The Best Test Prep for Your 7-Year-Old©

by Deborah L. Ruf, PhD, 2022

In this post, we look at how to prepare your bright, possibly gifted child for individual or group testing for intellectual ability and current achievement levels.

In a later post, I talk about how to find the right person to work with you and your child for individual testing.

The reasons a young child gets tested for academic ability and intelligence vary. Some parents recognize or suspect their children are so highly intelligent that they would benefit from starting school earlier than other students. It’s called Early Entrance and is common throughout the country. Although schools sometimes administer the needed tests free of charge, it isn’t common. An individual test is time consuming and requires a higher level of training than for a group test, so it’s time-consuming for the school psychologist or gifted specialist.

Well-known individual tests have more questions within a wider array of ability domains than the group tests have. The latter are proctored by classroom teachers and aren’t as thorough as an individual test but are great for initial screening purposes. Before children are admitted to school earlier than the usual cutoff age, though, schools almost always require testing. It’s the most common reason to test earlier than age 7.

It’s generally accepted that age 7 is the ideal age for getting the most useful result and input regarding your child’s needs. By that age, most children are mature enough to follow a classroom teacher’s directions for completing the forms that are part of the tests. Accordingly, it is in 2nd or 3rd grade that almost all United States schools first administer the first round of ability and achievement tests to all children. Anyone currently reading this who grew up in the United States took those tests and the results are in your mother’s — or your own — filing system. Most schools administer the versions of the same tests at least two more times before you and the other students finish 8th grade.

For many private schools, especially college preparatory or schools…