Secondary school application form, just put one choice or is it best to put 3 choices?

[cheekysealion]

if i just put one choice will i most likely get that one, as it shows i dont want any others... or is it best to put 3 choices or would they give someone who has just put one choice a place before me as i have put down 3 choices IYSWIM?

well, I put the same school down 3 times. I e in first choice, second and third. And I got it.

Others may have differing views, but if its the only school you want its worth doing that IMO

Put down 3!! because if you don't get your first place and you haven't stated an alternative your child will just get put anywhere.

If you only put down one school it in no way means they will give you priority when allocating places

It says on the form we have to put down a choice in each space as if you dont fit the criteria for the first, and only choce you have made they will offer you anywhere, and there may have been another school, somewhere, that you would have prefered, over their anywhere choice.
I have 4 boxes to fill.
Only 2 schools I want though really.

The risk of only putting one choice is that if you don't get the school you want you are likely to be given whatever is leftover (which could mean a school you really don't want which could be several miles away as well. As opposed to a school you don't want but at least near to home). Schools admissions operate on an 'equal preference' system which means that the school doesn't know if you put it first, second ot third, so they can't give preference to people who put them first. But the admission authority will try to give you your first choice (fingers crossed!). Putting the same school down 3 times makes no difference whatsoever as far as I have heard.

Probably best to find out how strong your chances are of getting a place at the school and then decide whether to risk it or not. I'm in a similar situation and it's a nightmare knowing what to do, isn't it?

Unless you are absolutely sure your child will get a place (eg already has a sibling there and siblings get priority) you really should put down three choices. As memoo said, otherwise you may end up with the school that no-one else wants.

Check what the procedures are in your area - in ours they look at each of your choices separately and then give you your highest ranking one if you get a place at more than one (previously it was done differently - all on the basis of first choices - if you didn't get your first choice you risked not getting your second choice either even if you lived nearer to the school than someone who had put it as their first choice...)

I would love to know how they do it, is it alphabetical order, or do they have a computer programme with birds eye from school or ???

Agree with all your points.

I put the same school 3 times, and it is highly oversubscribed, and out of our catchment area, and not our nearest school. This was 3 years ago and other parents were advised to do this (not officially) but as you say, there is a risk in doing this in case they offer you the crapola one!

We were very lucky to be given it, and did not have siblings there either.

I was advised to put a second choice, in spite of our being in catchment, in case they suddenly introduce banding - always a threat.

If your child is in a bulgy band, so to speak, you want to have a back-up plan.

Be very sure about which order you put them in. It is not a system that can be manipulated, the schools don't know what order you've chosen. Be sure to put your first choice first and then your second etc.

They will try to give you your first choice and if that fails then they'll move down your list.

great thanks for all responses
will def put 3 choices now

fingers crossed

Dunno where you live, but the pan-London system may be similar -
You put down your 6 choices in rank order and send to central admin

Central admin sends your child's details out to all schools (not telling order)

Each school rates you according to their criteria and offers a place / not and sends back to central admin

Central admin looks at your rank order and puts down your childs best offer, then tells any other schools who may have offered a place to "cross you off" their list

Schools who have spaces because of this then look at names on their lists and offer again, etc

When every child has got a place, they send the offer of the place to you!

Whew! So if you only put one down and don't get it, you will be offered something else. You can, of course go on the school you wanted's waiting list and hope for the best / appeal.

So if it was me, I'd try to find as many possibilities as I could and be prepared for waiting lists, etc.

My dd is 6 yrs younger than ds2 and the admissions procedure has changed in the mean time. Schools used to offer places to those who had put the school 1st choice first and then if they had any places left they would move on to the 2nd choices and so on. In reality this meant that the "good" schools filled up with 1st choice and those which didn't would, in all likelyhood, have places left anyway. All schools have a list of admissions criteria which explains how they allocate places. They apply these when they are over subscribed and what preference you gave the school on your application form is no longer one of them. Neither is how many times you put the school down.
As others have probably said you could use the schools admissions criteria to work out how likely you are to get a place at your chosen school. You could possibly ask the school as well. DD's was quite happy to tell me how likely she was to get a place and also told me that had we been applying in the previous few years she would have got in.
Obviously they can't offer guarantees because they can't acurately predict how many applications they are going to get.
Our lea now operate an equal preference system and stated that as long as you put the school within whose catchment area you live as one of your choices you would probably get a place there.
I don't know how high up the addmissions criteria your dc comes but I would not put just one choice. Do some research on other schools in your area. The likelyhood is that if you don't put another choice down the schools with places left will be the ones no one wants to go to iyswim. You will then be left to go through the lengthy and stressful appeals process, under which the school will not be obliged to offer your child a place unless you can prove dicrepancies in how they have applied their addmissions criteria.
i.e. that they have given a place to a child who was in a lower addmissions criteria than your child.
I've been there and done that with ds2 and it was very hard. He eventually got a place at our 2nd choice school but only because the governors had sympathy for our plight because we were given very bad and incorrect advice by the headteacher of the school we put 1st (who still wouldn't offer a place in spite of us proving they had applied their criteria illegaly and having given us very bad advice)
So in answer to your question
"if i just put one choice will i most likely get that one, as it shows i dont want any others"
NO it won't!!!!
HTH and sorry it's long.

Worth putting other choices in as if first choice for some reason don't offer a place (happened to us and others that year despite masses of research) we had the right to appeal at all 3 schools. In the end we got our first choice school on appeal but either of the other 2 on appeal would have been better than the one we were offered!

You need more than one school, as an insurance against not getting your first choice.