How to prepare for king’s scholar exams

[Rectangula]

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on how to prepare for the King’s Scholar exams. Has anyone here prepared their child for these exams? I’d be really grateful if you could share how you approached the preparation, any recommended books or resources, and whether you used a tutor.

Thank you so much.

Hello, I work in tutoring, so bear that in mind. If this is Eton's King's Scholarship, the most useful first step is to download the past papers from the Eton admissions page (papers up to 2025 are published there) and have your child sit one General Paper, timed, early in the year. Eton's own advice is to look at the papers early to judge whether to sit at all. Candidates take six compulsory papers (English A and B, Maths A, Science Theory, Science Data and General I) plus at least three options from Maths B, General II, History-Geography-Divinity, French, Latin and Greek, over three days in late April of Year 8, and the papers go well beyond Common Entrance in the analytical response they expect. Whether a tutor is needed usually becomes clear after that first timed paper: if the gap sits in one or two papers, targeted help on those is worth more than general sessions, and wide reading plus talking ideas through at home carries a lot of the General Papers. Happy to answer anything else here.