Super bright kids

Also, I meant to say to the other posters, whose kids have been waitlisted- I am certain the waitlists will move. If people are holding multiple offers, they can only accept one, so there should hopefully be a redistribution. Good luck- it’s such a stressful process for everyone.

I am fairly certain that people are far more likely to post good news on this forum. Therefore you get a distorted view of how children are doing across the board.

My daughter has secured offers with academic scholarships in this year’s SW London 11 plus. She is at a prep school and they practiced papers all last term, so the school prepared her well. We are genuinely astonished by her results and we don’t feel that we have pushed her very hard.

I think that she was in the right head space and is fundamentally quite academic. There is no doubt that practicing exam papers and VR/NVR has been very important for her confidence and exam technique.

My ds is very bright (cat scores of 136), but we didn't tutor and he isn't having much success in the 11+ exams.

I think in hindsight we should have had him tutored, so he would have been faster and learnt 'tricks' for whipping through the questions the right way. 😔

I thought my child was very bright but today we got told by City School for Girls that she is on their waiting list.

Personally I think not only does your child need to be super bright but also oozing in confidence when it comes to interviews at these super selective independent schools as well as being very strong in sports etc.

But I may be wrong but I do wonder how can these 10 and 11 years be so clever.

Also OP, if you follow the Higher Education Oxbridge thread on MN a large % of the contributors have dc who have Oxbridge offers and if you follow the elevenplusexams.co.uk forum on 2nd March some of the contributors will get offers from the top grammar schools in U.K. like QE & HBS where 1000's apply for a 100plus places so the nature of these forums attracts a certain type of parent.

I will be very honest here. DS is a genuinely bright child. He had two offers this week. We are really hoping to get a third one, which would probably be our first choice. Let’s way and see what happens there. Having said that I truly believe that DS is genuinely bright, he has indeed been tutored in exam technique and I do believe that that helped him cope with the demands of these particular assessments. Bottom line, in my opinion: firstly and foremost, be realistic on whether DC would thrive at any particular independent school; then, by all means, provide some additional support if you are able to (it does not need to be a professional tutor if you have the time, ability and inclination to provide such support yourself). It is really tough to be submitted to this level of stress when you are only 10 or 11 years old; it is however the world we live in. Good luck to all!

OP, I have experienced the SW London independent school 11 plus entry system and the bottom line is the top schools write exams to attract bright children who will thrive in their environments, the content doesn't stray much from the KS2 curriculum but a prep school or a tutor teaches exam technique & VR/NVR. Many of the offers from the top schools go to the same group of children hence when you are taking part in the exams & interviews you see the same dc again & again. If you look at the destination school pages of some prep school websites you will see 24 children may generate 60 offers. Some of those getting 4 or 5 offers today will end up taking a grammar school place when they are released on 2nd March unless the private schools can match them with a 100% bursary or scholarship.

In my experience a lot of kids who were multiple scholarship offered were naturally high ability but tutored within an inch of their life. Shame as they can only accept one offer yet had swiped prizes that wouldn’t be re-distributed back out to pupils who might have had a school as genuinely first choice. Some Heads are onto this now so won’t add a scholarship to an offer if it’s apparent that child has their school as back up.