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Question sourced from the Newstead Wood 11+ forum on elevenplusexams.co.uk.

The Format of the Real Newstead Wood Exam

The Newstead exam contains a 45-minute verbal reasoning paper and a 40-minute paper on non-verbal reasoning. There are approximately 80 questions in each paper.

The verbal reasoning paper includes an assortment of GL-style questions. The non-verbal reasoning paper includes only four different GL question types. Students are expected to complete approximately one question every 30 seconds.

The format and length of these papers has not changed for well over 20 years; however, as other schools have done in recent years, Newstead Wood could decide to change the test format at any time.

The Newstead Wood Sample Paper

Newstead Wood provides one sample paper (sold at their open day each year), which contains 26 non-verbal reasoning questions and 30 verbal reasoning questions. The paper states that students should spend up to 15 minutes on each paper. 

Note: the school open day is held just one week before the exam. We therefore advise that you attend the open day at the very beginning of Year 5 and buy the sample paper then. You can then save the paper until the end of the academic year. 

It should be noted that, whilst the content of the Newstead exam seems to change year-on-year, this sample paper has not been changed for over 20 years (it is, in fact, the same sample paper that our founder used when preparing for her Newstead 11+ in the nineties). 

Compared to the real exam, the Newstead Wood sample paper provides far fewer questions and gives students slightly longer to complete each non-verbal reasoning question. Given the limitations of this paper, it would therefore be unwise to assume that this sample provides an exhaustive list of topics, particularly in verbal reasoning. 

LEARN ABOUT OUR NEWSTEAD MOCK EXAMS

What else have we learnt about the Newstead exam?

Over the course of several years, we have gathered information from Newstead candidates and have learnt that the questions in the exam included can vary quite wildly from the sample paper. In addition, our student reports suggest that the paper changes significantly each year; in some years, students have reported that there have been a lot of code questions whilst, in other years, they have reported seeing an overwhelming number of word problems.

Whilst we cannot rely too heavily on student feedback from the exam (as memory can be unreliable and the students are in a stressful situation), there have been clear patterns in the content reported by each year’s candidates.

With all of this in mind, we obviously encourage students to master the type of question shown in the sample paper but, in addition, we encourage them to practise with a broad variety of practice papers in order to prepare for them for an exam that can be unpredictable.

How does this information guide up when writing the Newstead Mock Exam?

When preparing for the Newstead exam, it is important that girls expect the unexpected. With this in mind, we aim to include a broad range of question types in our mock exam in order to prepare students mentally and provide feedback on the topics that you may want to focus on at home.

In our non-verbal reasoning exam, we stick to four question types (like the real exam), with 20 questions in each section. Like the sample paper, we include a few very tricky questions, which help to identify the highest performers.

Uniquely, both the verbal and non-verbal reasoning parts of our mock exam are timed in the same way as the real Newstead Wood exam. We also administer the test in the same way: prohibiting students from returning to previous sections in a non-verbal reasoning paper, for example. By adhering to these timings and question numbers, we are able to test not only accuracy but also the girls’ speed which, of course, is another essential component of success in the exam.

BOOK A NEWSTEAD MOCK EXAM

You can never be too prepared when it comes to the 11+. 

Our Easter Course and Summer School are created and led by Newstead Wood alumni. 

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