Scholarships and correlation to offers made

[LondonUSAmum]

Hello,

As I am so new to this 11+ process and it seems so many of you know so much, I wanted to ask about insight into how schools handle the process of scholarships and ultimately offers of a place at their school.

Should I assume most children that are being offered scholarship assessments will be offered a place at the school? For example, a friend whose dd sat the academic scholarship interview at Alleyn's was told her dd had a 99% chance of being offered a place. Evidently one year a boy said he preferred another school so they didn't give him an offer but as long as nothing like that happens it's almost a sure thing.

Is this similar for music, art, sport and drama scholarships? I assume each school is different but in general is this how it works?

This waiting for offers is so nerve wracking, trying to analyse our chances even though I do know it's not very scientific!

Many thanks!

Yes - pretty much all the children called for academic scholarship interviews will be offered at least a full fees place. Plus bear in mind that the children being offered scholarships at places like Alleyn’s will almost certainly have been offered scholarships at other schools and they can only take one place.

Effectively as long as children aren’t obnoxious or assault the head then they’re in! It’s usually the case for co-curricular scholarships too although they won’t have had to score as highly in the exam so it’s possible they could underperform in the assessment and be pipped to the post by a child who was very impressive at interview.

yes - academic scholarship interview does translate to an offer in 99.9% of cases. One head told us that DD was in unless she was currently assaulting her interviewer!!

Not quite the same for the other scholarships. It's only if the assessment day is after the exam that you could read something into your dc being called in. they['re v unlikely to want to watch someone play netball/draw a picture/sing a song if that child has not passed the academic hurdle. It was really helpful to us last year - but increasingly the schools just hold mass assessment days before Xmas and those are really just taster days.

We were told at school where dd had scholarship interview that it was 100% certain she'd be offered a place of some sort (ie not necessarily with any fee reduction). Since they were only interviewing those that had done well in the exam (about 60 out of 600), they had never ever not offered a space to those ones and we should consider it in the bag.

Although me looking so surprised that she'd got in somewhere might have put them off...

Very helpful, thank you!

I guess I was asking more about the non-academic scholarship call backs that happen after the exams. Our headmaster said, yes, it’s generally a good sign but with very academic schools you never know?? So desperate for any insight or news!

On the non academic scholarship question - all the girls from dd's school who were called for the sports scholarship assessment at JAGs last year did go on to be offered a place.

JAGs is pretty academic?

There's not cast iron guarantee but I was hugely relieved to get her invitation letter last year as it was effectively an offer in the bag 10 days before the official offers day.

Again I think it would be v rare for no offer to be forthcoming?

Best of luck!