VIC Selective Entry study guide
VIC Selective Entry · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Selective Entry High Schools (SEHS) Year 9 entrance examination is the centralised selection test used to allocate Year 9 places across Victoria's four selective entry high schools: Nossal High School, Suzanne Cory High School, The Mac.Robertson Girls' High School and Melbourne High School. Around 1,000 places are available each year. The VIC Selective Entry study guide has 5 sections and about 1,561 words.
01Higher Order Thinking and Problem-Solving
Higher order thinking means you cannot simply recall a fact - you must analyse a situation, evaluate options, or create a strategy. The core concepts are: identifying the real goal (what is actually being asked), recognising constraints (time, rules, resources), breaking a complex problem into smaller steps, and checking whether a solution actually satisfies every condition.
323 words, about 2 min02Reasoning
Reasoning questions ask you to draw valid conclusions from given information. The key concepts are deduction (conclusions that must follow), induction (patterns that probably continue), and analogy (relationships that carry across).
295 words, about 1 min03Creative Thinking
Creative thinking in selective testing is not about artistic flair - it is about generating many possibilities , making unusual connections , and evaluating which idea best fits the brief . The concepts you need are: fluency (producing several ideas), flexibility (shifting categories), originality (avoiding the obvious), and elaboration (developing an idea with detail).
308 words, about 2 min04Comprehension and Interpretation
Comprehension asks you to build accurate meaning from a passage and then reason beyond it. The concepts are: main idea versus supporting detail , inference (reading between the lines while staying anchored in the text), tone and purpose , vocabulary in context , and distinguishing fact from opinion .
312 words, about 2 min05Application of Known Concepts to Situations
This domain tests whether you can take a familiar rule and use it in an unfamiliar setting. The concepts are: transfer (applying a learned rule to a new context), analogy (spotting the same underlying structure), identifying the principle behind an example, and predicting consequences of applying a rule.
323 words, about 2 min