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Below is what states on the Northwestern NUMATS page about EXPLORE. Hope this helps.

EXPLORE

NUMATS utilizes the EXPLORE test, developed by ACT for students in grade 8, to determine the abilities of students in grades 3 through 6. EXPLORE includes subtests in English, math, reading and science. Registered students arrive to assigned test center at 8:00 am. The test takes between 3–3½ hours to complete.

Which state are you from?

Texas has K-12 testing centers that you can take the test and move up. But you will face nightmare with taking 4th grade LA and 6th grade Math in public school crossing between elementary and middle schools. It gets easier in MS if they offer HS classes. Even in the same State, some school districts are rigid and won't accomodate. So, please check with your district.

Thank you. I've been scanning websites but had not come across that yet. Oh boy. DS will not be thrilled about spending his Sat. morning that way. ;-)

We are in Iowa. He's in a private school, so I'm not as worried about the crossover (it goes through GR8 and they start bussing some kids to the affiliated HS for math in MS).

Completely familiar with rigidity, unfortunately, from other experiences.

My DS7 is in first grade. Originally I was going to see if he could take the test to see where he is at in terms of grade level, before he took the WISC-V test. I was told that the test takes more than 3 hours long. I backed off :-)

I don't blame you! I think this might cost me lunch out with him if we want him to be cheerful about it. Going to have to frame it so he isn't balky about it. We need to make sure we have new "evidence" in the event of a hoped-for relocation, since he goes to a school with a very stringent grading scale (92 and below is a B) and his grades are a bit all over the place. I'm also very curious about what he's actually learned and where he still may have some gaps.

I would register for the grade the child is registered for in school. My DS is going to take it, but I registered him as grade 4 because he's only had a few weeks as a 5th grader and is in the trial period, not yet officially in 5th. Makes it kind of tricky, doesn't it. But the test is the same (8th grade level) no matter what grade you are taking it; and we should get to see how the scores compare to kids from various grades.

Thank you! I was confused about that -- makes sense now that I know it's all the same test. Age-based grade should do the trick.

I just want to add some data (factual information) to avoid parents being scared off. Many of these tests are not as onerous as you may assume. My kids have taken SCAT, Explore and SAT. Explore and SAT are not talent search dependent, meaning that you take the same test regardless of which talent search or lack thereof and you can be sitting in the same testing center with people signed up through different talent searches.

Explore is exactly 2 hours long and 100% multiple choice. There are 4 sections of 30 minutes each. You are supposed to have only one break, which shouldn't be more than 5 to 10 minutes long. The preliminaries (handling out materials, instructions) may take another 10 minutes or so. It is possible that some people arrive an hour early and hang around afterwards but it is not necessary. My kids were in the building only about 2 1/2 hours total each time they took the Explore. They were 8 years old (3rd grade) the first time and did not have any trouble. To put it in perspective, state testing for 3rd graders was as long and required actual writing.

Even the SAT is not that bad. The actual test is exactly 3 hours and 45 minutes long (including the 25 minutes experimental section). However, there are three 5 minute breaks and the preliminaries can take another 15-30 minutes so the actual "sit down" time is more like 4 1/4 to 4 1/2 hours. Because the administration can be huge with hundreds of test takers at one location who will need to be herded to the right location, you should plan to add another 30 minutes before start time. We did not try to go early so DS was at the school, including waiting in line outside the building for about 4 1/2 to 4 3/4 hours.

The SCAT is unlikely to be stressful. It is less than 1 hours of testing with an optional 5 minute break between the two sections. It is all on the computer and completely multiple choice. DS completed the whole test in less than 30 minutes.

The Explore is meant for entering 8th graders as the norms are for Fall 8th grade. The SCAT has several levels so the material can be 2 years or 3 years above level depending on your grade. The SCAT is interesting because it can measure either ability or achievement. In the math sections, the questions can be answered based on number sense and logic without actually solving the problems, which would measure ability. However, a kid who has gone through the math curriculum can also easily apply learned algorithms to solve the problems, which would measure achievement.

My point is not to be intimidated by these tests and present them to your kids as more than what they are. Kids need to know that the tests are likely to have some hard questions but that it is also no big deal regardless of how they perform.

Thank you so very much! This eases my concerns. We're now just deciding whether to have him go to the local site (which has the perhaps considerable disadvantage of being the place he was punished for being years ahead of the material covered) or one that's an hour drive away, but somewhere he enjoys visiting (for its great restaurants, lol). We'll likely let him pick once we figure out how to tell him "why" he's taking it.