Scholarships at 13+ how good do they need to be?

[MGMidget]

I wondered if anyone could share their experience or knowledge of how goid a DC needs to be to have a chance of a scholarship for a competitive private school at age 13 (year 9) entry?

My DS has place at a competitive academic boys school for year 9 entry and they will soon be inviting applications for scholarships to be assessed in year 8. His place is guaranteed so there is no pressure and what with lockdown I have had no info on his school performance since last Autumn. The tradition of prep schools advising and preparing for entrance exams seems to have gone at DS’s current school owing to lockdown and their ambitious plans to extend until 18 years. Therefore I am interested to hear from others just what level of ability might be expected for a scholarship.

We are particularly considering the drama scholarship. I think the academic scholarship may be too optimistic for Ds as he is entering an academic school so I dont think he is going to stand out sufficiently above the others on academics but I suppose I could be wrong.

Any insights?

It depends a lot on the school but for sport for example for a competitive school you'd expect to see the child playing at county level in one or two sports. For a less competitive school you'd just expect to see the kind of child who was maybe best in an average year at sports and did well in at least two sports.

Likewise academically there's one local indie school which will give scholarships to kids who perform in the top 10% in their exams but this school isn't particularly selective and so they need to attract top performers with scholarship offers. An academic school would expect to see a candidate above the top 1% at least.

Drama's harder for me to quantify but would probably work the same way. I know one child who was awarded a drama scholarship at a non particularly competitive school - she was known to be very good at acting but hadn't done anything professionally. I imagine it also depends alot on the emphasis placed on the school on drama.

We are applying for 11+ at the minute and all the scholarships for drama and music say that there is an assessment day at the school where each child is asked to perform 1 or 2 pieces and then the school chose

Something like Drama is really hard to gauge for scholarships as presumably it just depends how good the others are who are going for it - and to some extent if they are good enough but the school wants to make them an attractive offer?

Depends on the school, standard of drama and who you are up against.

My DD has worked professionally, has two IMDb credits, extensive amateur theatre experience and Grade 4 LAMDA solo acting, musical theatre and Grade 5 Trinity Musical theatre at age 11, all with distinctions. And she didn’t get it. The girl who did get it was working in a West End show at the time.

@MGMidget

I wondered if anyone could share their experience or knowledge of how goid a DC needs to be to have a chance of a scholarship for a competitive private school at age 13 (year 9) entry?

My DS has place at a competitive academic boys school for year 9 entry and they will soon be inviting applications for scholarships to be assessed in year 8. His place is guaranteed so there is no pressure and what with lockdown I have had no info on his school performance since last Autumn. The tradition of prep schools advising and preparing for entrance exams seems to have gone at DS’s current school owing to lockdown and their ambitious plans to extend until 18 years. Therefore I am interested to hear from others just what level of ability might be expected for a scholarship.

We are particularly considering the drama scholarship. I think the academic scholarship may be too optimistic for Ds as he is entering an academic school so I dont think he is going to stand out sufficiently above the others on academics but I suppose I could be wrong.

Any insights?

It depends on the senior school. Their scholarship standards differ.

You do realise that a drama scholarship might be worth 0 - 5% fee remission?

Thanks. Its a boys school with a good theatre but I suspect not a first choice for someone planning on a stage career so competition might not be quite as stiff as having others doing west end shows all the time. The academic entry exam might filter out those who are sacrificing school time for a theatre career, although I appreciate there are always the exceptions and some might be clever enough to sail through the entrance exam with little effort! Fee remission of 0-5 per cent would be disappointing given they want a commitment to participating in drama productions.

I am not too worried about the assessment day. DS has done LAMDA exams so probably similar to that although there will be an unrehearsed piece to perform, I’m sure. Drama scholarship we are thinking of is for Hampton in case anyone has any specific knowledge of standards? Also any knowledge of their academic scholarship standards at 13?

I don’t have any knowledge of Hampton’s drama scholarship process, but my DS went to a similar academic senior school in Year 9 on a combined drama/academic scholarship.

He sat for drama scholarships at 3 schools which we applied to specifically because of the quality of their drama programmes. The applications for all 3 involved submitting a portfolio summarising previous drama experience and training, photos of productions he’d been in showing a range of roles, and evidence of a wider interest in theatre (e.g. productions attended as an audience member). He also had to write a short essay explaining why he wanted to be a drama scholar, and submit a review of a theatre production he'd watched recently. For 2 of the schools, the assessment involved a half-day session with drama games and improvisation in groups, followed by individual monologues and interviews with drama staff. The third was a much more cursory process lasting an hour, involving group work and a monologue presented in front of all the applicants but no individual interviews.

DS has been working professionally in theatre since the age of 9. Between the ages of 9 and 12 he was pretty much continually in work and he's been in 4 productions in the West End, as well as performing in off-West End, regional and international musicals and plays. He was offered scholarships at 2 of the schools but not at the third, which only takes a handful of new pupils into Year 9. However, I also know of pupils offered scholarships by the same schools as DS whose experience of acting didn’t extend beyond school plays.

My impression after going through the process is that it’s very much down to what the school is looking for and who else is auditioning. Having professional experience can help, but it’s no guarantee and it can even be a negative factor if the school thinks a pupil is more likely to be off working in professional productions instead of being available to fulfill their scholarship obligations by taking part in school productions. Conversely, a lack of professional experience isn’t a barrier as long as a child has talent and enthusiasm.

On the academic scholarship front, I think you need to go back to your DS' school and ask their opinion - actually I think you'll have to as most senior schools will only let boys enter their scholarship exams if this is supported by their current school.

Sounds like your prep school is letting you down (even allowing for covid disruption).

In case a comparison is helpful, my DS' London prep identified potential 13+ scholarship candidates at the end of last term (after a set of remote exams). Then going into Year 8, those boys have been streamed into a separate smaller class to prepare. They had baseline tests in their first week back to check if lockdown had left them behind compared to usual years. They will sit internal exams in October to see if they are still on track and then formal scholarship mocks in January. If they do well in those they will then be entered into the scholarship exams. They are also having extra lessons after school to teach them Greek.

On the other hand, and as others have said, its a lot of extra slog for little reward as academic scholarship awards are a few hundred pounds at most of the very academic schools. I'm not convinced it's worth it

Thanks. Our school had no remote exams and no school report because of Covid. Feedback had been non existent!

@MGMidget , I think you are looking at 5-20 % max fees discount for drama. It's not unusual for a dc to have 2 scholarships at Hampton ie drama & academic or sport & academic and the parents still pay a lot of fees.

At our school you would not get anything off fees but being a scholar opens up the opportunity for a bursary. But they go through your finances to the absolute last detail- they want tax returns, any benefit payments, spousal support, investments, property value, dividends, the value of your car and all house contents, your mortgage payments, other debts, and proof of the above.

Thanks everyone for your views, Singinrain1223, do you have any idea of the standards for a drama scholarship at Hampton and do you think they are swayed by academic performance too? My DS’s school arent doing Common Entrance any more so its hard to motivate DS to do the Common Academic Scholarship papers for Hampton when so few in the school (possibly noone else) will be doing it and he’s not that high flying. In a different school when everyone was doing Common Entrance we might have given the Scholarship papers a shot. But what with Covid 19 and possible isolations/lockdowns to contend with I think its being ambitious to try and take it on when I’ll need to do a lot of the prep and marking with him myself.

@MGMidget , I've sent you a PM.

I think it depends on the school you are applying to and the competition for that given year. My DS got an academic scholarship for a super selective London boys school and it was probably down to the fact his school had a great scholarship programme and more than one boy sitting the same scholarship - they felt they were all in it together and spurred each other on. If he had had to motivate himself it would have been a different story. Things like sport and drama are more subjective and really depend on who you are up against on the day...I do know someone who got a drama scholarship to a very popular Surrey co-Ed (renowned for its drama) and he had never even been in a school play! Everyone was really surprised when it was announced. All he did was attend a drama group outside of school and I think they had put him forward for a few commercials (none of which he got)...maybe he gave a great audition but it was really very random 😂

Drama can be very variable. Where a school has a top class drama dept you would expect high calibre DC applying. If it’s a big less serious, it’s not going to be quite so difficult. DC will be prepped according to what is required at each school. However not every school offers a discount off fees for scholarships. Some are honorary but will give a discount off drama lessons. Also schools with a strong drama dept will often offer scholarships later on in the school and very few for y7 or Y9. They evaluate commitment, enthusiasm and ability at school as well as external work and exams.

Regarding academic scholarships: schools do this prep for these and have a scholarship top set. If he’s not had this advantage I think it will be a struggle unless he’s near the top in his year group.

We are not going to bother with the academic scholarship. We are looking at only drama now! Unfortunately with Covid it feels like opportunities for performance are going to be more limited so all the things he would or could have done over the past few months and next few months to build his credentials are going to be largely curtailed! I may need to try and help him myself (which wont be much help!)