11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello,

I'm new to forum and sure this point must've got discussed elsewhere but couldn't locate the exact thread despite spending lot of time.

My DD is appearing for HBS stage 1 coming Sep 4, can I please get advise on what percentage score she should be targeting in CGP practice CEM papers at this time?

Thanking you in advance

There are 300 spaces in the second round .

The scores are recorded to two decimal points.

The numbers sitting are likely to be over two thousand as over two thousand sat last year and the numbers have not yet gone down.

Students do not do as well in the exam environment as in the home environment.

Scores in the 80% would be a realistic target. DG

Daogroupie wrote:There are 300 spaces in the second round .

The scores are recorded to two decimal points.

The numbers sitting are likely to be over two thousand as over two thousand sat last year and the numbers have not yet gone down.

Students do not do as well in the exam environment as in the home environment.

Scores in the 80% would be a realistic target. DG

Thank you Daogroupe, much appreciated

Daogroupie wrote:
Students do not do as well in the exam environment as in the home environment.

DG

And try to recreate an exam like environment when testing so your DD gets used to time management etc.

Thank you for your response.

Quickly checking on VR pattern - Does HBS keep typical VR in stage 1 or its not there in the test just like NVR?
I understand though that English part will contain comprehension, vocabulary, shuffled sentences etc

HBS use English CEM the same as the DAO/SW Herts paper. They do not use VR. They also use Numerical Reasoning, they do not use NVR.

For the first four years there was no comprehension, but there has been for the last two years. I would expect Shuffled Sentences, Missing Letter Cloze and Word Bank Cloze. These are the hardest three of the CEM sections. There will be others but these three are the most likely. DG

Hello,

My daughter took elevenplusexam mock for CEM today at Harrow and scored 83% and 84 percentile in both the papers.
Can you please advise how to benchmark this score for HBS actual stage 1 exam?

As always very grateful for your insights.

How many students were in the mock?

As there are only 300 spaces in the second round score in the low 80's are unlikely to secure a place.

Scores in the 90s in the actual exam will be required.

However, hopefully you will be going through the feedback and she will be able to secure a few more marks on Tuesday.

I would focus on Shuffled sentences and Missing Letter and Word Bank Cloze. How did she do in those three sections? DG

Kaira, these percentages or percentiles (not sure which you mean) seem good to me.

DD took a Susan Daugherty HBS styled CEM mock test a few days before the actual exam and was placed roughly at the 50th percentile. Extrapolating from this would suggest that she would have been ranked 1000-1200 in the HBS Round 1 Test, so no chance. Our objective in getting her to take the mock was to get her used to exam conditions, such as the time-pressured sections and managing her pencil and eraser - she's a great one for faffing around - so we decided to ignore the mock result and didn't even mention it to DD. She's now at HBS.

Hi Kaira!

SteveDH and nyr make important points.

Moreover, I'm afraid there is no way of knowing what practice mark on which paper is a good predictor of HBS entrance success. The speculation is unhelpful and, potentially, quite misleading.

Each year, a senior lady at HBS spends a lot of time responding to hundreds of emails partly because of this. These emails are generally from anguished Mums of candidates who didn't make the cut to the second stage or who made that cut but finished too low after that to earn a place at HBS. These Mums saw lots of 90% scores in practice papers and mock exams. That is only part of the story and it can be deceptive, eventually adding to the upset and the pain.

Yes it’s extremely, extremely competitive but, in addition, you kind of know what’s needed only after you get the results. Too many parents are influenced by speculation and by their child’s practice marks rather than just regarding them as stepping stones to, hopefully, a strong enough performance on the day. Every mark counts and there is very, very little to separate most leading candidates, hence scores being calculated to 2 decimal places.

A lot depends on the difficulty of the questions on the day and how your daughter responds to the challenge. The other factor is her performance relative to everyone else. For example, 90% is not needed where 80% as a raw score for one section is very good if it gives a ranking of 80 out of 2,500 candidates. But 80% is not that good if it gives a ranking of only 400.

There is no way for us to know the raw marks for past exams: the published data disclose only standardised scores, in simple terms out of 141 each. For example, for 2016 Entry’s Stage 1:

Rank VR Maths Total (/ 282)

1 108.91 118.60 227.51
100 111.74 110.93 222.68
140 99.17 121.34 220.51

I stand to be corrected but the top VR score I spotted was 132.51 and the top Maths score 125.55, for candidates with overall ranks 141 and 60, respectively. Note that the top ranked candidate achieved significantly lower than each of these standardised scores. Also note that there is very little separating Rank 1 from Rank 100, and even less separating Rank 100 from Rank 140.

I hope this is not too much statistical data for you. One simple inference to draw is that the raw marks may not have been that high for Maths; another is that broadly the same applied to the VR raw marks, albeit with a higher top standardised score.

What’s also vital to realise is that there has to be calm enough, strong enough performance on the day and with enough focus and enough accuracy. All these positive factors your child can control, helped by you. You should trust your preparation now and trust yourself, too. You’ve done plenty and you’ve done your best.
Anyhow, sorry for the statistics and, hard though it is, I hope you can relax. That will help to give calm and confidence to your child. We went through this in 2009/2010 and I feel for you. … Good luck!