Applying for Selective Entry in 2028: What to Do Now
If your child is in Year 5 this year, they belong to the round for Year 7 entry in 2028. The NSW Department of Education runs every round to the same shape: applications open in the November of Year 5 and close in the February of Year 6, the test is sat in early May of Year 6, and outcomes arrive in August. For your child that means an application window that is weeks away, not months.
What has not appeared yet is the exact set of dates. As at 13 October 2026, the department's pages still describe the round for 2027 entry, and it has not published the opening day, the closing day or the test days for 2028 entry. Its key dates page is where they will appear, and they are the only dates worth acting on. Until then, the last round is the best guide to the rhythm: applications for 2027 entry opened on 6 November 2025 and closed on 20 February 2026.
Confirmed, and not yet confirmed
Confirmed: the November to February application window, a test in early May, outcomes in August, up to three school preferences, and a test held only in NSW. Not yet published for 2028 entry: the exact dates, the number of places, and the birth-date range. For 2027 entry the range was 1 January 2014 to 31 July 2015, which gives you a sense of where it will fall.
Who can apply
Your child does not have to be at a public school. The department accepts applications for children at NSW public schools, non-government schools, home study, interstate schools and overseas schools.
Residency is the condition that catches families out. Your child and family must be living in NSW by the beginning of the school year of entry, and conditions may apply to students who are not Australian citizens, permanent residents or New Zealand citizens. If you expect to meet all the enrolment conditions before initial offers are released, you can still apply and your child can sit the test, but every condition must be met before any offer is made.
The test is only held in NSW
From 2026 the Selective High School Placement Test is held only in NSW. A child who is interstate or overseas has to come back to NSW to sit it, and a child who cannot will not be considered for a place. If you are planning a long stay away in the first half of 2027, early May is the date to build it around.
The test itself is sat on a computer and runs as four parts: reading, mathematical reasoning, thinking skills and writing.
What the application asks of you
The application is online and takes five steps. You register with your own details, not your child's. You verify your email address, log in, and complete eight sections of questions, including uploading a photo of your child, which is printed on the Test Admission Ticket so the test centre can check who is sitting. Then you submit.
One step is easy to miss: saving the application is not submitting it. A finished form that was never submitted is not an application. When you do submit, you should get both a confirmation email and a message in your application dashboard, so look for both before you assume it went through. After submitting you can still log back in to update details and upload documents, within the deadlines the department sets.
Three things worth doing before the window opens
- Choose the email address carefully. The dashboard you apply through is the one your child's outcome appears in nine months later, announced by an email alert. Use an address you actually read, and write the login down somewhere you will find it next August.
- Start the school shortlist. You can name up to three schools in order of preference, and only schools your child would really attend. Every NSW selective high school, with places is the full list to start from, and choosing your three schools covers how to order them. Last round also allowed changes to school choices until about a month after the test, so this is a shortlist, not a final answer.
- Find out where your child is now. A starting point measured on real test-style questions is worth more than a guess, and it tells you which of the four parts needs the time between now and May. Our free diagnostic takes 28 minutes, needs no account, and scores Mathematics, Thinking Skills and Reading by topic.
The year from here
Laid out against your child's calendar, the round looks like this. The application window is expected to open in Term 4 of Year 5 and close in February of Year 6. A Test Admission Ticket arrives about two weeks before the test. The test follows in early May. Outcomes come in August, still in Year 6, and reserve list offers can keep arriving until the end of Term 1 of Year 7.
The whole cycle is laid out date by date, using the last round as the worked example, in the selective test timeline. What to do with the months between now and the test is in preparing in Year 5. The application itself is the smallest part of the year. Doing it early, on a quiet evening in November, means it never becomes the thing you were worrying about in February.
Selective Edge is not affiliated with the NSW Department of Education or the Selective High Schools Test administrators. This guide is general information for parents, drawn from publicly available test materials.