Navigating 11+ Entry to Northwood for Girls

Due to COVID-19, Northwood College has decided to replace its Cognitive Abilities Test with the ISEB Common Pretest for admissions into Year 7 Entry. Applicants are required to complete the test at their current school on or before January 11th. If students are unable to take the exam at their current school, girls can be tested at Northwood College on November 26th or December 5th. On top of the exam, places in the school are given based on references and interview performance.

The ISEB Common Pretest

This examination covers skills in English, math, and verbal and non-verbal Reasoning. It typically lasts a total of 2.5 hours and distributes across the following subjects.

  • English (25 min): comprehension, sentence completion, spelling and punctuation

  • Maths (50 min): mathematical ability across the curriculum – arithmetic and problem solving

  • Verbal Reasoning (~36 min): problem-solving using words

  • Non-Verbal Reasoning (~32 min): thinking with shapes, space, diagrams and pictures

For more information on the ISEB, click here.

Practice Tests 

The provided practice tests are from Pretest Plus and are available online after purchase. Tests are marked automatically afterwards and allow students to thoroughly review. Comparative ranking statistics are provided as well to quickly and efficiently identify areas of weakness and strength.

Video Courses 

From the same company that provided the ISEB Pretest Practice exams, they also offer online video courses to outline everything your child should know for each section of the ISEB assessment. Video lessons will go through all possible question types and techniques to help your child recognize underlying patterns in questions to look out for.

Skills Practice

Pretest Plus also provides Skill Practice tests for the ISEB that focus on specific question formats highly likely to appear in the ISEB Pretest. These tests are great for improving skills and increasing scores fast.