Consortium test - general support thread anyone?

[zhp]

hi we got watford for both the test and music test and time also - it suits us fine !

[RationalityRules]

We got ours - Rickmansworth for the academic and Parmiters for the music. Shame about the Parmiters bit as that's miles away from us!

[Hera]

RR - We got Clement Danes for both when Ricky is walking distance, although I am relieved that yours is slightly odd too as irrationally I have been thinking I did something wrong with the application.

[toucan]

We will be part of the 5% out-of-catchment bunch applying to Parmiters. We got Watford Girls for the academic test. The admissions office said there were usually 400–500 applicants for the 5 places. Does that sound right?

Toucan

[Daogroupie]

How very odd! I am sure you are closer to Parmiters Toucan than RR and it is the only one you are applying for so why didn't they give you Parmiters and RR Watford girls?

[hairydog]

Well, we are just back from a lovely holiday where very little work went on....ds was so tired at the end of term and everything seemed a battle. We had a couple of wet days and did a VR paper to time and another where we did a few 10 minute tests but now we are back prep needs to start in ernest again. I'm going to try and do 1 paper a day, more VR than maths as ds's maths is very strong and ry to pin-point which questions he needs to do a bit more practicve with.

How is everyone else?

[Hera]

Hi Hairydog. We are just back from hols too, where we had a lovely break from all things 11+ (well pretty much)

[hairydog]

Hi Bel, hope your prep is going ok.

We have not done quite as much as I had hoped - managing about 3 papers a week plus a few bits and pieces, vocabulary learning and the like. Ds is doing well, staying calm and most importantly not talking about not wanting to go to Parmiters!

I'm a bit preoccupied by differences in scores from different practice papers though. he does really well on the Athey VR papers averaging between 90 and 95% but is much lower on Susan Daughtrey, about 80 - 85% and struggling to finish in 45 mins. Is anyone else finding this?

Hope everyone else is staying calm!

[Long Journey]

I hope you had a lovely time bel.

Things have sort of calmed down a bit here too. I'm feeling quite relaxed about the test now. We are still plodding on steadily, but I don't feel quite so much panic about being on the home stretch and don't stress too much about a missed day here and there.

RR my DD struggles to finish the SD papers too, very often she's writing till the very last second. Athey seems much easier to score highly and finish with time to check. Does anyone know if children generally struggle to finish at the actual Consortium test?

[hairydog]

Yes, I have heard from some that it's tough to finish. Ds sometimes has time to check a bit on Athey papers, usually not on SD and often misses out some questions. He finds the number codes tough (comparing 2 sets of 3 numbers and filling in a blank which fits the rule). This is interesting as he is usually really good with codes/number patterns. For the life of me I often can't see the relationship either. These questions don't seem to come up on Athey and I believe Athey are closest to the actual papers (is this correct DAO?)

I am just concentrating now on timing and finishing whole papers within the 45 mins so ds can get a feel for how quickly to work.

Let's keep going and keep calm! Hope everyone else is doing ok.