Entrance exams for international schools

Joyce Wu

with more parents considering enrolling their children in international schools, the competition - especially for schools with a long history - has intensified.

After applying, students are generally asked to take an entrance test. The test is divided into a written examination and an interview.

What are the scope and key points of these entrance tests?

If the students are in the lower grades such as early primary, most international schools will arrange group activities to observe how they tackle different task activities and how they get along with other candidates. The teacher will observe from the sidelines.

As for students in grades above Year Three and Four, schools often require them to take written tests and interviews.

Most written tests focus on English and mathematics, and some schools require students to take an additional cognitive test. The English test will see how good students' writing and reading comprehension skills are.

From past experience, we have seen several areas that students need to work on for the entrance tests.

The first is the content and length of writing.

Many students from local schools are not used to writing long articles, so when preparing for the writing component, they need to learn how to elaborate their ideas, provide more in-depth descriptions and explanations, and to create more substance in their writing.

Another example is to make more changes in the structure of the creative writing to make it more compact and complex, and to enrich the content of the writing.

In addition, many students who enroll in international schools feel that they do not have enough knowledge of different writing styles. International schools require students to write diverse styles, such as argumentative essays, letters, or speeches.

However, students may feel at a loss when encountering new styles of writing in the written test.

There is also a mathematics component in the test.

Our past students are generally able to cope with the level of mathematics knowledge. However, some students have been learning mathematics in Chinese, and feel nervous facing the test in English.

Those students usually need to learn mathematical terms and vocabulary in English; and practice more questions, especially situational-type questions.

In addition to English and mathematics, some schools - such as Harrow International School Hong Kong and Kellett School - require students to take a cognitive test.

This mainly assesses logical ability, such as giving students numbers and graphs to identify the sequence and pattern changes. This type of cognitive ability test will be difficult for students who have never tackled similar tests.

Finally, in preparation for entrance exams, key skills are important.

There are three areas where students often struggle during exams: time management, tackling difficult comprehension articles, and proofreading.

Improvements here are invaluable to most students, especially for younger students who have not yet experienced public exams.

For these students mock tests and interviews will help ensure proper opportunities to build new competencies.

Crucially, they allow students to build confidence and grow their ability to adapt in exam situations.

Joyce Wu is a Cambridge alumna, IB examiner as well as the co-founder of the Cana Elite Education Centre

(www.canaelite.com)