Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Can anyone advices on sample/practice papers for quantitative test.

Some 11+ revision guides have sections on these elements.

They are supposed to be intuitive and can't be revised for but I think that it can give the child some confidence to have at least seen some of the types of questions before.

WHSmith do the Bond Practice papers which are really good.

I'd second the WH Smith plug!

Thanks YadaYada, Momto2 & huggermugger,

Momto2, would these be the usual Bond Practice papers on VB, NVB, Maths & English?
What i am try to ask is, there is no specific paper on quantitative questions. I know that quantitative is maths related, but just wondered is there are specfic ones.

As YadaYada, said, it would be nice for the child to have an idea as to what they look like.

Thanks all, counting down now and not much time left.

I hope your poor child is not going to spend the Christmas holiday being put through practice papers for the January assessment. I am sure they are more interested in how he/she reacts to being in a residential situation than in their academic achievement at this stage.

Fjgrogan,

Thanks for your concern. I intend to make it a light revision session for her. We will do some practice, but not as much.

Hi Anxiousone (good name - we've all been there)!

The quantitative stuff really puzzled me and I couldn't find anything anywhere on it. I just got my children to do a few of the verbal and non-verbal reasoning practice papers, really so that they knew what to expect when they had the real thing.

I think they will be looking at all areas of boarding life for your daughter - if I can offer any tips then please let me know and I'll send you a private message.

Good luck and promise to keep us posted

Fjgrogan wrote:I hope your poor child is not going to spend the Christmas holiday being put through practice papers for the January assessment. I am sure they are more interested in how he/she reacts to being in a residential situation than in their academic achievement at this stage.

There is a lot in that... (When I was at CH, I often helped out with the entrance exams) and we were constantly being asked about the candidates and how they were getting on and itneracting with each other...

However, a lot of it will be down to the exams - when I did the entrance exam in 1992 there were c.300 kids for 120 places - they now have the pre-entrance exams to weedle 550+ down to the 350 who do the residential exams...

I am in an odd situation as being a member of staff and a potential parent! The entrance exam is important as it is an academically selective entry process, but they do look at the personality profile too. I have interviewed dozens of children over the years and these pen pictures are looked at closely HOWEVER if they do not pass the tests then the personality profile will be of little use to anyone. As was said earlier, it is 500+ reduced to 112!

How do the Presentations fit in to the selection process? Do the children of staff count as Presentations?

For the record, my DS was so desperate to go to CH that he got up half an hour early each morning for a month to do practice papers. Just to dispel the myth that we put our "poor" children through anything! It was his choice to apply, his choice to take the exams and his choice to do the papers. I suspect it's the same for most of the applicants.

I think it's really important that they be given the opportunity to practice so they are not thrown by a style of question they have never seen before. I went down the same route as Momto2 - verbal & non-verbal reasoning. I think I also found some 11+ papers and he had a go at those.

There are a few websites that may be helpful as well eg - Athey Educational and 11plusswot.

onewestguncopse wrote:I am in an odd situation as being a member of staff and a potential parent! The entrance exam is important as it is an academically selective entry process, but they do look at the personality profile too. I have interviewed dozens of children over the years and these pen pictures are looked at closely HOWEVER if they do not pass the tests then the personality profile will be of little use to anyone. As was said earlier, it is 500+ reduced to 112!

Is it just 112 now?

As a non foundationer, I was never aware that we had an easier route into the school than others...

onewestguncopse wrote:
I am in an odd situation as being a member of staff and a potential parent! The entrance exam is important as it is an academically selective entry process, but they do look at the personality profile too. I have interviewed dozens of children over the years and these pen pictures are looked at closely HOWEVER if they do not pass the tests then the personality profile will be of little use to anyone. As was said earlier, it is 500+ reduced to 112!

Is it just 112 now?

I'm curious to know how the new Direct Entry places being offered from next year will impact on this number. It is stated in the Head's letter I received yesterday that CH aims to double the proportion of full fee paying pupils from the previous 6% cap to 12% - does this indicate that the number of competitive places will be reduced accordingly? Or will the Direct Entry pupil numbers be in addition to the 112 places currently offered, bringing the total annual intake up to about 125?

My DS took the assessment last year. The English comprehension was much easier than the sample test on the CH website. We read Dickens for a few month, but the passage on the test was modern. and easy to understand.He did lots of the verbal and non-verbal reasoning practise tests. He spent hours on the site tutpup.com which he quite liked. Threats of the local comprehensive school was quite motivating for him.
We only found out about CH in September last year, so not much time to prepare. I couldn't afford a tutor either. My son really enjoyed the residential assessment, he said it was brilliant fun.