The Selective Test Timeline: Every Key Date, in Order

The selective test timeline confuses families for one simple reason: it starts much earlier than most people expect, and it finishes much later. The application window opens while your child is still in Year 5, and the last offers of the round can land after Year 7 has already begun. Everything in between runs to a published set of dates that repeats, in shape if not in exact days, every single year.

The cleanest way to understand it is to walk one full round from end to end. Below is the cycle for Year 7 entry in 2027, using the dates the NSW Department of Education has published. The department describes these as expected dates and notes that they may change, so treat its key dates page as the last word and this article as the map.

The rhythm behind the selective test timeline

Strip away the specific days and the pattern is easy to hold in your head. Applications open in the November of your child's Year 5. They close in the February of the following year, the year your child is in Year 6. The test is sat in May of that Year 6 year. Outcomes arrive in August, in Term 3, while your child is still in primary school. Reserve list movement then continues into the first term of the year they actually start high school.

So the round spans roughly ten months of active process, and the decisions that shape it are made in the first three. That is worth sitting with, because the parts families most want to control, the preparation and the school choices, both belong to the early end of the timeline rather than the late one.

November to February: the application window

For the 2027 entry round, applications opened on 6 November 2025 and closed on 20 February 2026. That is a window of a little over three months, and it opens in Term 4 of Year 5, which is exactly the period when most families are thinking about anything other than high school.

Two practical points. First, the application is made online, and the same dashboard is where the outcome will eventually appear, so the email address and login you use in November are the ones that matter in August. Use an address you actually read, and write the login down somewhere you will find it nine months later.

Second, this is where you nominate schools. You may name up to three, in the order you want them considered, a decision that deserves its own sitting: see choosing your three preferences. The department's own guidance is to only choose schools you genuinely would like your child to attend, which it notes may be fewer than the maximum of three. It is a decision worth making properly in November rather than hurriedly in February.

April and May: admission ticket, then test day

The test admission ticket is expected in April, about two weeks before the test. It is the first hard, concrete thing in the whole process, and it is worth reading closely rather than filing, because it is the department's own instruction sheet for your child's test day.

The placement test for the 2027 entry round is expected on 1 or 2 May 2026, a Friday or a Saturday. It is sat on computers provided by the department, and it runs as four components:

• Reading, 17 questions with three of them carrying multiple parts, 45 minutes, multiple choice.
• Mathematical Reasoning, 35 questions, 40 minutes, multiple choice.
• Thinking Skills, 40 questions, 40 minutes, multiple choice.
• Writing, one task, 30 minutes, an open response to a set topic.

If your child is unwell or something goes wrong on the day, there is a formal route rather than an informal one. For this round, illness and misadventure requests are due by 8 May 2026, and an approved request leads to a make-up test expected on 22 May 2026. The deadline sits about a week after the test, which means the decision to lodge one has to be made quickly, while the detail is still fresh and while any medical documentation is still easy to obtain.

June: the last chance to change your school choices

This is the date almost nobody knows about, and it is quietly one of the most useful in the timeline. For the 2027 entry round, the last day to change school choices is expected to be 5 June 2026, roughly a month after test day.

Think about what that window gives you. You nominated schools back in the application window, before your child had sat anything. By June you have watched them go through the actual test, you may have visited schools you had only read about, and your family circumstances may simply have moved. The department gives you a chance to revise the list in light of all that, and the chance closes.

August: outcomes, then a one-week appeal window

Placement outcomes for the 2027 entry round are expected on Wednesday 19 August 2026, in Term 3. What arrives, and how to read it, is worth knowing in advance. They do not arrive by post. The outcome appears as a message in the online application dashboard, and you receive an email alert telling you to log in.

Appeals for this round close on Wednesday 26 August 2026 at 11:59 pm, exactly one week later. A valid appeal needs supporting documentary evidence, such as medical records or documentation of unforeseen circumstances. Disappointment at not receiving an offer is not a ground of appeal, and neither is a student's young age or concerns about how much preparation they did. Appeal decisions are final.

One date is not yet fixed. The response deadline for first round offers is still to be confirmed by the department, so if an offer arrives, read the outcome message itself for the date rather than assuming you have a fortnight.

And the round does not close in August. For selective high schools, offers keep trickling out until the end of Term 1 of the entry year. A family who is still waiting in October is not in limbo through an administrative failure. That is simply how long the tail is.

If your child is younger, map your own year onto this

The specific days above belong to one round, and they will not be your days. The shape will be.

Find the year your child will be in Year 6. Applications will open in the November before it, close in the February at the start of it, and the test will follow in May. Outcomes come in the August of that same Year 6 year, and any reserve list movement runs into Term 1 of the year they start Year 7. From there you can work backwards to the only question that actually needs an answer now: how much of Year 5 do you want to spend thinking about this at all.

For a family with a child currently in Year 4, that arithmetic usually comes as a relief. There is more time than the noise suggests, and the useful version of that time is not a long grind. It is a slow build of reasoning and reading habits across an ordinary year, followed by a shorter, more deliberate stretch of timed practice closer to the test, when it can actually do something.

The families who find this process calm are rarely the ones who worked hardest. They are the ones who knew, in November, what November was for.