City of London Girls full and withdrawing offers - anyone heard similar and advice?

[NL2016]

Admissions office of the City of London Girls school is now saying that they have had the target number of girls confirming acceptance and are downgrading firm offers to those who have not yet accepted back to the waiting list, all before 6 March deadline!!! any one heard anything and any advice how to handle this situation is appreciated!

What's the 'cooling off period' - is that new? Does this mean you get all your money back if you change your mind within 14 days?

Im Not surprised that they went from 65% - 100% in just a few hours as the initial email Would have caused a panic effect.
It's really sad to see children effectively having their offers taken away but based on my experience of applying for a selective school for my son a couple of years ago, Too many parents hold onto several offers leaving other children languishing on waiting lists with no offers that they can accept. We were in the fortunate position to have an offer from every school applied for and we did the morally right thing and accepted our preferred option and rejected the other two within a couple of days. But I was aware of lots of people holding onto several offers right until the deadlines and a few people who accepted a grammar place as a back up to the independent place that they had accepted (with no real intention of their child attending the grammar).
All schools over offer but most will put on a bulge class if required but I suppose if there is no space then there is no space. They should probably make less offers though and put more children on the initial waiting list

Welldone miniPrada, my very close friend's daughter goes to City, she is on track of doing medical in one of the best Univ in the country. I have met her friends from the school numerous times and they are all so lively bunch of lively girls.

Surely all independent schools over offer and most parents should have made their minds uo by now which one they prefer instead of farting about and missing deadlines? It doesn't sound as though the poster upthread has any special circs around the decision, just faffing.

I think the point is they didn't miss the stated deadline, they declared it full before the deadline.

I personally think that that is a really horrible way to conduct your business as an independent school. The schools I know have put on extra classes when caught out with higher levels of acceptance than predicted. Virtually everyone waits to hear about grammar schools before accepting independent places in my area of S London. However, as long as they made this practice clear at application time, which I presume they did, then fair enough I suppose, caveat emptor. Personally it would put me off the school.

No George, as I understand it nobody has missed a deadline. For most schools (I think) there is still a fixed deadline - offer will remain open until that date. The difference in this case is that as another pp cleverly described it the offer 'explodes' when a certain number of pupils have accepted.

I think many parents/dds do know straight away which school they want - many others don't, big decision etc, and in some cases there are 'offer holders' open days' to attend to help make up your mind.

(xpost from other thread)

London schools (at least all the ones I know of) seem to have co-ordinated the process and discussed it collectively to work best for the students and for the schools. Responses all came by 10 Feb and acceptances all due by 6 March (after state school day). All schools run a waiting list to deal with under-acceptance and, to my knowledge, if you pay a deposit you get it back when they replace you with someone from the wait list. That is as fair as it can be.

City seem to be "playing the system" and stressing people to accept weeks ahead of the 6 March and even their own offer day. They also have a no-refund policy on the deposit, so it's all about making it work for them at the expense of student's ability to choose.

There will, of course, be a number of girls that have either only City as an offer, or already know that City is their first choice. But given how high the City requirement is they must know that girls will also have offers at others because they are a) bright enough and b) couldn't risk taking only one exam. Their policy discriminates against such girls. They should adopt the same policy as all the other schools and run a proper waitlist.

I think it is especially unfair as SPGS & G&L had offer holders' mornings yesterday and Latymer Upper had an open evening on Tuesday night. If they want people to commit early they should make their final acceptance deadline earlier. LEH used to send out a card with their offer letter asking you to state how likely you were to accept a place.

Eastlondmum, sympathies about having to explain to dd what's happened. But I'd focus on the fact that the other schools are all great as well - and not focus too much on this point, as dd may not even mind that much.

Did dd want mixed or single sex? Annoying about the accessiblility, but depending on what part of your name you live in, Channing and Highgate aren't too bad to get to and G and L is pretty straight forward if on the right tube line? Congrats to your dd by the way,

The CLSG open day is still happening next Tuesday. There must be 20+ offer holders who are invited but had their offers withdrawn and put on the waitlist.

I wonder how many will go and make their case to the school?

Interesting to have an offer holders open day when the offers have been put back to waiting list.

There may be some withdrawals once the state school offers are known I suppose - would be interesting to know how many dparents do go for state over clsg.
So presumably what happens next year is that a) parents in the know will presumably all rush to accept CLSG on day 1, fearing that other dparents will do the same; and b) other schools may feel constrained to introduce the same system rather than lose girls to CLSG. So effectively the 'thinking period' is greatly reduced - ok, maybe you don't need a month (though the state school offers are highly relevant), but you do need some time to gather your thoughts, discuss with current dparents etc.

When we were in this position last year we decided this week, tommorow I think, the Thursday, as we went to the offer holder days for the 2 schools we couldn't decide between which were Tuesday and Thursday of this week. After being at the last one on the Thursday (i.e tommorow) the choice became obvious. We needed half term to think as one school was much further away and we wanted to make sure it was doable. It was the most ambitious one for us and we weren't necessarily expecting my child to get in. So this week and last was spent really thinking it through (which is very difficult to do when it's just an abstract "maybe they'll get in"). I'd have really resented being forced to decide before Friday of this week (which I think is reasonable) and it would have made what was already a stressful period far, far worse

I certainly wouldn't be applying to that school again for subsequent children.

The logical conclusion to all of this is that families will only apply if it is their firm first choice and they plan to accept the offer immediately. Because I agree that the offer may "explode" almost immediately after going out given the dynamics of this situation. City has been imploring families not to apply unless they are serious. I think running the whole application process had spun out of all reasonable bounds. Perhaps City is content with the logical conclusion of this set up: fewer, more committed applicants.

This is a very unfortunate state of affairs. I hope City have thought it through because it could backfire. Emanuel have a cutoff of the number of registrations accepted. Each year they reach the cutoff earlier than ever because panic sets in. Next year City can expect the same, but perhaps not all those accepting instantly will be firmly committed. Perhaps those placed on the waiting list will go elsewhere. It seems a very risky game to me.

That is very interesting missing that CLSG has been imploring families not to apply unless they are serious. Perhaps that is why they left the consortium - because anyone entering for a consortium school might as well 'have a go' at CLSG as well, whereas entering as a one-off takes a positive decision.

I would have thought though that the 'not really serious' would not have been a huge problem for CLSG, as for many geographical areas it would be likely to be dparents' preferred choice (not expressing a view on the merits, just stating a fact!). But maybe people have started applying from a wider geographical catchment when they are closer to other super super selective schools.

Totally agree with Gavel that you can't consider the options totally clearly until you know where your dc has a place. So a problem with 'accept now or it may be gone tomorrow' is that you may rush into accepting the exploding offer when with a bit more time you might have reached the conclusion that dc would be a better fit somewhere else.

I agree that this is a very unpleasant addition to the joys of 11+. For some people the choices are clear and easily acted on but I don't think it is fair to suggest that everyone should know what their first choice is as soon as the results come in. It can be hard to make such decisions in abstract - I can't choose until I know I actually have a choice, and for that I need to know my child has a place in the first place. Plus quite often the child needs more exposure to the shortlist as touring and discussing 4-5 schools, ,which I gather is about the usual safe number of applications, before sitting could be very disruptive. And what if they fall in love with one they don't get into?

At the very least city should stop the pretence of offering offer-holders' tours

I am utterly shocked by this rogue behavior from CLGS. Ghastly.

And emailing everyone just fuels the panic ensuring that 65% to 100% happens in a morning. Ridiculous.

It takes waiting for the state option out of the equation, unless you are happy to lose the deposit (which is clearly an option that some will choose).

Just adds crazy pressure to an already pressured process and really doesn't show the school in good light. Its a cruel thing to remove an offer from a child. Plenty will not have been in a position to act on the panic emails in a few hours. They should honour their offers like everyone else.

Personally i think it is outrageous practice. If they are so constrained by space that they physically cannot put on a bulge class they they shouldn't over offer and they should use the waitlist to fill the places.
Their behaviour favours:

• those in the know / those with advice from prep school
• those not seriously considering state schools
• those who can comfortably afford to lose their deposit.

Many will have just paid the deposit in a panic in response to the acceptance % emails. I bet many will withdraw.

And the school will pocket the deposits happily!

Agreed ami, the CLSG deposit is "only" a grand so some people will have paid it to hold the place while they make up their minds.

I do wonder if this will have a knock on effect on other schools, with people accepting offers to be on the safe side. Bloody annoying really and horrible for the OPs DD.

Whilst I sympathise with the OP and others in this thread, I emailed the registrar last week as DH was away so no 2nd signature for the forms. To be fair, the admissions office were clear (if asked) that they had no idea when the list would be full, but last year it was March. She advised she would email everyone when it reached 75%. everyone who had an offer had the same opportunity to accept. If, like us, it was a genuine 1st choice, it was a no-brainer to send back the paperwork as it was clear there was a risk in not doing so. I honestly do not think that there is a massive cohort of parents hedging their bets but clearly there will be the odd one or two. those parents may well affect the reputation of their child's school in doing so. I do however see harm in holding onto offers from schools in all four corners of London when there are genuinely local kids waiting for a place who don't have the luxury of choice right now. I would bet that the acceptance level of 100% before offer holders morning is as much of a surprise to CLSG as it is to everyone on this thread (including myself).

I think it shows a school that doesn't have very good software in place. Modern AI systems with decent algorithms should be able to predict how many offers they should make with good accuracy. Of the three schools we applied to last year, none went to their waiting list at all and all places were filled from the initial round of offers. Obviously there are blips, the schools occasionally have to run bulge classes, but this seems elitist and grabby to me.

I find it particularly unfortunate - but also a source of hope for those who now suddenly find themselves on the City waiting list - that the school is "full" before the state school offers. Many clever North London girls will be hoping for a great comp or have sat e.g. Henrietta Barnett - which might be the true first preference for some who have accepted City under time pressure. This could mean quite a bit of movement on the City waiting list late next week.

(This will then also impact waiting lists for several other schools, both highly selective and less so. One spot at HBS lead to a chain reaction affecting several kids)