Stowe School 13+ Preparation

Stowe School no longer uses the ISEB Common Pre-Test for 13-plus entry, and it sets no Common Entrance requirement. Its own admissions page states it plainly: "Success in CAT4 Tests (or UKiset for whom English is not their first language). We no longer use the ISEB Pre-Tests as a mean of entry." Entry to the Third Form — Stowe's name for Year 9 — turns instead on three things, all of them assessed in Year 6: a private visit with interviews, a CAT4 result (or a UKiset result where English is not the child's first language), and a satisfactory reference or report from the child's current school. Successful candidates receive an unconditional offer on a fixed date: 31 January of Year 6 for day places, 1 March of Year 6 for boarding. Stowe takes approximately 180 pupils into the Third Form each year.

What Does Stowe Actually Test at 13+?

Stowe describes its own process as three steps "to be negotiated in Year 6", and it is worth being precise about what each one is, because the sequence is unusual among 13-plus schools.

• A private visit with interviews at Stowe — by exception, overseas pupils may be interviewed remotely. The visit takes in interviews with the Registrar and a Houseparent, a tour of a House, and a tour of the School with a member of the Sixth Form.
• Success in CAT4 Tests, or a UKiset test for candidates whose first language is not English. Stowe uses CAT4 "to assess academic ability and potential".
• A satisfactory reference or report from the candidate's current school. For pupils at a prep school, Stowe requests this from the Prep School Head in October of Year 6. For pupils at a UK state or independent school, and for those schooled overseas, reports are requested from parents during the early stages of the enquiry.

What is not on that list matters as much as what is. There is no written entrance paper at 13-plus for ordinary entry, no ISEB Pre-Test, and no Common Entrance. Written papers appear in the Stowe process only in the Year 8 scholarship round, which is a separate competition for pupils who already hold a place. Stowe does reserve the right to apply additional academic assessments to candidates it considers borderline.

When Do You Register, and When Do Offers Arrive?

Stowe advises families to begin when their child is in Year 4 or 5, visiting on an Open Morning with the aim of narrowing a long list down to three or four schools. Registration itself has no fixed deadline: Stowe fills its places on a first come, first served basis, and recommends only that parents register no later than December of Year 6. Registration adds a child to the School List for that year of entry; Stowe is explicit that it does not on its own guarantee admission, or a place in any particular House.

Working the year groups through gives the full span. A child in Year 6 during the 2026–27 school year sits CAT4 in October or November 2026, receives a day offer on 31 January 2027 or a boarding offer on 1 March 2027, and enters the Third Form in September 2029. That is two years and seven months between a day offer and arrival, and two years and six months for a boarding offer. It is a long wait, and because the offer is unconditional it is a wait with no further entry hurdle in it.

What Is CAT4, and Can a Child Prepare for It?

CAT4 is the fourth edition of the Cognitive Abilities Test, published by GL Assessment. GL describes it as an assessment of "the main types of reasoning ability known to make a difference to learning and achievement", reported across four batteries: Verbal Reasoning, Non-verbal Reasoning, Spatial Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning. Results come back as standard age scores for each battery plus an overall mean. GL sets CAT4 as three tests of 45 minutes each — two hours and fifteen minutes in total — sat online on a PC or tablet, or on paper.

The honest answer on preparation is one most tutoring pages will not give you. GL Assessment's own published position is: "We strongly advise against any kind of practice ahead of a CAT4 test and we do not recommend or endorse any CAT4 practice materials." The test is designed to read underlying reasoning rather than taught content, and the publisher does not want it coached. We take that at face value. What can be built over Years 4 to 6 is genuine reasoning fluency — comfort with words, number, pattern and space — which is a slow, ordinary business rather than a drilling exercise in the term before the test.

Stowe publishes no CAT4 threshold for ordinary 13-plus entry. The only CAT4 figures on its admissions pages sit on the Third Form scholarship page, and they apply to Year 8 scholarship candidates rather than to entry: an Academic scholarship candidate is expected to have a CAT4 mean of 130+, and a Roxburgh candidate a mean of circa 120+. Treat those as the scholarship bar, not the entry bar. Anyone quoting you a CAT4 entry score for Stowe is quoting something Stowe has not published.

What If English Is Not Your Child's First Language?

Stowe asks candidates whose first language is not English to sit UKiset instead of CAT4. Overseas candidates whose first language is English sit CAT4 like everyone else, and may be interviewed remotely by exception.

UKiset describes itself as an adaptive online entry test in English for admission to UK independent schools, measuring four areas: vocabulary, mathematics, non-verbal reasoning, and other English skills covering reading, listening and creative writing including grammar and spelling. It also reports a CEFR level through the Cambridge English Linguaskill test. It is open to candidates aged 9.5 to 18, is sat under online invigilation anywhere in the world or at an approved test centre, and results are normally processed within three business days. A UKiset profile can be sent to up to five schools, results are valid for one year, and the test can be retaken after three months. UKiset's published fee is £295, with a 10% surcharge for a weekend sitting (UKiset, checked 8 September 2026).

That three-month retake floor is worth planning around. A candidate who sits UKiset in November of Year 6 and is unhappy with the result cannot sit it again until February — after the 31 January day-offer date, and only just before the 1 March boarding date. Sitting early enough to leave a retake window inside the offer calendar is a scheduling decision, and it is one of the few genuine levers a family has. Families whose child's normal residence is outside the UK should also note Stowe's additional deposit of £12,000, on top of the standard £1,500, payable on acceptance.

How Tight Is the Visit Window for Day Families?

This is our own reading of Stowe's published windows rather than a Stowe rule, but the arithmetic is straightforward and the two windows are rarely read against each other.

Stowe offers four visit appointments per weekday and three on most Saturday mornings in term time. That is 4 × 5 + 3 = 23 individual visits a week, and Stowe adds that appointments are "routinely booked up one to two months in advance". Now hold that against the interview windows: day pupils are seen from September to mid-January of Year 6, boarders from September to March.

Follow Stowe's own registration backstop — December of Year 6 — and a day family booking a visit at that point is booking into January or February. The day window shuts in mid-January. Working back from the one-to-two-month booking lead, the practical last moment for a day family to make contact is closer to mid-November of Year 6, roughly two months before the window closes, not December. A boarding family following the same December backstop still has a three-month runway to March and is comfortable. The published advice is the same for both; the real deadline is not.

Which Scholarships Can a Stowe Candidate Apply For, and When?

Third Form scholarship applications and assessments happen in Year 8, not Year 6, with the single exception of Equestrian, which is assessed in July of Year 7 on an individual basis. Stowe's guidance is explicit that a place can be secured from Year 6 onwards and that scholarship applications come later: securing the place and competing for an award are two separate exercises, two years apart. Candidates may apply for more than one award, but cannot be given both an Academic and a Roxburgh scholarship, or both a Sport and a Golf scholarship. Applications go to the Admissions Office with a supporting reference from the candidate's current Head covering academic ability, character and temperament as well as the relevant specialism.

The assessments themselves differ sharply by award. Academic candidates sit papers in English, Maths and Science, plus additional papers of their choice from Humanities, Classics, French or Spanish, and the Head's Essay paper, followed by an interview with the Head, Deputy Head (Academic) or Head of Lower School and a Philosothon. Roxburgh is a two-day programme with English, Maths and Science papers, an interview, Stowe's Leadership Challenge, and an assessment in a chosen area of Art, Design, Drama, Music or Sport. Music candidates should be around Grade 5 standard on at least one instrument and face an audition panel plus an interview with the Director of Music. Art is an observational drawing exercise and a portfolio discussion; Drama is a portfolio submitted in advance, a two-to-four-minute audition piece from memory, a group workshop and an interview with the Director of Drama; Design is a timed design challenge and a discussion of past work. Chess candidates play a live game under tournament rules with a clock, and submit a Chess CV. Sport and Golf both require a CV, with Golf assessed by Stowe's PGA professional on the nine-hole course.

Stowe publishes the dates below for the 2027-entry scholarship round. Read them carefully: this round is for pupils currently in Year 8, who already hold a Stowe place. It is not the same cohort as the Year 6 CAT4 timeline above, and conflating the two is an easy way to end up preparing for the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Two things fall out of that table. The Golf, Sport and Chess deadlines all fall on 11 September 2026, three days from the date this page was checked, while the Academic, Music, Art, Design and Roxburgh deadlines sit in early November — so the sporting awards close roughly two months before the academic ones, and a Year 8 family weighing both has already used most of its runway on one of them. And the scholarship round is the one part of the Stowe process where past-paper work is both possible and sanctioned: Stowe publishes past and sample Academic Scholarship papers in English, Maths, Science, Humanities, French, Spanish and Classics, in direct contrast to CAT4, where the publisher advises against practice altogether.

What Happens After an Unconditional Offer?

On receipt of the completed Acceptance of Place Form and the £1,500 deposit, Stowe confirms both the place and the House. Because the offer is unconditional, there is nothing further to pass. Years 7 and 8 carry no Stowe entrance assessment of any kind, which is the single largest practical difference between Stowe and the 13-plus schools that still run an ISEB Pre-Test into a conditional offer and a Common Entrance sitting in the summer of Year 8.

Families who arrive late are not shut out. Stowe accepts late applications in Year 7 subject to availability, and says it will consider them up to the point of entry subject to capacity. It also allows for a bad day: Stowe states that where a candidate does not initially perform well in interviews or CAT4, it will consider re-assessment at a later stage on a case-by-case basis, again subject to capacity.

Working With Leading Tuition on Stowe 13+ Preparation

Leading Tuition provides 1-to-1 tutoring for pupils preparing for 13-plus entry, and for Stowe specifically that means being clear about what preparation can and cannot do. We do not sell CAT4 drilling, because the test's publisher advises against practice and we are not going to tell you otherwise. What we do is build the underlying reasoning — verbal, quantitative, spatial and non-verbal — across Years 4 to 6, in the ordinary way that makes a child comfortable with unfamiliar problems whatever form they take.

The second leg is the interview. Stowe's Year 6 visit puts a child in front of the Registrar and a Houseparent, and it rewards a child who can talk with some conviction about what they actually care about — an instrument, a sport, a subject, a project of their own. That is developed over months, not rehearsed in a week, and our specialist tutors work on it as a habit of thinking out loud rather than a script. The third leg is the Year 8 scholarship round, where written papers finally do enter the picture and Stowe's own published past and sample papers give a real syllabus to work from.

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot by families across the UK, and we work with Stowe candidates in person and online. For official entry requirements, registration and the current calendar, always check Stowe School's 13+ admissions page and its Third Form scholarships page directly — dates move, and this page records what those pages said on 8 September 2026. Book a free consultation to talk through where your child is in the Stowe timeline.

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