SW London Grammar and Private year 7 entry 2024

[lolo99]

Not sure if this thread has been started but if not, I would like to share experiences, tips and generally talk about schools and their pros and cons and processes to ease the anxiety and pain for us parents :)

Completely not up to speed with any of this. Due to recent circumstances and change of location, I am looking for a place for a year 7 son who is currently in scholarship set and with no pre existing plans re schools near w5. He is academic but a decent all rounder. Am I mad to think I could find a mid year place or do I have to join the hot competition for sept? I've no idea what to do next

@parfaitspoon , do you mean your ds is currently in Year 7 at a prep school and you live in Ealing?

lolo99 My DS is also at a state primary and sitting entrance exams for three private schools in November. Just to reassure you that my DD who is now in yr 8 went from state primary to a good SW London private girls' school with no problems whatsoever. Happy as Larry and flourishing academically.

Has anyone got the data on the acceptance rate for LU, G&l and LEH. I was told Lu would be the hardest with 1in 10 acceptance? Any previous experiences?

Most of the kids in SW London apply for 4 or more private schools in recent years. Every kid will have a banker or aspirational / midrange target so the number of applicants is super inflated. Therefore, the number of applicants to the number of places available (or acceptance rate) is a pointless measurement on difficulty of entrance.

If one obsessed with difficulty of entrance. The most useful measure of difficulty to entrance for private is the ranking position (including waiting list) of the last admitted academic place.

For example, last year I heart a SW school with 1000+ applicants for 100 place? in the end have exhausted their long long waiting list still didn't manage to fill their places, the school has to call back to the parents they rejected kids to offer places...

Most of the schools, including LU GL LEH will over offer a lot, I will guess the last ranking position of the kid who get in of all these three schools will be 2x of the total number of available places. One can ask the school but I bet most of the school will keep it vague.

KGS has been very transparent that they offer about 2.5-3:1 (250 offers for 100 places out of 1000 applicants). As G&L and LU are higher ranked, I would assume they will offer near 2x per place. St Paul's / SPGS are probably the only schools that can only afford to over offer a tiny amount due to high acceptance rate. From what I have seen over the years, candidates who manage to be in the top third of candidates (top quartile for the most selective schools) have a very high chance of getting offers.

SPGS is about 1.3x I think, the total number of applicants is also low 500?

NLCS about 2x, CLSG probably also 2x+ but with more applicants and catch different demographics

I'd say that even St Pauls boys will be over offering a fair bit. Lots will have offers from KCS, Westminster, Tiffin etc. Some will turn it down for LU. A couple will probably choose Hampton, Dulwich etc. I bet they're also offering 2x.
SPGS will be slightly different.

Yes, but for 11+ there are only 36 spots for St Pauls boys with I think the same amount of applicants that apply for their 13+

@sanam2010 interesting about KGS. I’d missed that. We couldn’t go to the evening talk last week - is that where they talked about this?
I agree the schools all over offer so numbers not quite as bad as they seem at first glance.

Drawing on our experience, KGS runs a very transparent process. They had around 900-1000 applications last years, called some 300-350 for interviews (if you are called for a 'general interview' the likelihood of getting an interview is very, very high), and offered some 250 places (they have around 100 places for 11+ as they have some candidates coming from the 10+) . They gave some of this information at their open days and their admissions team was very open.

WHS has similar ratios of applications to offers but they call quite a lot to second round - 600 applicants, around 300 going to second round, around 150 offers for 60 places.

The ratio of offers to places is clearly a tricky one and there are quite a few examples of schools not getting it right - IPS run out of waiting list candidates and had to start calling DC that had already been given a straight no. At the other end of the spectrum, Surbiton High over offered a couple of years ago and ended up with a bumper year.

Do we know how LEH offers? How many places, etc?

LEH has 100 places in senior - around 1/3 goes to girls coming from the junior, around 2/3 for external candidates.
I would assume that given its (relative) standing and competition in the area, they would offer 2-3 times the number of places available for external candidates.

How can someone be so sure that a boy who ranks 100th in St Paul’s exam will do better academically than a boy who ranks 200th in LU?

Don’t the marginal higher rank boy always get higher GCSE and A level grades and go to better universities?

If your son gets into both SPS with rank 80 and LU with rank 50, does that mean he will not be challenged enough in LU compared to SPS?
Does it bother you that the other boys in LU are ranked 200+ while some in SPS are ranked 100?

Do you think your son will be more successful, happier or well-rounded in one school or the other?

For goodness sake, league tables are not everything, statistician will tell you there are a few percentage difference in the public exam result. Your DC is one data point out of many, the best school for your child is not necessarily the hardest one to get into.

@QuiteAJourney might you gave some info on numbers at Putney too? And how to best prepare for the Putney test? Thanks

@Iffiyas my DD did not apply to Putney but some of her friends did. First stage was quite similar to Atom, so that would me a good starting point. I heard from parents applying last year that applications were some 500 for 60 places and offers were 2-3 times the places. So numbers a bit better but not that dissimilar to WHS. Annoyingly for some they refused to say where DC sat in the reserve list ...

Thank you @QuiteAJourney ! You’re an oracle 😁

@Iffiyas far from it... but very happy to help along the journey if I can.... I found last year's thread very helpful so hopefully others find this year's one useful too.

Did anyone else's DC sit KGS this morning?

DS thought it went ok.

They seem to mark pretty rapidly, with offers to interview going out on 27th of November.

@SkaterGrrrrl yes we did. There’s another KGS session tomorrow so won’t say much, but yes it seemed to go OK. First one done at least 👏🏻

Went ok but upon feedback DS said some interesting answers 😩. Most children say it went ok but actually are oblivious to their wrong answers :(

I know they had this morning and this afternoon- didn’t know about Saturday too. Also Tiffin girls part 2 tomorrow

Good luck to everyone writing KGS and Tiffin part 2 this weekend.

DC2 did tiffin on Thursday, KGS yesterday and now is horrendously ill with a temperature and nausea. He’s not that fussed about the exams so I don’t think it’s psychological but I’m a bit nervous that it may have had an impact on the two tests. The poor thing took himself off to bed early which is unheard of!

Does any one have the times 2023 ranking for both alevel and gcse that they can share?