Winchester College Election / Eton King's Scholarship / Tonbridge Academic Scholarship

[PopDaGod]

Hi everyone,

Just out of my curiosity, is it possible for the kids to register to take Winchester College Election in the same year with King's Scholarship at Eton, or Academic Scholarship paper at Tonbridge?

I understand that if the candidate already holds an academic award from another school will not be permitted to sit the Election exam, unless approved by Winchester College Registrar. Same rules apply to Eton's King's Scholarship. However, if the candidate don't know the result of academic scholarship just yet, would it be okay for them to sit more than one scholarship exams at different schools, assuming that the exams will all be hold close to one another, late April or early May?

I'm asking because we're looking for the right boarding school in UK for my son. He's in year7 now, moving on to year8 in August. He's at an independent international school overseas, which follows the UK curriculum. So he takes CAT4, GL tests, along with Cambridge Primary Progression tests every year at school as part of the assessment, and familiar with the system. To be able to attend the school, we will need scholarship and a bit top up from partial bursaries support. We already submitted the application to Tonbridge and wait to take their entrance exam in November. For Tonbridge, he needs to have an unconditional offer from the school first before sitting the academic scholarship paper in May.

He got Gold and Best in School from UKMT Intermediate Mathematical Challenge (IMC) and sat the Cayley Olympiad paper in March, still waiting for the Cayley result though. He also got Gold and Best in Year from UKMT JMC, and will take UKMT JMO next week.

He talked to the admission officer from Caterham last year, seems to like what he has heard about the school. He plans to sit the Academic Scholarship paper; however, Caterham bursary is strictly for UK residents. At first, we hope that if we can work it out with Caterham, we might not have to sit those exceedingly challenging exams at competitive schools in May.

Any advice is appreciated. Please be kind :) I really need to get any suggestion from the fellow mommies here. Thank you very much.

With any of these schools, you need to talk to the bursars about what fee remission is possible. I don't know about Tonbridge, but Eton and Winchester separate scholarship awards from bursary assistance completely. If a bursar indicates that support would be possible for you, and you have a place at a school, then focus just on that school and scholarship or entrance papers as you and your son choose.

There are still a few schools that choose to distribute bursary support only to those in receipt of scholarship awards but these are in the minority.

If your son does not have a place at these schools already, then yes you may be relying on him getting an academic scholarship in order to gain a place. That is a tricky tightrope to walk. You need to discuss with both his current schools, and target schools, what the likelihood is of him gaining a place, the timetable of the scholarship papers, and work out which to sit for. If I remember from when my son and his friends were doing them, Eton and Winchester exams were within a week or less of each other. I don't think a boy will do himself justice if asked to do too much back-to-back.

My son sat two sets of academic scholarship papers but a couple of months apart - it was a tremendous amount of work for him even so. (the first school were willing to hold his offers until the second set were done)