Experiences of boys private school entry exams in South West London

[Herewegoagain1000]

DS will be sitting exams for 2027 entry and we are looking at a mix of co-Ed and boys schools such as Alleyns, DC, LU, City, Emmanuel, Harrodian, Ibstock. I fear we have few “back up” options in SW London for boys and everywhere has become so competitive. I am really interested in hearing how those who have been through this process recently found it? Did children get offers from the schools you expected?

My DS ended up with offers from all his chosen schools (Kings, LU, DC and Alleyns (both scholarships) Hampton and Emanuel and he chose Kings. His class mates all got offers from some of their selected schools, DC, Emanuel, Alleyns, quite a few to Hampton, Harrodian, Brighton College.

as long as you can cope with the admin and DS is ok with sitting multiple assessments, my advice would be to apply to as many as you are interested in. With a spread of schools at each tier in terms of competition. Your list seems to do that with LU from the top tier and then City, Alleyns and DC followed by Emanuel, Ibstock and Harrodian. So I think you have all bases covered.

they are all fantastic schools at the end of the day.

My son applied to Dulwich because it’s local and he enjoyed a science school he did there. His yr 5 teacher suggested he apply when he scored perfect on the mock SATs he did with his split class. he got an offer with the bursary we needed and have accepted.

We haven’t done the typical prep route. In fact we weren’t going to do any. But after he sat the Wandsworth test and we learned it wasn’t the sats 😂 we realised he needed exposure to the questions before sitting the Dulwich test. He did a month and a bit of Atom.

We applied to Ibstock, Emanuel, Harrodian, Thomas’s College, Radnor House/Kneller Hall, Kingston Grammar and Tiffin boys. Tiffin being the stretch school and Radnor being the back-up. DS got offers from Radnor, Ibstock, Emanuel, Harrodian and Thomas’s after getting interviews at these. He didn’t get through to interview at KGS or to the second round assessment at Tiffin.

His prep school advised to have a mix of schools that use ISEB and their own assessments in case they have a bad ISEB day. They also give a list of schools in year 5 that they suggested applying to based on CATs, Quest and other standardized testing they do, giving an idea of which would be stretch schools vs likely to attain. His offers pretty much matched up to what his prep school said was attainable (KGS being the outlier, but this was also one of the first exams he sat).

His friends get offers from Kings, Hampton, St Paul’s, Tiffin, Epsom, St John’s Leatherhead, KGS, Royal Russell, Whitgift, City of London as well as the schools he got offers for.

I should add that we also only applied to schools that we would’ve happy with the journey to/from school. We didn’t apply to any that would need a long coach journey. Transportation was one of our key criteria in narrowing down where to apply. You had to think about Saturday sports fixtures, as well as the M-F commute to school!

+1 to the commute consideration!

Thanks all. I do have experience in the 11+ as my eldest child is already at LU, however that was 4 years ago and I feel the system has become harder, and children are all different . Your messages are encouraging and whilst I hate having to apply to 6 or 7 schools, it seems the laws of averages means we must.

Your son did very well. Which one did you end up choosing?

Emanuel has become extremely competitive compared to what it was a few years ago. It’s highly desired in SW London - well done to your son for getting in.

100% agree. If we have a choice between near and far and schools are of similar standard, we would always choose convenience and logistics over anything else.

We chose Thomas’s but it was a tough decision! Emanuel was just a bit more complicated to get to - especially if there are issues with SWR trains.

Does anyone have any views/experience of the new Wetherby Pembridge near Olympia?