Hunter Elementary Schools Admissions Warns Parents Not to Prepare for Testing!

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - September 12th, 2011

It’s that time of year again for Manhattan parents to apply to Hunter Elementary School in New York City. According to the Hunter website the completed application (application form, administrative fee, and birth certificate/adoption record) must be received in the Admissions Office no later than November 4th, 2011 by 4 PM.

It’s interesting to note Hunter’s position on preparing your child for the Stanford-Binet V test. The SB-5 is part of the vetting process to getting accepted into Hunter Elementary School, which is one of the most competitive Kindergartens in the nation.

A NOTE ABOUT “PREPPING” FOR TESTING (From Hunter’s web site)

“HCES strongly discourages exposing children to the Stanford-Binet 5 prior to the formal administration of the exam for the purpose of admission to HCES. Psychologists are required to inform the Director of Admissions if there is evidence that a child has had previous experience with the exam or specific exam activities. HCES reserves the right to disqualify any child from competition for admission if there is evidence that testing with the approved psychologist is not the child’s first experience with the exam.”

No matter what test your child is taking, we at TestingMom.com in no way condone exposing your child to the actual Stanford-Binet 5 or any other test your child takes. We DO condone making sure you are preparing your child with the concepts that these exams evaluate. For example, the SB-5 evaluates the following concepts:

• Fluid Reasoning: early reasoning with pictures, analogies.
• Knowledge: vocabulary. Includes toys, identification of body parts, Verbal Quantitative
• Reasoning: contains five different levels. tapping number concepts, problem solving, and figural-geometric/measurement estimation problems
• Visual-Spatial Processing
• Working Memory: memory for sentences and last word.

As you can tell, all the items above are broad enough in spectrum that you can easily incorporate in your daily life with your child and aren’t exclusive to the Stanford-Binet IQ test, or any other child’s IQ test for that matter. For example, you can help your 4 year old identify body parts when you are giving him a bath or play a word game with your daughter where she ends a sentence you say with an appropriate word. At TestingMom.com, we give parents (like us!) the tools and resources to effectively practice the concepts that are on the Stanford-Binet and other intelligence tests given for private school admissions and G&T programs.