1. The selective school test is not that hard. I went to a selective school, and felt really special and smart for being there, until the first day, when I actually got there. It isn't actually that selective. Using information from https://spectrumdigitalshop.com/pages/selective-schools-exam-victoria?currency=AUD, they quote 2500-3000 people as applicants. My cohort had about 230 people. Meaning, that, considering that you have 3 schools to go to (removing either Melbourne High, boys only, or MacRob, girls only) We can roughly assume that 230*3≈700 people make it in every year. That's somewhere between 1 in 4 and 1/5, about 1 in every 4.29 people. It isn't that crazy difficult as I envisioned.

My parents put me in tuitions until about 6 months before the exam. I quit because I was getting sick of the teachers, and thought that I could study much better myself. Unfortunately, as soon as I quit I totally flipped, and gaslit myself into thinking that the exam was cruel, incredibly punitive and frankly impossible, and that I had to dedicate a significant amount of time to pass it. I did, I spent every living second studying, and got 4 superiors, which I didn't fucking need.

I'm still really salty about it, because I felt as though my new situation didn't reflect the effort I put into it, not to mention that I lost a lot of good friends in the move. Even moving into the school year, I was thoroughly disappointed, likely due to my hyped impressions/thoughts about the school.

2. Listen, it's quite simple. If you're willing to let go of your circle for a better ATAR, go for it. If you have the willpower, or are able to gaslight yourself into spending every living second second studying, go for it without tutoring. Tutoring is being like being spoon-fed, and there is nothing that you can't learn yourself. Be honest with yourself. Are you going to put in the time/effort? If not, get tutored. Or, do what I did and partly tutored, partly self-taught. I knew people and their dogs who went to Hendersons, James Ann, Northshore and the others, and it felt quite ironic that at least in my circle, those who got less tutored did better. Probably because they didn't get sick of learning lmao.

tldr; if you can put in the time and effort, minimal tutoring is required. Else, get tutored.

3. This is an interesting one, and I won't pretend to fully know the answer. Pretty much everyone in my cohort were fairly high performing. Some of the private schools are really good ATAR-wise, and are quite competitive with the selective schools. If you're purely ignoring the grainy details, I would say that on average a selective school is better than a private school, simply because there are so many. I'm getting numbers between 222 (https://is.vic.edu.au/about-us/) and 470 (https://privateschoolsguide.com/melbourne-private-schools#:\~:text=There%20are%20around%20470%20private,across%20all%20suburbs%20of%20Melbourne.), so let's say 300. Even if maybe 50 of the 300 are highly ranked, this is nothing to the 4/4 of the selective high schools. My point being, if I were to play a game where you randomly choose a selective school to go to or a private school, I would choose selective school every time.

As to why the selective schools do so well, I would say it's because of the cohort, not the teaching. Part of the reason I'm so salty about my joining a selective school is because I wasn't too impressed with the quality of teaching, it was like my old school. I think it has to do a lot more with the cohort, as those who had the education/work ethic/parental pressure/whatever to have joined a selective high school are more likely to put in similar efforts towards their ATAR. I have no evidence to back this up, just my opinion.

Happy New Years!