City of London Girls withdrawing offers

[Leo12345]

Hello! I was surprised to receive an email today from City of London Girls that their offer to DD is now withdrawn. I opened their original email with the offer and read that indeed this is their policy: first-comes-first-gets.
We are much more prone to go to LEH or if not Kingston Grammar, and now I bless this decision as I learnt something about City of London Girls character and aptitude towards its pupil.

My question is: do other schools (in particular LEH and Kingston Grammar) practice such policy?

We would accept the offer in LEH today then, though we are waiting for the tour in there.

The reality is a boycott will only result in your DD missing out. While many people will want to protest the exploding offers, realistically for a top top school like CLSG, parents will do what they can to secure a place including following a clearly defined process, regardless of if it’s ‘normal’. When peers compete, either 10-11yr oldkids or parents sprinting to the school, then self interest will win out over collective protest. If you hate it, don’t apply. But applying, knowing the system and then screaming unfair when you lose out for not playing the system screams of entitlement culture.

I just don't think its defendable. Awful to offer places, and then snatch them away. You might as well line parents up in the playing field and make them sprint to the finish line.

Waiting lists are a perfectly sensible way to go, they just want a clamour around getting an offer. I bet they think it increases the prestige of the school to have parents racing to get acceptances in.

The only hope is that it puts people off applying.

The thing is that CLSG isn't by any means the only "top top" school, so they can't assume that people will put up with this for the sake of getting a place. We had something mildly similar with DS, i.e. one particular school putting pressure on us to decide very quickly without having time to think about it or consider other offers. Ultimately we decided that we didn't really fancy entrusting DS to a school that was as pushy as that and he ended up doing very well elsewhere. CL could well lose out on good candidates with a policy like this.

youngmum, isn't the problem that many people who apply have no means of knowing the system because they carefully don't publicise it?

The admissions booklet we had was quite clear:

"Early March Acceptance Deadline You will have over 2 weeks from when results are emailed to make your decision. We appreciate that this is a very important decision to make, but we will need to know your decision by the acceptance deadline at the very latest. Should we reach our maximum capacity for new intake before this acceptance deadline has passed, we may need to prioritise acceptances on time of receipt. We therefore recommend that you let us know your decision as soon as you can."

You will have over 2 weeks from when results are emailed to make your decision.

We MAY need to prioritise acceptances on time of receipt.

I would not, under any interpretation of this, think that I had less than 9 hours to make a decision.

I do not think even the school was expecting the places to be filled within 9 hours. It would have come as a shock for them as well...especially if they have actually over-offered by a lower margin than last year, as a poster (current parent) has mentioned earlier.

Ave.. I don't think it was clear .. even their website's admissions booklet states:

early march
Acceptance deadline
The speci c deadline date will be published on our website when the admissions process begins in the Autumn term. The precise details and conditions of the offer and the acceptance process, including how the school would deal with over subscription, will be contained within the offer email that you receive.

Based on the information above, parents are not told prior to applying how they intend to rescind the initial offers on a first come first serve basis. Their electronic application system doesn't discuss this either, so if you are a parent not reading mumsnet, then you will not know this timing gap until you've already parted with the registration deposit. Its just plain dishonest to not disclose until they hooked the parents in. If this is the format by which they want to allocate places, why on earth do they not tell parents on the Open Day and on their website. Probably because it would justifiably put some parents off from applying. They seem to like to tell everyone how oversubscribed they are but not a key selection criteria at the end of the day. Can anyone rational read this as anything other than dishonesty.

Get a lawyer and get everyone offered a place who didn't accept it (whether they would have or not) to get application fee and as many associated costs as possible refunded on the basis that the acceptance date was changed after the school took in the exam fees.

Also, get the City of London authorities involved in this.

This is a disgusting practice.

Tefaltaster interesting proposal.

Curious if anyone who had the offer withdrawn will be going to the offer morning on Tuesday? Is it still being held? I’ve emailed and called he school multiple times asking if they are still having it and have had zero response.

Great idea tefal I hope people will consider doing this.

I hope so too, as without push back, these schools will continue this bad practice of bait and switch!

I predict next year people will queue up right after the offers come out. There will be people in the queue who’ve sold it to their dds as top choice who then lose out and then the process will come to be perceived as an arbitrary hassle.

By putting this one final hurdle in place, the school effectively select those families who are "in the know" and good at rules and regulations.

All a bit too survival of the fittest to me. Is that part of the ethos of the school?

The trouble is that in our area of East London offers are not made by the Indy schools until a week after City notifies. So someone could be waiting to hear about a scholarship offer in addition to any state school offers. If City's your top choice I'm sure it's easy to justify the school's behaviour. If money isn't a consideration it will be as well. If you're sitting on NLCS and SPGS offers - likewise, probably. If the acceptance is a delightful surprise but a huge family decision that needs more - and I'm only talking to the standard 6 March deadline- consideration it's potentially heartbreaking. Poor show all around and I very much hope they'll rethink. In reality I believe more schools will take this approach.

Prada and chocolate-I admire your loyalty to your school and see that you both firmly believe that CLSG has found the solution to its admissions conundrums. But hasn't the school spectacularly shot itself in the foot? It will surely have to find another way next year because it just won't work. As others have said there will be a stampede, headed not just by those super keen on the school but also those willing to lose a large sum of money to buy more time.

If City is keen to attract those for whom it is genuinely a first choice, why not make offers intelligently- eg prioritise those who do well and live close, or who have a sibling at the school?

Genuine question to the poster whose child had 7 offers. Did they get offers from all schools or did they sit more than 7? Did you really feel it was necessary to sit so many to guarantee getting something? Your child is obviously very able.

I've no idea whether registrars collude but if it were me, I would. There is no need for any child to have 7 or 9 offers when some get none (see the recent post in this topic - someone inevitably ends up in this unfortunate position every year).

I have a DD at the school (who is very happy there). There is one bulge year in the school (current year 10 I think) and it is the case that there simply is not room for another one. However, I agree that it would be far far better to manage this through making fewer offers and use of waiting list.

I do wonder if their difficulty in managing the numbers is linked to their withdrawal from the NLC and associated shift in their ‘catchment’. They were pretty open that part of the reason for withdrawing from the consortium was that they saw their catchment shifting east. When it was more clearly a north/central London school, I suspect they were often second choice to NLCS and SPGS and determined their offer levels on that basis. However, with the shift in the ‘catchment’ east, there is no equivalent competitor school in that area, so maybe they are finding that they are more often first choice than was historically the case. The withdrawal from the NLC is recent so it may be a case of them going through a transitition period and once this has bedded in it will become easier for them to predict their acceptance numbers again. Maybe.

The other thing I would say is that I have a DC at another London school and have friends with DC at others, and overall City has a much less moneyed feel than the others that I am familiar with. So if the result of this practice is to prejudice those families for whom the decision to go private is a borderline one financially (and I can see that it may do), I genuinely think that is not consistent with the school’s general ethos and is an unintended consequence. Not that this means that it is not a consequence of course.

It would be interesting to know if they applied this practice to girls moving up from prep (who I think still have to formally accept) and girls with sisters at the school.

Pradaqueen, after a search I understand why you are the fan of exploding offer. You received email that informed your DD offered a music scholarship FEW DAYS AFTER the exploding last year. The scholarships usually received same time as offers last year. I wonder CLSG must lose lot of scholarships as well because of exploding offer. You are luck enough not catching by the explosion, but....

Kudos to whyohwhine for seemingly being the only current parent on this thread with empathy for other parents going through this and not employing a high handed "I'm alright jack" attitude.

Ahh so that's where my DD's music scholarship went last year. I often wondered what they did with those in the event no one took their offer.

Well, DD was pretty horrified to discover her school was in the dailymail!

Don't we all think highly of our children? I don't agree with prada's take on the exploding offer at all but I think it's starting to get a bit too personal.

It's pretty obvious existing parents will defend the system they benefited from. None have presented a convincing argument so far though!

Agree anti. I’m sure all the girls are smart and motivated. There is an odd defensiveness about this weird policy which I guess will be reviewed at some point because of the unintended consequences but we don’t need to dig out old posts and start attacking people’s motivations. everyday would you think about getting your post deleted ?