AU selective dates to put on the calendar
HAST scholarship rounds, NSW Selective, Opportunity Class, and Victorian Select Entry do not share a month. Switch the chart between application close and sit day for 2026.
Selective and scholarship papers in Australia are not one season. A family that prepares “for February” can be early for NSW Selective and late for a HAST scholarship application. The chart uses the 2026 windows in RubricMark’s exam calendar. It is a planning view, not a booking confirmation. Official pages move; check them before you pay or travel.
Switch between Applications close and Sit day. The number on the axis is the day of 2026 so the gaps are visible. The note on each bar is the calendar date.
[[chart:ld-au-sits-2026]]| Paper | Applications close | Sit |
|---|---|---|
| HAST scholarship, SA cooperative | 23 January | 7 February |
| HAST scholarship, cooperative round | 8 February | 28 February |
| NSW Selective High School Placement Test | 20 February | 1–2 May |
| NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test | 20 February | 8–9 May |
| Victorian Select Entry High School Exam | 24 April | 20 June |
What the gaps are for
HAST scholarship rounds clustered here sit in late summer. NSW Selective applications close in February and the test is in May — about ten weeks of retrieve, not ten weeks of rereading a booklet the night before. Opportunity Class is the same application close and the following weekend. Victorian Select Entry is later: applications into April, the exam in June.
Edutest and ASET dates are set by the school or by Education WA, not by this statewide table. If that is your paper, use the section clocks in HAST, Selective, Edutest, and ASET for the shape of the sitting, and the school’s own page for the day.
None of these dates is a reason to skip ordinary schoolwork. They are a reason to put one sit on a calendar and retrieve toward it, instead of treating “selective” as a mood.
A planning pass that takes one evening
- Write the close date and the sit date for the one paper you are entering. If you are entering two, write both. Do not collect a fifth.
- Count the weeks between close and sit. That is the retrieve window, not the cram window.
- Put a weekly short sit on the same weekday. Full papers are for stamina, not for every night.
- The week of the sit, stop adding new cards. Clear what is due.
Named timed papers, when we have them, are in Practice Hub. HAST practice starts at the HAST page. Cards for the methods you must still produce stay in Study Lab. Language sits that fall on their own calendar are in JLPT Sundays and OET venues.
What not to do with the gap
The weeks between an application close and a sit are not a reason to buy a thicker booklet and read it. They are weeks of retrieve. For NSW Selective, applications close in February and the test is in May. That is time for thinking-skills methods and a 30-minute writing piece to become something you can produce, not time for a new summary every Sunday. For the February HAST rounds, the gap after applications close is short. If you are entering that round, the retrieve should already be underway before the close date, not after it.
Opportunity Class shares Selective’s application close and sits the next weekend. It is not the same paper. Do not train OC on Selective’s writing block. Victorian Select Entry’s June sit means a family also watching NSW should not assume one weekend covers both.
Put the dates in a place you will see, then ignore the internet’s weekly “how many weeks left” posts. The work is the due pile and one section under the real clock. The clocks are in the section chart. If a date on this page and a date on an official site disagree, the official site is the one you travel for.
Edutest and ASET are missing from the bars on purpose. Their days are set by a school or by Education WA, and a statewide bar would be a fiction. When that letter arrives, add two lines to the same calendar you used for Selective: the close, and the morning. Then use the section chart for minutes. A date without a clock is how students practise the wrong length of writing and call it preparation.