Both DS and DD thought the sample questions were easier than the actual test questions.
If you are really wondering whether sample questions are predictive of the actual scores, then the answer depends on your child.
For my DS, who is more advanced, you can say that performance on the samples predicted performance on the actual test. For my DD, who is not as advance, doing really well on the sample questons did not necessarily translate to top scores on the Explore. That seems to hold true for them on other out of level tests like SCAT.
