Habs, St Albans entrance exams

[jdr1234]

Could anyone who’s son was offered places at either habs or St Albans let me know what atom scores they were getting in the lead up to the exams. My son is generally only getting 110-119 across the board (occasionally getting above this) but just did his GL’s and got 130 in English and maths and 132 in his Cat 4.
ive been advised he is capable and should be sitting the selective schools but the atoms are worrying me.

My DS got an academic scholarship to St Albans School, he’s now in Y7 there.

From memory his Atom scores were typically 115-122 but he had some much higher and lower scores too, in the month or two before the exam (100-132).

Atom standardised age scores are known for being a bit “off” - if you search on here you may find threads discussing it. Our tutor said there were discussions amongst her tutor contacts about it too, and she also saw some extremely difficult questions that she didn’t think were representative of actual tests.

So while they’re a useful datapoint I wouldn’t place too much weight on them.

In your shoes I’d definitively be putting your DS in for the exam.

Thank you- this is really helpful. is he happy at the school so far?

He’s not found the secondary transition very easy but the school has been very supportive and we’re very happy with it overall. They are mid-ISI inspection so a report will be coming out on it - the first under the new head - but I don’t know when.