Year 7 Scholarship Tests: Which One Will Your Child Sit?
ACER Scholarship Test, HAST, or the school's own exam — how the Year 7 entry tests differ, when each is held, and what preparation carries across them.
Scholarship season starts with a small administrative shock. You look at three independent schools your family likes, and each one names a different test — or the same acronym used to mean something slightly different. Which exam is it? Do the dates clash? Does preparing for one help with the others?
The confusion is structural, not your fault. There is no single Year 7 scholarship exam that every school uses. Each school chooses its own assessment, and the two most common choices are both run by the same organisation, which makes them easy to mix up. Here's how to sort out what your child is actually sitting.
Start with the school, not the test
The single most useful thing you can do — before any preparation, before any booking — is to open each school's admissions or scholarships page and write down four things:
- Which test they use for Year 7 entry scholarships.
- Which components your child sits (for HAST, schools choose; the ACER Scholarship Test has the same three components for everyone).
- When the sitting is, and when registration closes — deadlines commonly fall months before the test itself.
- What else counts — an interview, school reports, references.
Everything below is a map of the landscape. The school's own page is the authority for your child.
The ACER Scholarship Test (Year 7 entry)
This is the academic scholarship exam run by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). ACER says approximately 250 independent schools across Australia use it to award academic scholarships for Year 7 entry, which makes it the most likely test a Year 6 student will sit.
Year 7 entry is ACER's Level 1 sitting, with three components:
| Component | Questions | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Humanities / Reading | 40–45 | Multiple-choice, four options A–D, in units of several questions per text |
| Mathematics | 32–36 | Multiple-choice, four options A–D, no calculator |
| Written Expression | 2 topics | Two stimulus-based pieces, set as two separate tests |
Those counts are ACER's own. Timing is thinner: ACER publishes no duration for either multiple-choice component, so treat any Humanities or Mathematics time you see quoted as an estimate; for the writing, ACER's example-questions booklet mentions "the 25 minutes allowed" without saying whether that covers one topic or both. Cooperative schools all test on one Saturday in February — 27 February 2027 for 2028 entry — while schools on the alternative date program choose their own date, which is how families applying widely sometimes sit more than once in a season.
HAST
HAST — the Higher Ability Selection Test — comes from the same organisation but does a broader job. More than 100 selective and independent schools use it, and not only for scholarships: some use it as their main academic assessment for entry, some for scholarship decisions, some to place students into academic streams.
HAST has several levels, and ACER chooses by your child's current year level at the time of the test, not their age. A Year 6 student sitting for Year 7 entry takes a Secondary level (Junior Secondary) — the Primary level is sat in Years 4 and 5, for entry into Years 5 and 6. Ask the school which level it has booked before you prepare for the wrong paper. The Primary test has up to four components — Reading Comprehension, Mathematical Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning and Writing, at 30 minutes each — and the school chooses which ones your child sits. Testing sessions are typically March to June, arranged by the school.
Two consequences follow from that flexibility. First, "we're doing the HAST" can mean an hour of testing at one school and two hours at another. Second, Abstract Reasoning may or may not be on your child's paper — worth knowing before you spend a term on pattern puzzles.
The school's own exam
A third possibility: some schools don't use either test and run their own entrance examination instead. Sydney Grammar School is a common example. If a school's page names an exam you don't recognise, take it literally rather than assuming it's one of the two big tests under another name.
The difference that changes your preparation
Purpose, school numbers and timing are compared row by row in our HAST explainer. For a family deciding what to practise, two differences matter more than any of that:
| ACER Scholarship Test | HAST | |
|---|---|---|
| Non-verbal reasoning? | No | Yes, if the school includes Abstract Reasoning |
| Writing? | Yes, always | Only if the school includes it |
Both are academic reasoning tests rather than curriculum quizzes, which is why the preparation overlaps far more than the acronyms suggest.
What preparation carries across
If your family is looking at several schools, don't build separate programs. Almost everything useful is shared:
- Reading closely, under time. Both tests reward inference, vocabulary in context and reading for structure — not speed-reading, but not dawdling either.
- Mathematical reasoning without a calculator. Multi-step problems where choosing the operation is the work, and mental fluency keeps you inside the time.
- Planning a piece of writing fast. Where writing is assessed, the constraint is the clock: a usable plan in two or three minutes, then write.
- Familiarity with the format. Cheap to acquire, and it removes the first five minutes of confusion on the day.
The one component that doesn't transfer is Abstract Reasoning, which appears in HAST for some schools and not in the ACER Scholarship Test at all. If your child's paper includes it, treat it as a separate, small piece of preparation. Our free HAST practice questions include two Abstract Reasoning examples to try.
About the money, honestly
Scholarship terms are set school by school. Some awards cover full tuition, many cover a percentage, and separate means-tested bursaries are sometimes available. Amounts, duration, renewal conditions and what happens if you decline a place all vary — and none of it is standard across the sector. Read the individual school's published terms before you plan around a number you've seen quoted elsewhere.
It's also worth knowing how the results are typically used: the test result usually acts as the first filter, with interviews and school reports coming after. That's a reason not to build the whole year around the exam. Schools are choosing a student, not a score.
A sane way through the season
- Shortlist the schools first. Three or four you'd genuinely be happy with beats a long list sat in a panic.
- Diarise the registration deadlines, not the test dates. The deadlines are what families actually miss.
- Prepare once, for the shared skills. Add anything test-specific late, and only if it applies.
- Keep the stakes visible but small. These awards are highly competitive by design, so not receiving one is an ordinary outcome rather than a verdict on your child. Say that out loud before the day, not after.
Where to look next
- ACER Scholarship Test (Year 7 entry): format and samples — the three components in detail, with maths questions to try.
- HAST explained — levels, components, and which schools use it.
- Free question sets with instant feedback and no account: ACER Scholarship practice and HAST practice.
- Official test information: ACER's scholarships page and HAST page.