City of London Girls withdrawing offers

"Someone who went to the offer Day this week said that one of the teachers indicated that they had made far fewer offers than last year and still had the problem."

Exactly. There are more people living to the East of London who can afford private education, so overall demand has grown. (Plus SPGS drawing boundaries, etc, etc) Equally acceptance rates per offer will have risen, as for people to the East are much more likely to have City as their first choice, and now they are out of the Consortium there will be far fewer who simply tick the City box and pay an extra cheque. The Consortium also meant a consistency of results. So a good day on the Consortium papers would have meant lots of offers including City, a bad day not. Now a girl might have a bad day on the Consortium but a good day at City and so is more likely to take the City offer.

That is what I meant by drilling down into the data. With 70 places it can almost be done manually. A very bright girl living in Hammersmith might only have a 5% probably of taking up an offer. A more marginal girl living at the Barbican can be 90% assumed to accept. Throw in a bit of mapping, including TFL links and grammar catchments, even house price data and you ought to get something reasonably accurate. The picture will change again with Crossrail (girls from Shenfield and Woolwich?) I think they should collect the £1,500s and get themselves along to Cass and ask if any student forecaster/modeller has time for an interesting project.

Its not about the reputational damage. People will still apply. Its about those distraught 10 year olds.

Am not at all clear in what way CLSG is not like other schools?

It is a good single sex school with amazing academic results in a very urban setting with little outside space. It is better than some schools and worse than others.

The school is constrained by the size of its site, but that is not an excuse to badly manage this process to the extent they have done.

The vast majority of London day schools manage their processes expertly and end up with exactly the number of classes per year they set out to. Without recourse to exploding offers.

The situation at CLSG is escalating. 2 years ago the offers took several weeks to explode. This year it was less than 2 working days. I predict a hysteria next year that will see parents queuing through the night to be sure of a place on the Monday morning. This does not mean it is a more in demand school. It simply means that they have chosen a registration process which creates hysteria and panic.

The idea that some parents don't care about their children enough to have foreseen this escalation is bizarre. And unattractively smug.

Once my friend asked a Cambridge professor who interviewed DCs how they chose the candidates. He was told that that depends on the interviewers. For few super talent applicants, every interviewer will give offers. For many others, it is just like a lottery. I would believe same law applies to City and all other top London schools. It can't be wrong to give offers to any applicant get to the interview stage. The fact is that the super talent kids will mostly received offers to any school applied, even with music, academic or other scholarships. City's exploding offer certainly will do harm to itself by losing these top applicants. It has been proved to be true.

Love Prada in various other threads and know from my friends experience of how great is City however I do think that City isnt doing themself any favour either for their reputation treating offer holders or creaming the top candidates. No doubt some very able children were the ones who have multiple offer holders and choices to make and with City academic records l, City could be equally on top of their list compare to many other schools including top grammar schools. Treating offer holders(parents/children) this way has set City back in many ways.

I agree that City have probably shot themselves in the foot. I would certainly hesitate about even putting my child down for the school in future: there would be no point in putting her through all the stress of exams and interviews only for her to be accepted but lose the place because I happened to be 71st in the queue on the day acceptances came out. Inevitably they will reduce the pool of able children applying to them which will affect standards in future.

I suspect also that it will be made very clear to them that, unless they follow the practice of other schools from now on, they are out of the ISA, which would hold clear disadvantages for them. I therefore think that that factor coupled with the appalling signals they are sending out to potential applicants will bring about a major rethink in future years.

Prada you missed my point. Again, some parents with girls at the school would like to believe their child is unique and City only handpicks only such girls etc etc. Of course City only makes offers to girls who hit “their academic standard” but I put it to you that this standard isn’t exceptionally high in the context of top London girl schools. So many other schools in London - NLC, JAGS, SPGS, Godolphin, Habs, LEH and others I’m probably not familiar with are looking for similar girls. Each has some 75-120 places available and each will over offer. Judging by the dozens of girls whom City offered but couldn’t accommodate they may have offered as many as 200 girls. Within that 150 or 200 there will be a RANGE of abilities and actually I see that within the microcosm of girls at our school who got City. A couple scrapped in much to everyone’s pleasant surprise and there is one girl who also got NLC (with academic scholarship) as well as SPGS, Habs, and a couple of other backups. She is going to NLC. If City offered 150 places the top ranked, say 75 girls, most definitely would also have the choice of similar or better schools and those families are the least likely to be elbowed to jump and accept City within hours of getting the offer or queue up in the early hours with forms if this happens again next year.

Best thing current parents can do is put pressure on their school to have a fairer admission process consistent with everyone else. No school likes to go to waiting list because - fact of life - it’s the lower ranking girls that are placed on the list but sometimes it’s necessary and City needs to accept that. The most sought after schools like NLC and SPGS rarely draw much from the waiting list. All City has done is to include more of those girls who ordinarily might be waitlisted within their “confirmed” offer list, chances are those girls are the very ones that ended up accepting within the narrow timeframe allowed.

I’m typing this at work !! Too much time spent reading this thread...I will leave it now. For us the 11+ journey is over and ended well. I will always feel for the girls who City courted then let down at the last moment. Wish all your girls at whichever school they are going to, City included, a fulfilling school life.

User223344 - there will never be consensus on this matter but I do strongly feel that one of your points needs addressing. City only makes offers to girls who they consider are of their academic standard. It is not correct or fair for anyone to suggest that those girls who take up the offer first this year or any other are somehow 'less able' or will affect future results. Only time will tell. There is no waitlist other than those girls who have reached the school's standard but who have, unfortunately missed out on a place.

Anothernewt - I would agree that the dash for places is not sustainable and I am sure the School knows this. Last year the offers exploded after 13 days and before offer holders day. This year in apparently 9 hours even though less offers were made. The difficulty the school faces from reading this year's thread (and others on the forum) is the potential number of places which may have been 'reserved' by parents fortunate enough to have £1500 to dispose of to do so. This makes analysis of the data even more tricky as parents from seemingly all parts of London have deposited 'just in case.

It's difficult to see how it's sustainable at

I don’t think City will get away with it 3rd time round.

Catching up on this thread this evening I do feel Soya was a given a hard time but......
I get that current and prospective parents want to defend City because it’s not a nice feeling having your child at a school that so many many believe has treated girls with disdain; a school that has a slight whiff of foul play about it; an academically elite school that now has a suspicion of ending up with lower ranking girls whose parents had no choice but to accept offers immediately, within hours of receiving it, because they don’t have other equally good or better offers to mull over....

I get all of that but if you really want to help your school engage with the people who matter - the admissions office and other decision makers and encourage them to change this practice. It is simply not acceptable to come on this forum and justify or defend what City did because justify you have done. There is absolutely nothing unique about City - just another very oversubscribed London Day School. If other schools can adhere to a sensible admissions system so can City - offer fewer girls and put more on the waiting list. If it is such an exceptionally highly sought after school as you claim it is the offer holders will accept and if not all do, the waiting list girls will jump at the opportunity. You see, 2 years in a row City have messed up. There will be some parents reading this who will be put off applying next year and those could be the very girls City needs to attract to continue to be an academically successful school. So, if you want to help your school Pradaqueen, Soya etc do what you can to prevent a recurrence of this fiasco because I don’t will not get away with it 3rd time round.

Btw I am not excusIng the practice, just suggesting that past data does not always give the full picture.
Someone who went to the offer Day this week said that one of the teachers indicated that they had made far fewer offers than last year and still had the problem.

Their acceptance rates have significantly increased in recent years as I understand it, and the fact they came out of the NLC indicates that they are targeting, at least on part , a different catchment than historically in which they do not have obvious competitors like NLCS and SPGS.

It is recent and it looks like the trends are very different than previously. Unfortinately their exploding offers will make it even harder for them to get the full picture as they won’t have complete data on acceptance levels - they do not know how many would have accepted if their offers had not exploded.

Two PPs, I think we are talking about completely different things.

The suggestion was that City should be able to drill deeper into previous acceptances to more accurately forecast likely acceptance rates. And adjust the number of offers accordingly. There seems no reason why they have got these so very wrong two years in a row.

Coming from Essex should not impact on the model.

Ahhh people use grans or aunties postcode...postcodes are too easy to manipulate. People just need to be honest, either it is or isn’t your first choice.

Although I do agree that this is not a great system, I am not sure that it is as easy for them to work this out by looking at postcodes. For, example, in my DD’s year there are more girls with Essex postcodes than Islington (including in Islington N1, N5, N7 and stokey), one girl from Cambs, at least 3 from Surrey etc.

Thank you needmoresleep

soya you have been quite rude actually.

If the school is that popular, then admissions should have only offered the 70 seats and waitlisted the rest. Give the initial 70 a set amount of time to accept (even if it’s a crazy quick 72hrs) and move down the list.
If it really isn’t that popular and is thought of as a back up plan b, then the whole exam interview process needs revamping.

I think CLSG needs to impose a max travel time in the same way as SPGS. This will reduce its "catchment" which will help, and I also think there are other benefits to this.

I also think it would be great if the private schools could make their offers on the same day as the state schools. That should significantly reduce the prospect of people rushing to accept an offer they do not ultimately want. I doubt CLSG would do it unilaterally because it will be worried about losing girls to other schools, but if the NLC as a whole agree to change their offer date, that would help things.

Thankfully my daughter takes after my wonderful wife so your son will be fine!!

As an impartial observer (going through boys this year so only interest in clsg is that my son may be mixing with the girls!) I have to say that you are not coming across as very pleasant soya and It's a bit odd that you think you are being bullied.

[Off to burnish the CV for Head of PTA, I'm guessing.]

Backingvocals you are right. Rereading the text i can see how it can read as cold and blunt and that certainly was not my intention - my intention being to point out that in my experience it did only take 10 minutes and in doing so I do not think that blanket makes me and the many other parents ocd which in itself is rude and insulting.

It feels like I am being bullied for looking out for my daughter and posting our experiences on here to balance out some of the unfair and negative comments so I will respectfully bow out here and sincerely wish good health and happiness to everyone and I do hope the girls caught up in this get positive outcomes.

I have been patiently discussing this for days but this:

Personally speaking my children are worth my (literally 10 mins) time on google to become aware and have a heads up

is so smug and passive aggressive that I do actually now feel quite cross.

I did get my child in. I did also give someone else the heads up so that their child didn't lose a place. However, I am nothing but sympathetic to the three families from our school who have lost out. I have not told them that, unlike them, I care about my children enough not to allow this problem to happen .

"the school is best served with the current system so they can control the exact number of students enrolled."

Well, they'll find that this is a pretty bad way of doing it. Last year, City of London Boys had an overrun of £70k in the admissions process from parents who paid deposits but ultimately didn't take up places. (Noticed this in minutes of governers meeting where they were debating what to do with the money). That will be from 4 points of entry (10,11,13 and 16+) but represents 14 no-shows paying £5k deposits, presumably to keep options open with other waiting list places and/or those who had changes of circumstances or relocations.

If 14 do that with £5k deposits in the boys school that actually does wait until the agreed deadline and manages to get their over-offering just about right, a lot, lot more will be doing it at the equivalent girls' school with a £1.5k deposit (so less disincentive) but faster deadline (so more unknown variables post-deposit). I'll be interested to see what kind of cohort CLSG gets come September.

Dancergirl, those who believe that CLSG's current acceptance system is the least bad option usually cite that its unique location and premises make it extremely undesirable, if not physically impossible, to have oversize forms or to add a bulge class. Whether these constraints are that much more painful than at other schools is a matter of opinion, but I believe that is the justification the school itself uses.

Defenders of the system sometimes also assert that, because of its unique location (central but not very residential), CLSG gets many more applications as a backup school than other independent schools. They allege that this causes more uncertainty in the acceptance/offer yield so that, in combination with the prior point, the school is best served with the current system so they can control the exact number of students enrolled.