Camden School for Girls - Music entrants

[littlebull]

Currently looking at ALL secondary options around North London as we are out of catchment of good secondaries. Looking at the music aptitude route - but interested to hear if there are any girls who don't live in and around Camden? Is it worth applying for the music assessment if living out of catchment area?

Yes - you can live anywhere and qualify for the music places. We live nearly an hour from central London and DD sat for the Camden music places. You get the results before the CAF has to be in, so you can put down the schools where you are offered a music place.

When we did it, I reckon around 300 sat the MAT first stage. They then give places to the top three ask the next 50 back for the assessment part. There are then 5 places available at that stage.

So it's only 8 places available in total.

FWIW, DD sat for pretty much every music aptitude place in London that we could have physically got to by their morning start time.... but with a focus on South London rather than North.

There are quite a lot of schools with aptitude places!

Thanks so much for your input, very helpful indeed.
For the first stage MAT assessment, do you know if all (300) girls sit in the same room/hall and listen to tones/pitch/rhythm etc. through a loudspeaker and each recording gets played twice as per some examples I've looked at online? Just trying to visualise the format of this assessment!

They had multiple sessions, and iirc, they split DD's group into 2 and then they sat in big rooms and listened to everything played twice as you describe.

What I can say is that every single school had a completely different format. One school only did aural tests; one school did MAT, aural tests, performance, sight reading and interview for all applicants; another school did MT for all, then top 80 did performance and interview etc etc.

DD's feeling was you couldn't really prep that much as you can't learn a right answer for MAT, it's subjective and you just need a good ear. You can prep for the performance side - but schools very definitely seemed to have a bias towards certain instruments and styles (not all the same happily). My feeling was that Camden was slightly more interested in classical music and orchestral instruments than some others.

FWIW, DD has never done any exams in her first study and hadn't done any in her second when she sat the tests. She was probably around G6/7 level in first study at the time. Some schools asked - she just said what level she was at and that she didn't do exams. It wasn't a problem with any school (state or private) - they were much more interested in performance than certificates.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow this is very interesting! My daughter doesn't have any formal training either but enjoys playing various styles of music. Thanks again for your advice.

Ah, DD has had a lot of training - formal lessons since she was 7 in her main study, and performing professionally since she was 9. It’s just that neither her teachers nor she had any interest in taking exam grades.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but @OhCrumbsWhereNow do you happen to have kr know where to find a list of London schools with music places?

I don’t think there is one. I just sat and googled schools and also looked at what was mentioned on MAT tutor websites.

Ones I do know of:
West London Free
Habadashers Hatcham College
Camden School for Girls
St Marylebones
Kingsdale
Prendergast

There are others. I was interested in SE London mainly so didn’t look at North.

Thank you @OhCrumbsWhereNow !

My DD was planning on applying for music entry with CSG but is only grade 3. Is it even worth putting her through it? Sounds like children need to be quite advanced. Thanks for any advice.

It probably depends on whether it's an unusual instrument - violin or piano there will be loads at high grades - and if she absolutely aces the MAT tests. `