City of London Girls full and withdrawing offers - anyone heard similar and advice?

Hi Pradaqueen, I understand the maths but still this system makes no sense to me and seems grossly unfair. Why overoffer by this much? Why favour those for whom potentially losing 1.5k deposit is insignificant?

ChocolateWombat - the other school is Channing in Highgate. I am also new to the whole 11+ thing (I am not even British) so was very surprised.

In fact, the email I got did not mention this - so I went on holiday for half term and only got the posted offer when I got back - imagine the panic when I read the letter!!

Op and @eastlondon mum. I know it is hard, and I sympathise with your position but the email was really clear...I accepted a place yesterday by scanned signed copies on email and deposit transfer after getting the 65% email yesterday as this meant that there were no more than 26 places available and I figured it might trigger a panic....i couldn't do it before as my DH was away with work and we needed both signatures. Sod's law was that one of her other schools upped her scholarship offer after I had accepted the place but I think city is the right place for her. Every year there are people who accept the place before getting the state/grammar offers (partic HB) but the max cooling off period to cancel the contract you have is 14 days so it is tight. Generally you will lose the deposit but you may be liable for the first terms fees if you don't read the small print properly. I do hope that you get what you want. Just email the registrar and explain that if offered, you would accept. Maybe send the paperwork in anyway and the deposit to show good faith?

Notcontent, would you mind naming the other school that is using this practice too please? And does anyone know of any others that do this too? I am really shocked as I have never heard of it.
How awful for the children who have been celebrating their success in gaining an offer (and the parents too) to then lose it.

I really feel for those of you in this position. Are there other offers you are holding too,mor was it just state you were waiting for?

I think it is an unreasonable practice. People should be given the chance to hear if they have received a state school offer. They should make fewer offers to start with and should be able to make some kind of judgement about what is appropriate based on previous year's experiences of take-up of offers.
I haven't heard of this before and hope it doesn't become more widespread. If it does, people who can afford to lose a term of fees will accept and later decline their place....but not everyone can afford to do this, and they may well lose some excellent candidates. An offer should be an offer until acceptance day. If the only emails sent saying they were near their limit were yesterday and today, that wasn't enough time for anyone to gather more information and it would be very possible to miss all of those messages and miss out. I can see why they do it, but don't think it is necessary to fill their places and do think it is unreasonable.

In my view, one of the features of the independent school market is needing to over offer.....and good schools learn from the past and know how much to over offer, whether to run waiting lists and their length and then manage to fill their schools without going vastly over. Why can't this school manage to do these things that other schools do? What is so different about them?

Tbh I wouldn't have expected 65 percent full to 100 per cent full in the space of a few hours. Last year we couldn't decide between City and Godolphin and as a result we went to both schools offer holders tour. We rejected our City offer a good few days after the tour, so it does appear that people have moved far quicker this year.
It is a horrible position to be in.

I share the same feelings entirely.
And it is so unfair for the kids. We are lucky to have other offers, but really not sure what to tell my DD tomorrow

They did send an email yesterday to say they had reached 65%. Around 9:30 this morning they sent another saying 85%. I missed this one as I was chatting to my DD on our way to City for the tour. Just after 11am they communicated that they had reached 100% ...

Last year the offer email clearly set out their position re withdrawing offers once the target number of acceptances had been achieved. In addition to this we received numerous emails letting us know how close they were to achieving their target eg we have now received half of our target acceptance number, we have now received over three quarters of our target ....Has the school stopped sending such emails?

This was mentioned in the offer email. However it still caught us by surprise, especially as it is the first 11+ journey for us, we come from a state primary and you have no idea by how much the school as over offered. We (clearly wrongly) had assumed a fair amount of people would have waited for the offers holders open morning if not for national offer day (for grammar schools) before making the final decision and also co-ed school offers only came out on Friday.
We received the same upsetting email from CLSG today and still haven't had the heart to tell DD. We had been for a tour of the school just this morning as my husband is away next week for work and could have not attended the offers holders next Tuesday. What happens now? How likely is that anyone will change their mind and thus lose their deposit?

I believe that City started doing this two years ago. People have been caught our each year. I am surprised that they haven't made the initial offer letter clearer by now.

Gosh, I don't think I've come across that before - though I have known of schools making a 'have you made your mind up yet?' call before the deadline. But I've always assumed that is so they can offer the place to people on the waiting list if they get a 'no'. Withdrawing/downgrading the offer before the deadline is something I have not come across though.

Sorry, I have no advice except to say that hopefully some who have accepted will change their mind. I have to say I think it's really bad practice!

I think most schools do this and it should have been expressly stated in the offer letter. The way it works is this - say the school has 60 places. They know that most girls will have offers from more than one school - so they might make 75 offers, knowing that statistically it is very unlikely that all 75 will accept.

The letter I got from another school said exactly that - but I only realised when I came back from half term - I emailed them to accept that night!!!