Victorian Selective Entry Exam: A Parent's Guide

Victoria has four selective entry high schools, and one exam decides most of their Year 9 places. Children sit it in Year 8, on one Saturday in June, and they only get one go. This guide covers who runs it, how to apply, what is on it, how offers are made, and how to get ready without letting it take over the year.

Who sets the exam, and which schools use it

The Victorian Department of Education owns the selection process. It asks ACER (the Australian Council for Educational Research) to run it: the applications, the exam, the marking and the offers. The four schools are:

• Melbourne High School (South Yarra)
• The Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School (Melbourne)
• Nossal High School (Berwick)
• Suzanne Cory High School (Werribee)

All four teach Years 9 to 12. The exam is for Year 9 entry only. A small number of places can come up in Years 10 and 11, and each school manages those itself.

Who can apply, and how

Your child must be in Year 8 (the second year of secondary school) and must not have sat the Year 9 entry exam before. They must be an Australian citizen, a New Zealand citizen living in Australia, or hold a visa that exempts them from international student fees. Students from government and non-government schools, and registered home schoolers, can all apply, from Victoria, interstate or overseas.

You apply online through ACER’s portal and list up to three of the four schools in order. Your child is offered only the highest preference they qualify for, so put the school they most want first.

The application fee in the 2026 cycle was $175. It is free for families with a valid health care card or pensioner concession card, and for First Nations families, and other families facing hardship can ask for a reduction. Late applications are not accepted. Dates change every year, so check ACER’s site before each cycle opens.

What is on the exam

The exam is on paper, in a venue ACER assigns. It takes about four hours with registration and breaks, and 2 hours 35 minutes of that is working time. The parts are sat in this order:

There is a 20-minute break after the first part and a 5-minute break after the second. ACER does not publish how many questions each part has, or what kind of writing the two tasks ask for. Knowledge needed never goes past the Year 8 curriculum. Calculators, phones, smart watches, dictionaries and extra paper are not allowed.

One thing ACER says plainly is worth passing on to your child: the exam is meant to be hard. It is common to get only about half the questions right, and many children do not finish.

How places are offered

Most places go on the exam alone. The Department splits places in three:

• About 85% on merit, in order of exam performance.
• Up to 10% for equity: children whose parent holds a health care card or pensioner concession card, or who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
• Up to 5% at the principal’s discretion. Principals invite strong performers to apply, then look at school reports, other achievements and the child’s reasons, and interview a shortlist.

No single school can supply more than 4% of its students in the merit and principal categories (10% for a school that runs from prep to Year 9). Offers come in rounds from early August, and ACER says about 90% of places are filled in Round 1. A child can still get an offer in a later round, including one for a higher preference after accepting a lower one. Neither the Department nor ACER publishes a cut-off score, and the tests and individual scores are never released.

How to prepare

1. Know the shape of the day. Two long multiple-choice papers, then writing, with short breaks. A child who has sat a 60-minute paper at home knows how it feels to still have 20 questions left with 10 minutes to go.
2. Practise moving on. ACER’s own advice is not to stay too long on a hard question: make a sensible guess and come back if time allows. That is a habit, and it takes a few timed papers to build.
3. Work on reasoning, not just Year 8 maths. The quantitative questions use patterns and shapes that school rarely teaches. A little practice makes them much less strange on the day.
4. Read widely and talk about it. Stories, poems, articles and opinion pieces. Ask what the writer means, not just what happens.
5. Write to fresh prompts, twice. Two tasks in 40 minutes means about 20 minutes each. A quick plan, then a complete piece, is better than a long one that stops halfway.
6. Look at ACER’s free sample questions. They show the style and the answer booklet. ACER notes they may not match the exam’s difficulty.
7. Keep it calm. ACER asks parents to keep expectations realistic and avoid extra pressure. Sleep the night before matters more than one more practice paper.

Practice in the selective entry style

Our VIC Selective Entry practice is built at Year 8 level, in the exam’s shape. Paper 1 is Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning: 50 questions in 60 minutes, Year 8 maths first and then quantitative reasoning. Paper 2 is Reading and Verbal Reasoning: 50 questions in 55 minutes, ten texts (a story, a poem, information texts, quotations and short comments) and then verbal reasoning. Every question has four choices. Writing is one creative and one persuasive task, 20 minutes each, marked against ACER’s three published criteria, with your child’s own sentences quoted as the reason for each band. Every question is explained afterwards, and drills let your child practise one question type at a time.

To be clear about what these are: practice papers we wrote in the style of the exam, not real exam questions or past papers. We are not connected with ACER, the Victorian Department of Education or any of the four schools. ACER does not publish question counts or the writing task types, so ours are our own estimate from its official sample questions. Our score is the number right, not a ranking or a predicted result. A free account includes 3 practice tests, and the VIC Selective Entry pack opens unlimited papers with the answers, worked solutions and marked writing.

What’s next

Start with the VIC Selective Entry practice page. If your child is younger, the SEAL page covers the tests for Victoria’s Year 7 accelerated programs, and the HAST page covers ACER’s Higher Ability Selection Test used by many other schools.