DePaul College Prep Entrance Exam and Essay Writing Guide for Fall 2027

What the DePaul College Prep Entrance Exam Covers

The DePaul College Prep entrance exam uses the High School Placement Test, or HSPT. The school lists verbal and quantitative cognitive skills, followed by reading, mathematics and language skills. The short essay is a separate task within the exam experience. On multiple-choice questions, you mark your selections on a bubble sheet. On the writing sample, the reader needs enough context to follow your response from beginning to end.

STEM Critical Thinking for HSPT Quantitative Skills

The quantitative section includes comparisons, sequences and reasoning. Try naming the relationship before calculating. For the sequence 3, 7, 15, 31, check whether doubling and adding one explains every step. If your rule fits only the final pair, keep looking. That checking habit also helps on comparisons, where two expressions may look different and still have the same value. In my experience, students who name the pattern in words before calculating make fewer careless errors.

Review direct math skills separately. A fraction operation and a number pattern can both involve arithmetic, but they ask you to do different things. Keep a simple error log with columns for the skill, the mistake and the check you’ll use next time.

For verbal reasoning, use pairs of words to practice naming a relationship. A thermometer measures temperature, so first look for another instrument and the quantity it measures. Read every option before committing. For reading comprehension, point to the phrase that supports your answer. Writing down the reason for one or two misses can tell you whether to slow down at the question stem or return to the passage more often.

Essay Writing for the DePaul College Prep Writing Sample

DePaul describes a short writing sample. Its public exam page gives the broad format, so use the actual test-day directions for topic, length and timing. For practice, build a compact response with a clear answer, a developed example and a final sentence that explains why the example matters.

Try this original practice prompt. Describe a time you changed your approach to a difficult task. What prompted the change, and what happened next? If you pick a group presentation, narrow the story to the rehearsal where a teammate could not follow your explanation. Then identify the revision you tried and the difference you observed at the next run-through.

Essay Writing Practice With One Strong Example

Underline the action you took. If your draft skips from a problem straight to a result, add the decision in between. A reader can then see how you responded to the difficulty. In a short sample, that decision usually earns its space more than a long introduction about the importance of persistence. I’ve watched students improve a draft quickly just by adding the one decision that sits between the problem and the result.

Compare two versions of the same example. “We practiced more and it worked” leaves the reader guessing about what changed. “We put each diagram on its own slide and tested the explanation on a classmate” supplies an action and a way to check it. In your own response, keep the details that let a reader follow the sequence. Use the remaining space to explain how your choice changed the outcome.

A Practice Schedule for the DePaul College Prep Entrance Exam

Give yourself three kinds of practice sessions. First, work a small set of reading or reasoning questions and explain the choices you eliminated. Second, handwrite a practice response to an unfamiliar question. Third, combine the two activities so you get used to changing tasks without carrying mistakes or frustration into the next section.

You can start with a 15-minute writing drill at home. Try two minutes to plan, ten to write and three to reread. Those are practice intervals. On test day, follow the proctor’s directions. If your draft stays unfinished, shorten the opening next time and begin your example earlier. If your ideas are clear but the ending repeats the introduction, use the ending to explain what the example taught you.

When you practice bubbling, check the question number against the row after any skipped item. It takes a moment and can prevent several misplaced marks. Use the last week to repeat the routines you can control, including reading the full prompt before outlining.

After one drill, cover the draft and tell someone your answer in two sentences. If the spoken version is clearer, notice which detail you moved forward. Try that order in the next written response. If you have trouble choosing an example, build a small list of experiences from class, home, activities or a team. Use the list to practice finding a fit for an unfamiliar prompt.

How the DePaul College Prep Entrance Exam Fits the Application

Start with the student inquiry form, which sets up the student and parent accounts. Exam registration runs through the parent or guardian’s MyDePaulPrep account. The same account is used for the online freshman application. Set separate calendar reminders for registration, the exam and the application deadline, since finishing the test leaves application work to complete.

DePaul considers the entrance exam together with other factors such as grade school performance and extracurricular involvement. School records and prior standardized scores are part of the application steps. Ask your current school how to obtain those records while you still have time to resolve missing documents.

The school ties merit award and financial aid consideration to testing at DePaul. If you’re weighing several Catholic high schools, decide where to test before registering. DePaul’s exam page says the archdiocese permits taking the entrance exam once at one Catholic high school. That policy makes your test location an application decision as well as a logistical one.

When you request school records, ask which grades or test reports are already available and which will be released later. Keep a copy of the portal checklist so you know what to follow up on after the exam.

Planning the DePaul College Prep Entrance Exam Morning

Check-in starts at 7:30 a.m. and you need to be seated at 8 a.m. Set a departure time that leaves room for Chicago traffic and drop-off. Have your two sharpened No. 2 pencils and clear water bottle ready the night before. If you rely on a calculator as part of an accommodation, confirm the school’s approval ahead of time. In my experience, a calm morning helps more than one extra hour of studying the night before.

The school’s accommodations page gives December 1 for sending supporting documentation in the request instructions. It also displays December 4 in its summary table. Use the earlier date and confirm the submission timing with DePaul. An approved accommodation can change how you mark answers or how long you have to complete the exam.

After the test, put the December 18 application deadline back at the top of your list. Give yourself a day to check whether each required item appears in the portal. A calendar reminder for the application matters even if you’ve already received confirmation that you sat for the exam.

Once you’re seated, pay attention to how the proctor signals the end of each task. When the writing sample begins, reread the prompt before you plan. If the question asks for a reason and an example, make room for both. Save a quick final pass for missing words or an unclear pronoun.