My ds has passed Walling and SGS and has the 2nd stage test for St.Olaves on Friday. We will also be applying to Whitgift and Trinity. Ds will only be able to attend if he is awarded a bursary and/or scholarship. He doesn't have a tutor. Is continuing to do past papers the best prep? Does anyone have a view on how difficult the tests are in comparison to the Sutton grammars and St. Olaves?

I don't have too much experience of these schools but there are several long threads on Mumsnet on both of them. Generally the independents have written comprehensions and creative writing (similar to second stage St Olaves). I would hazard a guess that the standards are similar but Whitgift/Trinity take a wider ability range. Whitgift are meant to be generous with their scholarships for the higher scorers and I guess if your Ds is sporty/musical then all the better!

Your ds will need to do verbal reasoning as well as maths and English. I guess you've looked at the style of papers, so you know what you're dealing with. You're competing against a similar cohort of boys, many of whom will have also sat the Sutton exams - I don't think that the standard is particularly different, but obviously different schools set harder papers once in a while.

I would suggest keeping up with reading, and possibly having a mock interview or two.

Hi, my ds sat Whiftgift a couple of years ago. He also passed SGS, Wilson and Wallington. The areas we focused on was comprehension, since it wasn't his strongest and we knew this was not tested in the selective at the time.

We bought some GL VR papers and practiced those as well.

Interview was a passage and asked questions plus a couple of maths questions. Plus the usual what books are you reading, where have you applied.....

Both my dh and myself were then interviewed .

Good luck .