Hensachi and mock exams: what Nichinoken and ONETES publish

A mock exam (模試, mogi, or 公開模試, kōkai mogi) is a test run by a juku or a test company, sat by children from many schools on the same day. The result is usually a deviation score (偏差値, hensachi) and, later, a label the company prints next to each school you register. Two pages that publish those labels, read on 9 October 2026, are Nichinoken's judgment test (日能研 合格判定テスト) and ONETES (the company that runs 合格ONEテスト and related sittings).

A deviation score describes where one paper sits among the children who sat that paper. It is not a school grade, and it is not a statement that one school is a better place to study than another. The probability bands below are the labels those two companies print. They are not an offer of a place.

Nichinoken's judgment test

Nichinoken's page describes the 合格判定テスト as a sitting after the summer, for children who are about to treat the exam as real. The page says more than 12,000 children sit it. Results are posted on the web the next day.

The fee, tax included, is ¥6,050 for four subjects and ¥4,950 for two. The times on the page are Japanese 50 minutes, maths 50 minutes, social studies 35 minutes and science 35 minutes.

You register schools in two lists:

• A list: up to 8 schools whose exam dates do not clash. A morning exam and an afternoon exam on the same day may both be registered.
• B list: up to 4 further schools, and these dates may clash.

Nichinoken's own definition of the bands it prints:

R4=80％、R3=50％、R2=20％

R4 (アールよん) means the deviation score at which Nichinoken labels the chance of passing as 80 percent. R3 is 50 percent. R2 is 20 percent. On the result graph, one star mark is 5 percent. The page calls the area above R3 the "possible" zone and the area above R4 the "pass" zone. For A-list schools it also shows the average deviation of children who registered that school, last year's applicants, and last year's successful applicants, when it has those figures. If it does not, the cell is shown as --.-.

The forecast R4 table (予想R4表) is a list Nichinoken says it builds from the next exam's dates, places and subjects, plus the judgment-test results. It says that table is distributed to children who sit the open mock from September onward. Registration is on the members' site, or on a paper form if you applied at a Nichinoken classroom. The page points you to the R4 table and the school-code table when you pick schools. A code list marked for the 2027 exam was updated on the page as of 2 October 2026.

The same page says some sittings are held at a junior high or a university, and that a parents' meeting runs in parallel there, including a short school session when the venue is a junior high. External venues were marked as still being prepared when the page was opened.

What ONETES publishes

ONETES describes its open mocks as a capital-region test (首都圏, shutoken: Tokyo and the neighbouring prefectures) that any juku's students can sit. The test menu opened on 9 October 2026 lists these sittings. The menu gives the month and day; check the year on that sitting's own page.

合格ONEテスト (Gōkaku ONE tesuto), the subject mock:

Grade	Days on the menu
6	19 April, 12 July, 13 September, 12 October, 8 November, 13 December
5	12 July, 13 September, 12 October, 13 December, 17 January
4	17 January

スタートONEテスト, an earlier sitting, is listed for grades 3, 4 and 5 on 20–21 June and 5–6 December. 適性ONEテスト is the aptitude-test mock for public combined schools: grade 6 on 5 July, 23 September and 23 November, and grade 5 on 23 November. A separate "difficult-school skills" mock is marked as not running.

ONETES says each full test can judge up to six schools, including every round those schools offer, and that you can see your rank among children who registered the same school. From 2020 it has also printed a second axis it calls a thinking code (思考コード): knowledge and understanding, logical thinking, and creative thinking, each with a difficulty step. The deviation score moves from sitting to sitting. The thinking-code label is their description of the kind of question.

If you miss a test you had booked, or you buy their past-paper book, a simpler online judgment (簡易判定) lets you type a self-marked score. Japanese and maths are out of 150. Social studies and science are out of 100. One password allows three judgments and up to six schools, and the password is not reissued. Some schools cannot be judged on two subjects. The chance it prints runs from 80 percent down to under 30 percent. You also enter the child's sex, because the page says the school judgment uses it. Absent sitters who applied themselves are sent the paper, the answers and a password about 10 days after the test. If a juku booked the test, the page says the juku's own rule applies.

ONETES also prints a parents' meeting at many venues. The 2026 theme list on the same page runs from April ("what the latest exam suggests") through July (how to use a school session), September and October (results and the next exam), November (how to line up schools), December (the last weeks) and January (the six years after entry). Some venues skip the meeting.

What to do now

• Treat R4 and an ONETES percentage as that company's label for one paper. Ask the school, and read its own guidelines, before you decide where to apply.
• For Nichinoken, register non-clashing dates on the A list first. Eight plus four is the cap on that page.
• For ONETES, match the grade to the menu above, and open the sitting page for the year and the fee. This article does not have an ONETES fee.
• If you use the simple judgment, mark the paper yourself against their answers before you type the score, and check whether that school accepts a two-subject result.
• Keep the school-code table beside you. A wrong code judges a different school.