Year 8 //2015 - Selective Exam?

[PastLullaby]

Hey!.. erm.. everyone.. I'm a year 8 student taking the exams this year. Currently, I'm attending JAC's selective prep classes, but a few of my friends who'd taken the exam in the past said that JAC didn't help them improve in anything but their confidence. My parents spent mansions on tutors and I don't want everything to go down the drain. My cousin is taking St. Vincent's selective classes (I'm an idiot so I didn't sign up, haha), and erm... are the exam questions similar to JAC/St. Vincent's practice ones??

I want to know what to expect on the actual exams. Like.. what types of questions are there? Helpful tips?? Also, how much (many?) pages/space are we given for the Analytical/Creative pieces? D:

I'm a bit worried about the essay pieces. For creative, is it a picture prompt, or...? What do they mark you on?

Sorry. There's less than a month left and.. yeah.. LOL I'm freaking out so bad.

[~Asuna~]

Hey!.. erm.. everyone.. I'm a year 8 student taking the exams this year. Currently, I'm attending JAC's selective prep classes, but a few of my friends who'd taken the exam in the past said that JAC didn't help them improve in anything but their confidence. My parents spent mansions on tutors and I don't want everything to go down the drain. My cousin is taking St. Vincent's selective classes (I'm an idiot so I didn't sign up, haha), and erm... are the exam questions similar to JAC/St. Vincent's practice ones??

I want to know what to expect on the actual exams. Like.. what types of questions are there? Helpful tips?? Also, how much (many?) pages/space are we given for the Analytical/Creative pieces? D:

I'm a bit worried about the essay pieces. For creative, is it a picture prompt, or...? What do they mark you on?

Sorry. There's less than a month left and.. yeah.. LOL I'm freaking out so bad.

For the creative last year, we had a prompt. It was like, something about the the world with no sunlight. For the other essay, it was something to do with the punishment of those who break the laws and if it was right to put them in prison or rehabilitation.

They'll mark you on your creativity, spelling, grammar, vocab and punctuation of course. For the other essay, they'll mark you on the structure, how strong your arguments are and the same as the creative one basically.

I didn't go to any tutoring, so I kinda just used the practice exams on the website. The maths was actually much harder than the one there, I knew everything on the one on the website but then everything was like a level higher on the actual exam.

Numerical I found the hardest, but really, that's just me. XD Problem-solving takes me a while. Reading comprehension was the easiest, and I finished quite early. It's only because I'm really good at skim-reading, though. Verbal reasoning was also pretty easy.

Pick a letter before the exam date. Use that one letter for all the questions you have no idea about. The chances of you getting at least one or two right will be better.

If you work really hard and do that tutoring, I'm sure you'll pass! I was an idiot and only did really light studying a month before the exam and I regret it a lot. I got everything above high average, except the Numerical which I got an average for. My friend said the average is why I didn't get in...

So yeah, study as much as possible! If you work as hard as possible, then you'll make it for sure. Don't procrastinate, just sacrifice this one month for that amazing feeling when you receive the offer.

[Leezy]

Hey!.. erm.. everyone.. I'm a year 8 student taking the exams this year. Currently, I'm attending JAC's selective prep classes, but a few of my friends who'd taken the exam in the past said that JAC didn't help them improve in anything but their confidence. My parents spent mansions on tutors and I don't want everything to go down the drain. My cousin is taking St. Vincent's selective classes (I'm an idiot so I didn't sign up, haha), and erm... are the exam questions similar to JAC/St. Vincent's practice ones??

I want to know what to expect on the actual exams. Like.. what types of questions are there? Helpful tips?? Also, how much (many?) pages/space are we given for the Analytical/Creative pieces? D:

I'm a bit worried about the essay pieces. For creative, is it a picture prompt, or...? What do they mark you on?

Sorry. There's less than a month left and.. yeah.. LOL I'm freaking out so bad.

Probably a bit too late now, but back in my day Henderson's was really good preparation for the entrance exams to selective schools. Despite what your friends have said, JAC's selective prep is actually really helpful, not just for a confidence boost but also to train you in speed as time is a huge issue in the real exam. The exam questions are similar to the JAC practice ones and if I remember correctly Mathematics consisted of some basic Year 7/8 maths along with some Year 9 concepts such as Trig. Don't worry, just be confident as tutoring is definitely not necessary to make the cut for a selective school, many of my friends made it without tutors.

For some last minute preparation, read the newspaper everyday to search for current issues in our world today and practice writing essays on those issues!

Good Luck!

Good Luck!

[PastLullaby]

Thanks!
Another question... :c Am I allowed to use contractions for the creative essay?

[Iman2098]

Personally JAC didn't help me, since their tests were way harder and there is no real 'teaching' there, just practice tests. However, you should know all of the yr 8 & 9 curriculum for maths( there were stuff on quadratic equations and trig/pythagoras on the actuall exam). Also i found numerical reasoning to be the hardest. Do a lot of problem solving and if you don't get an answer to a question just move on. Or else you'll end up guessing like 20 Qs. For RC its really simple, just be able to do basic comprehension and have a broad range of vocab since they ask you to find word relationships/analogies in VR. For the essay be clear in your structure and don't use contractions. For creative writing, basically just write a good narrative and include a lot of sophisticated vocabulary. Other than that, Good Luck!

[darkrai115]

here are a list of things in maths you should study in order of importance

1. trigonometry (ok so there were a bunch of trig related questions when i was doing the test and they threw me off so hard)
2. quadratic (i cant emphasize how much you need to study this learn your null factors and basic factorization)
3. basic year 8/9 algebra (important to memorize your perfect square factorizations)
4. measurement (area formulas, etc)
5. other (probability, statistics and other types of questions that you think may come up on the test)

and also i recommend going online and doing some logical reasoning/aptitude practice tests, it'll help for numerical and verbal

hope i helped 

[PastLullaby]

Huh. Okay, thanks guys!

(Woo. It's next week. rip.)

Can someone give me feedback on my 15-minute creative essay? Maybe via PM or something... Erm... There are still heaps of things that I'm unsure about, and essay writing isn't exactly my forte.

pls halp