This year’s 8th grade students are in the process of deciding where they are going to go for high school. After they have decided, they take the entrance exam for the specific school that they would like to attend. These entrance exams are tests that high schools use to decide if a student will be accepted into the school, depending on his or her scores. The schools that the students took tests for were Dominican, Marquette University High School, and Divine Savior Holy Angels (DSHA). The tests for the last two schools very similar. November 8th was on a Friday, and November 9th was on a Saturday. About half of the students took the test on the Friday, and those who did got to skip the morning of that school day. The others took the test on the Saturday.

Both Marquette and DSHA used the same test called the ACT Explore exam. The tests started at around 8:00 AM and ended at around 11:00 AM.The tests have four different sections, or subjects, that they test the students on. They are science, math, reading, and English. The reading section tested to see how well the students can understand a passage of text. The English tested to see how well the students understand grammar and sentence structure. The science section tested students more on understanding tables and data than on memorized facts. The math section tested a student’s proficiency at math.

At the Marquette tests, the students were given a room number when they checked in at the beginning of the tests. The student would go to the homeroom number that was on his notecard. This is where they would take their tests, and there were about ten to fifteen students in each room. The teachers were there to watch over the students testing, and the high school students that attend Marquette had no school on the Friday that the tests were taking place. The tests were each thirty minutes long, and after two there was a break. The school itself was very big, with much more hallways than St. Robert’s. There are lots of different rooms, and it could be easy to become lost. Almost everything is different and it would take some getting used to if you were to go there for high school.

The DSHA test also consisted of reading, math, science, and English sections. It was very similar to the Marquette test. The tests were both the same length, and there was a break after two tests. The students were also divided up into separate rooms to take the tests. Both high schools were very different from St. Robert’s, and gave the 8th graders some mixed feelings. Maeve Devine, an 8th grader who took the DSHA entrance tests, says, “It was honestly a little overwhelming. There were over one hundred girls that were there taking the test. To think that all of these people were trying to get in to DSHA was very nerve-racking.”

Some students did more to prepare than others. Jake Nation says that he “studied with a preparatory notebook.” Some might have studied for all of the different tests, while others might have only studied for one. “I only prepared for math because I felt that would be the hardest for me personally. And Ms. Biernacki gave us some practice tests and so I did those,” says Maeve Devine. With preparation, some students thought that the tests were easy. “I personally thought the tests were pretty easy, because I was well prepared. If you read questions carefully and manage your time it turned out really well,” says Maeve. Jake also thought the same. “It wasn’t as hard as I imaged it to be,” he says. Hopefully the students who took the tests will be accepted into the schools. They will find out if they made it in from a letter that will come soon after Christmas.