How similar to the real HPAT exam are ACER's practice materials?

We often get asked which preparation materials are most similar to the real HPAT exam in February.

ACER (the Australian Council for Educational Research), the organization that creates the exam, offers four practice exams and two sets of additional questions, available for purchase once you register.

We asked last year's top-performing students—those who scored in the 90th percentile and above—whether they thought there were any similarities.

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Here’s what one student had to say:

 “Regarding comparability, overall I think the real exam was largely similar to the ACER practice exams.

In Section 1, there was a much stronger emphasis on problem-solving and data interpretation, with mostly block-style questions and very few standalone ones.

 Section 2 was quite similar, although they did include some new question types, such as ‘Given a statement, do you believe this statement would be helpful?’ with options like very helpful, quite helpful, or not helpful.

 Section 3 felt the most similar to ACER, as many of the general mapping patterns and methods I had learned were directly applicable.”

The general advice around HPAT preparation has always been that ACER Practice Test 4 and ACER Additional Practice Questions 2 are the most similar to the real exam—and it seems that hasn’t changed!

My advice: save the ACER materials for the last month or two of your preparation, as they tend to be slightly easier than third-party resources like MedEntry’s prep materials.

Hope this helps! If you’re looking for one-to-one HPAT tuition or have any questions, feel free to email me at james@HPATteacher.com .