City of London Girls withdrawing offers

Lentils I agree. City has an offer day on Feb 20th. If you’re not aware of how their exploding offers worked last year and why would you if didn’t read forums or know someone or your Head advised you would likely think you at least have a week or so to contemplate this important decision. My husband and I are in separate countries for the week due to his job so we couldn’t have turned in the signed form yet anyway. And you have to turn it in in person. Plus I assumed many families would travel over half term.

But plenty of families knew what they wanted I guess or are happy to lose the deposit should they decide otherwise.

Ps it was clear on the offers letter that they do this - they say something like ‘although the deadline is 5 March if we fill our places before then we’ll put your daughter on the wait list’. Or something like that. I think it will work against them as those with lots of offers won’t be jumping on it as those with only one will do.

LondonUSAmum why don’t you let City’s behaviour make your mind up for you and take one of your alternative offers?

We’re choosing between two schools and one has exploding offers and one doesn’t. We’re going to offers sessions at both on the 20th. If the offer explodes before then, so be it. I won’t be bullied into making a decision before even having a chance to revisit the school.

The non exploding school is far higher up the league tables and more prestigious. The head there said that actually working out how many places to offer isn’t very hard or complicated, you’ve got lots of historic stats to look at and there’s no excuse not to honour the deadline.

I've heard of this, they did it last year too.

Why don't they offer a smaller number of places and if they don't get enough acceptances they can go down the waiting list?? That seems much more sensible to me.

OP, did they tell you this in the offer letter? My lawyer DH wonders if there is some legal implication ie offer and acceptance....

Hello all, first time poster here! Firstly, can I say that while I get why schools would do this, I think it's bad form as it's a huge decision and makes it really tricky for those waiting to hear re state school offers.

Second, sorry to gatecrash but do you know if any of the boy's schools do this? We are overseas at the moment and I don't have our offer letters and am now in a panic that I might have missed something. Ds has offers from Alleyn's, Dulwich, Trinity and Whitgift. Thanks so much!

Wow, this is ridiculous. I know they need to manage a number of offers and slots on their end, but this just makes my blood boil. As if this entire non transparent 11+ system is not bad enough, schools then want you to make a snap decision that will literally affect the next 7 years of your child's life...Sure, I know, you can argue we had all the time in the run-up to think about it, but I'm sure many are torn between a lot of serious factors.

We got the same email from City this morning. I was aware they did this last year and our Head warned us we must act immediately if we wanted the space but I assumed they would do the “countdown” like they did last year when they emailed parents letting them know places were filling up.

We were hoping to go to the offers day on Feb 20th but I assume that is cancelled now.
I do understand they took 6 from the waiting list last year and likely could be more this year as I’m assuming even more paid the deposit without being certain they will take the space.

Curious as well to hear if any other schools do this...

Kingston Grammar does the same