective entry exam and so I'll quickly go

through this slide here you're welcome to have a look at it in your own time as well but there's a few other opportunities available for you so one thing is the top private schools yes we saw here that a lot of them have very high fees but they do have high atar scores and you can actually sit to apply to get scholarships into these schools so for example in year five schools like baller at Clarendon College halry St Leonard's Brian grar you can sit to try and get scholarships into these schools in year five in

year six there's a lot more so fentona Reon hunting Tower which is a big popular one St Catherine's cwell Westborn penley and endon you can sit to get scholarships into all of these schools in early in year six and then at the end of year six there's the opportunity to get into seal programs or accelerated learning programs for example there's seal programs at Boren High there's about 40 other schools that have seal programs alamander college has the aage program saltwater P9 has the enrichment program these are exams that you can sit for at the end

of year six so for a lot of people selective entry schools are the long-term goal they want to get their child into a selective Entry School but what I'd say is it's worth if your child's in one of these year levels here sitting these exams beforehand best case they might get a scholarship they might get into one of these seal or enrichment programs which is really good and that's going to set them up pretty well as well it's nice to have that already under your belt you might decide to stick with one of these schools

or you might still apply for selector entry schools but even if your child isn't successful with any of these schools or even if you're not sure if they even want to do any of these schools the students who have practice sitting these exams which these exams are very similar to The Selective entry exam they have a big Advantage I know quite a few people last year who they were sitting these exams as they were preparing for the selective entry exam number one they felt more confident with their test taking skills but number two I know

quite a few of them who got 50% scholarships 75% scholarships to Big private schools where they would save 10 20 30,000 a year some of them took them some of them didn't and they still tried to get into a selective School but those students had a big Advantage when preparing for Selective entry schools as well so that's one thing I would consider try and sit for these exams if your child's a little bit earlier it'll give them practice and it'll give them more opportunities as well now in terms of how the selector entry exam specifically

works the key thing with this exam is it is quite similar to all those other exams and all of the exams exams as a whole they are designed to test ability rather than achievement and what that means is yes there will be some things that your child will have learned at school on on the exam for example if your child is a strong writer they're a strong reader they have strong basic math skills that will definitely help them on the exam but the exam is more of an aptitude test which means it's designed to measure

problem solving reasoning creative thinking comprehension interpretation and applying known Concepts to situations and so there is a lot of questions on this exam which your child would not have seen before and will require its own specialist preparation and so very often what happens is students come to this exam they're say I'm getting top grades at school I'm right at the top of my class I'm just going to set this exam and I'm just going to do really well because I'm a high achieving student I've got a high IQ and that doesn't normally work too well

just because there specifics of this exam which if you haven't seen before you're naturally going to underperform compared to students who prepared for it for a period of time and so the selective entry exam but also all the other scholarship seal enrichment program exams they are a little bit different to what you'll do at school and so it is worthwhile preparing specifically for these exams for a period of time to make sure that your child has the test taking skills they know all the major types of questions that come up on these exams year after

year and they're equipped to prepare for them even the company that actually creates the exam themselves they say the skills that are tested on this exam they can be developed over time through exposure to a culture of learning by being immersed in a variety of age appropriate and engaging stimuli by being encouraged to think deeply and freely discuss their learning so even though it is more of an aptitude test it's definitely something you can prepare for you can become very good at personally for me the first time I sat the exam I didn't actually do

that well and I wasn't able to gain admission into a selective school the next year though I prepared quite differently and I differentiated myself from the way most students prepared for this exam and I did really quite well on the exam particularly one section which was a section called which was a math space section the first time I sat it I really didn't get a very good score second time I scored right in the top 10% which was as high as you could get and it really was just through prep operation and so it's definitely

a key thing if your child wants to Excel on this exam in terms of what the exam looks like this really is how it works so there's five different sections the exam all up takes 3 hours so it's a long exam this is the same thing with a lot of those other seal scholarship um enrichment program exams as well and that they are quite long and that's why it's important to get practice beforehand because what we normally see when students are sitting these exams for the first time their scores will really go down in the

section towards the end often writing is the last section and you can imagine if your child's already done 2 and 1/ half hours of exams then they have to write 40 minutes at the end the quality they're writing is significantly lower than normally would be and so it's definitely a skill just getting used to those long exams that you need to develop in yourself now in terms of what the exam looks like there's three english-based sections reading verbal and writing reading and writing are more so what you would see at school there is some differences

though so the reading comprehension the passages are ofering quite a lot more difficult than what what you normally do at school there's also now a lot of cartoons and images that you have to interpret which are a little bit different the writing is probably one of the most challenging sections because you've got 40 minutes you have to write two pieces generally it's one creative piece like one story and then it's one essay and so the good thing about this is learning to do well on this writing section of the exam it's quite a lot more

difficult than probably what you're doing at school but if you do prepare for this exam and you do do well on writing on this exam when you go back to school your child's grades are really going to improve because this is like a high stakes writing environment which can really accelerate their writing skills pretty quickly verbal reasoning then is kind of like an English IQ test to some extent so it's a little bit different to what you would have seen at school same thing with quantitative it's more of a maths or number based IQ test

and then maths is again assessing some of the core skills your child would have learned at school but the way they ask the questions on this exam is really quite different so it's not plain maths it's very applied and so it means that students who they're not used to the way they ask these questions often the students can think I just have no idea what these questions even ask me I don't understand the mathematical concept that's even being tested here and so it is something you do want to spend a bit of time familiarizing yourself

with making sure you understand how they ask the questions even for maths which you would think is more one of the easier ones so on the exam five sections generally you do need to do well in really all of them to get able to get accepted into one of these schools so the way they normally say it is students must reach an acceptable stand across all five sections so unfortunately you generally can't do really well in one of them and then poorly in the others or really well in four of them and poorly in one

you do need to be pretty strong across the board so it means your child needs to be strong in both English and math based sessions and this is a report card that your child will get after the selective entry exam so it will show all five sections it will show how they ranked compared to other students so you can see it looks a little bit similar to the napan report cards that you might receive and what we're generally seeing is you do need quite high scores to get into the selective entry schools what we generally

recommend is if you can get three sections in the top 10% of students so three sections where it's right up here in the top 10% that's going to give you a pretty good chance if the other two sections are probably in the top 20% so that's generally what you want to aim for three sections in the top 10% so for example this student here reading quantitative and writing was in the top 10% then they had two sections in the top 20% that's probably the minimum Baseline that I'd recommend aiming for if you want to get

accepted into one of these schools obviously it's better if you could have all five sections in the top 10% that would be ideal that would probably guarantee your place into one of these schools but at a minimum if you said what's the minimum I should be aiming for to give me a 90 95% chance of getting into one of these schools it's probably three scores in the top 10% two scores in the top 20% now the final thing is well we understand why these schools are popular how the admissions proc process works how the exam

is important what the exam requires and how it's assessed but when should we actually start preparing for the selective entry exam because we know it's important for 85% of the places it's the only factor that determines if your child will get into one of these schools but when should we actually start preparing for it and what should that preparation look like now this here is a bit of our recommended pathway for entrance into top Victorian high schools there's a few key things to say again you can spend some time pause the video have a look

at this in detail if would like but there's a few different stages to preparation so I'm going to start all the way with year four and then we'll move our way up from there so year four if you're child's in year four now this really is a good time to start learning about the process so learning how the exam Works what to expect from it but also just accelerating them beyond the curriculum at school because you can imagine the selective entry exam when they sit in year eight it's not just testing year eight knowledge often

they say it does but realistically there's a lot of questions on there that are significantly more difficult than what a year student would be doing at school and so in year four you don't have to worry specifically about the exam at that point and have them doing mock exams for example but it's worth thinking well they're in year four now can we boost them a little bit ahead of the curriculum can they start be doing end of year four questions start of year five questions so they're confident they're getting top grades in year four and

they're just pushing themselves a little bit beyond the curriculum that's probably what would recommend in year four in year five same thing again you want to be accelerating them further beyond the curriculum they're doing at school and it's also a good time where there's scholarship there's other opportunity exams that are available it's good to start sitting these there's probably only maybe 2 3 four a year that you would be able to sign up for but it's good to sit them just to start getting some test taking practice cuz there's quite a few people in the

program for example who if the selective entry exams their first real exam experience they're more likely to find it stressful to make silly mistakes to find the whole experience a bit overwhelming whereas if they've spent a few years sitting these exams even just one or two every single year by the time they get to year eight it's pretty relaxing they're used to these exams it's not a big deal and they're pretty confident going in there and doing well so year five good time to accelerate your child beyond the curriculum again and also start to see

a few of these exams in year six this really is a time where there's a lot of exams available scholarships seal enrichment programs I would recommend sitting a few here again just to boost your child's test taking skills but also it's a good way to push them beyond the curriculum again year 7even is really when you want to start thinking specifically about the selective exam and preparing for the specifics of this exam really at the start of your s that's when you want to click into gear and look at this exam in particular ideally up

at this point your child is pretty confident with tests because they've sat a few before and they're also ideally a little bit ahead of the school's curriculum if they're starting year seven and they're doing and they're pretty confident with Concepts that are kind of halfway through year seven end of year 7even maybe start of year eight that's going to obviously set them up with the best possible chance of success and so so then in year 7even that's really the time to focus specifically on the selective entry exam understanding these five sections understanding the types of

questions that come up on the exam year after year after year because there is a lot of questions that come up a lot and specifically tailoring their skills to this exam so that means sitting a lot of mock exams understanding all the questions that come up having strategies that can allow them to solve those questions in 30 seconds rather than 2 3 minutes which is what it's going to take most people CU timing is a big thing on this exam and that means they're going to then be ready halfway through year eight they're going to

have the test taking skills they're going to have the knowledge they're going to have the specific knowledge for the exam to Excel on the selective entry exam and so you can see this is kind of the ideal road map if your child is a little bit older that's okay they can start with wherever we suggested they were to start with on here but the key thing is from start of year seven that's when you want to think about specifically preparing for the selective entry exam before that it's really just about accelerating the Beyond what they're

currently doing at school and sitting any other exams to boost their exam taking skills overall and so that brings us to the end of this quick information video on how to help a child get into melbour high mcro nosul or Susan Cory hopefully that answered a lot of questions about how the process works there's just one more question which I know a lot of people have which I thought I'd quickly answer before we finish the video which is 4% rule this is something which a lot of people have heard about but they don't really understand

what it means and essentially what there is is there's a rule called the % rule where only a maximum of 4% of students from your child's current school can get accepted into one of these selective schools and what that means is if there's 100 students in your child's year level doesn't matter how many of them apply for these schools but only four of them can actually get into each one of these schools so four could get into melbour high four nosel four Suzanne Cory and four mcrob the reason why they have this rule is imagine

there's 100 students at your child's school they don't want 50 of them all getting into select entry schools if your child's year level was very High achieving because that would decimate your child's year level at that other school and they have a cap on how many students can get into these schools from each High School across the state so that is one thing to consider if your child's at a school which is very competitive that has a lot of high achieving students it will be harder for them to get into these schools whereas if they're

at a public school where not many people generally apply for these schools it will give them a little bit of an advantage so that's one other thing to consider otherwise hopefully now you have a lot more clarity around the process works the key things are to get into these schools you need to Excel on the exam halfway through year eight the exam is a bit different to what you would have normally done at school what your child will be confident in in math and English at school and so it will require its own dedicated preparation

if you want to maximize their chances of success and so if you want our help in preparing for the exam and helping them get into one of these top selective schools then there's information below this video where you can book in for a call we'll have a chat understand what school you want to get into and we can talk about different preparation options available from there otherwise there'll be a lot more videos there'll be free training there's also free practice questions available below this video so i' recommend watching those videos and taking advantage of those

free resources as well and so good luck I wish you and your child the best of luck in the application process for these schools and I hope to hear of them getting into one of them very soon