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SelectiveGenius

How many children apply for each Selective and OC place?

Is OC harder to get into than Selective? By applications per place, yes: about 7.2 OC applications for each place against 4.2 for Selective in the 2025 figures.

Which entry route
Year on the Department's graph

The review labels each year as printed on its graph. We keep that label rather than guess which entry year it means.

OC and Selective applications per place

OC 7.2, Selective 4.2 applications per place

Your result

OC 7.2, Selective 4.2 applications per place. 13,263 OC applications for 1,840 places; 17,559 Selective applications for 4,227 places. That compares demand with capacity. It is not any one child's chance: families choose different schools, some do not sit the test, and declined offers are made again.

Applications per place, 2020 to 2025
0
3
6
9
'20'21'22'23'24'25OCSelectiveOC 7.2
  • OC applied13,263
  • OC places1,840
  • Selective applied17,559
  • Selective places4,227
  • OC
  • Selective (dashed)
  • Year you picked

Counting only children who sat the 2025 test: OC had 16.1 places per 100 who sat (11,458 sat); Selective had 27.1 to 27.3 places per 100 who sat (15,573 or 15,576 sat). Two official reviews print slightly different Selective figures, so we show both ends.

The Department’s own summary: “only about one in eight students are successful in gaining a place in an opportunity class and a quarter of students are successful in gaining a selective high school place”. For 2027 entry there are 4,338 Selective and 1,840 OC places.

A capacity ratio, not an acceptance rate. We do not forecast next year: a straight-line trend fitted to 2020 to 2024 missed 2025 by 9% for Selective and 17% for OC.

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Questions people ask

Is OC harder to get into than Selective?

By applications per place, yes: about 7.2 OC applications for each place against 4.2 for Selective in the 2025 figures. The Department's own summary says about one in eight students gain an OC place and a quarter gain a selective high school place. That compares competition, not how hard the test is.

How many children sit the selective test?

Official reviews of the 2025 test report 15,573 or 15,576 students sitting the Selective test (two reviews differ by three) and 11,458 sitting the OC test, from 17,559 and 13,263 applications.

How many selective school places are there for 2027?

4,338 Year 7 selective places (including 90 at Aurora College) and 1,840 Year 5 opportunity class places, from the Department's school lists.

Will it be more competitive next year?

No one can say reliably. Applications went up and down between 2020 and 2025 and fell in 2025 for both tests. A straight-line trend would have overestimated 2025, so we do not forecast.

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How we work this out

What it does

Applications divided by places for the Selective and OC tests, 2020 to 2025, from the Department's own review, with the 2025 test sitters and the 2027 places.

Applications and places for Selective Year 7 and OC Year 5, for the six years printed on the graph in Appendix 3 of the Department's 2025 independent review (Dr Bruniges), plus 2025 test sitters from two official reviews and the published places for 2027 entry.

Method

  1. Applications per place is applications divided by places for the same year: 13,263 OC applications for 1,840 places in 2025 is 7.2.
  2. Places per 100 applications is the same ratio turned over: 13.9 OC places per 100 applications in 2025.
  3. For 2025 we also divide places by the children who actually sat the test. Two reviews print 15,573 and 15,576 Selective sitters, and the places are 4,227 on the graph and 4,248 in the review's terms of reference, so we show the full range (27.1 to 27.3 places per 100 who sat).
  4. The years are the labels printed on the review's graph; we do not relabel them as entry years.

Published figures

Applications and places, 2020 to 2025

As printed on the review's graph (Bruniges, Appendix 3); year labels kept as printed
YearSelective: applications / placesOC: applications / places
202014,536 / 4,212 (3.5 per place)14,269 / 1,830 (7.8 per place)
202116,347 / 4,247 (3.8 per place)13,978 / 1,840 (7.6 per place)
202215,660 / 4,247 (3.7 per place)15,025 / 1,840 (8.2 per place)
202317,198 / 4,247 (4.0 per place)15,341 / 1,840 (8.3 per place)
202418,545 / 4,247 (4.4 per place)14,918 / 1,840 (8.1 per place)
202517,559 / 4,227 (4.2 per place)13,263 / 1,840 (7.2 per place)

Sources

Checked .