Admissions preferences

[ClonedSquare]

Hi. Just a question about preferences. I know I'm thinking early, sorry!

We live 5 minutes walk from School A. It's very small and always very oversubscribed and we might not even get in. This school would be my third choice for various reasons, but if I couldn't have my other choices it would obviously be convenient enough to overlook those reasons.

When I'm reading online, I'm seeing that schools don't know what order of preference you put them in.

So does that mean if School A has 12 places then they just put everyone who put them as any choice in the same hat. Then they rank them in one list and just offer places to the top 12 on the list who either put it first or who didn't get an offer from their higher preferences?

So if my first two choices said no but I was in the top 12 at School A, we would be offered a place despite putting it last?

Sorry if this is a stupid question.

They rank them according to their admission criteria, which should be on the websites of the schools.

That’s pretty much how it works. If you meet the criteria better than somebody who puts it first you will be higher up the school’s list.

The preference system comes into play if you are far enough up the lists of each school to be offered a place at more than one school. In that case you will be offered a place at the school which is higher up your preference list.

Great, thank you! It feels a bit unfair to people who put the school in first place, but I guess it's designed that way to get more people into their local schools rather than doing mad commutes.