"What score do you need to get into GATE?" is the question we get asked more than any other — and the honest answer is that there's no single number. Every school sets its own effective cut-off, it moves every year with the strength of that year's applicants, and the Department of Education only ever publishes it after the fact. Here's what the numbers actually show, straight from the Department's own published data.
What is the TSS, and how is it calculated?
Every child who sits the Academic Selective Entrance Test (ASET) receives a standardised score for each of the four components — reading comprehension, communicating ideas in writing, quantitative reasoning, and abstract reasoning. These four scores are added together to give a Total Standard Score (TSS), which is what schools actually rank applicants on.
Two things trip parents up here. First, TSS scores are not percentages or percentiles — a score of 220 doesn't mean 220 out of anything obvious. Second, because only students who applied for a selective program sit the test, your child's TSS is measured against a group of already high-performing applicants, not the whole state. That's part of why the test feels harder than school work — it's designed to.
The minimum score everyone needs — and why it barely matters
For academic programs, the Department requires a minimum TSS of 209.5 just to be considered at all. Below that, an application isn't ranked, regardless of preferences.
But clearing 209.5 guarantees nothing. Places are offered strictly in order of TSS, highest first, until every place at every preferenced school is filled. For a handful of smaller regional or newer schools, 209.5 is close to what actually gets an offer most years. For popular metro schools — and especially for Perth Modern School, WA's only fully selective school — the real bar sits far higher.
Minimum entrance scores by school (2024–2025)
The table below shows the minimum entrance score for a sample of academic programs — the lowest TSS that actually received an offer, after every round was finished, in each of the last two years. These are published by the Department of Education as a historical guide only; they change every year and say nothing about the score a future cohort will need.
| School | 2024 score | 2025 score |
|---|---|---|
| Perth Modern School | 247.20 | 244.34 |
| Willetton Senior High School | 235.98 | 235.98 |
| Shenton College | 234.94 | 231.55 |
| Bob Hawke College | 234.59 | 230.80 |
| Harrisdale Senior High School | 227.64 | 226.57 |
| Melville Senior High School | 225.60 | 224.15 |
| Carine Senior High School | 221.23 | 221.98 |
| Duncraig Senior High School | 216.20 | 216.71 |
| Fremantle College | 210.26 | 209.50 |
| Bunbury / Comet Bay / Kelmscott (and others) | 209.50 | 209.50 |
Source: ASET Performance Report — Minimum entrance scores (previous years), WA Department of Education. This is a partial list — see the Department's page for the complete table (17 schools, 2016–2025) and the separate Languages program figures, which combine TSS with an interview score.
Why "the cut-off" moves every year
Cut-offs aren't set in advance — they're a byproduct of ranking that year's applicant pool. If more strong applicants preference a school in a given year, its effective cut-off rises; if fewer do, it can fall. Perth Modern's minimum entrance score moved from 240.06 in 2020 to a high of 247.20 in 2024, back down to 244.34 in 2025 — a swing of several points most years, in both directions. The Department is explicit about this: minimum scores for Year 7 entry in 2027 "will only be known at the end of the 2026 placement process."
How far above the minimum should you actually aim?
Given how much cut-offs move, families are generally better off preparing to comfortably clear their preferred school's recent scores rather than just scraping past the historical minimum — a stronger cohort the following year can lift the bar by several points with no warning. It's also worth listing more than one preference in genuine order of preference, since your child's TSS is compared against the field for every school they've listed, not just their first choice.
Start preparing for GATE 2027
If your child is in Year 5 now, the test that determines their Year 7 2028 place is the 2027 GATE (ASET) sitting — which means this year and next are the window that actually matters for building reasoning skills, not the few weeks before test day. Our students have taken WA's highest GATE Writing and Abstract Reasoning scores two years running using exactly this approach: start early, train under real timed conditions, and track progress properly.