Guildford High

[durness]

Random question borne of insecurity… we’re fortunate that our daughter is very musical and she’s been invited to audition for almost every music scholarship we’ve applied for. Except Guildford, who turned down her scholarship application two days after the CEM test. So be it, a scholarship was always going to be a helpful bonus, not something we expected… but to not even get invited to audition was disappointing. And then, inevitably, we started catastrophising: was she rejected because her exam result is poor and they don’t want to waste time auditioning someone they have no intention of inviting to join?

So now we’re fearful that - despite her assertion that it went really well - she’s had a bad day on the CEM test and it’s basically all over. Certainly other schools use the exam results to determine whether to consider kids for scholarships. But maybe it’s just that competition for scholarships at GHs is especially fierce and she’s been lucky to get invited to audition by other schools. Argh.

Does anyone have any insight into the GHS process? Or what level of would-be scholar they attract?

Honestly, the whole secondary school process has been a nightmare and maybe we’ve just become paranoid fools. I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with sanity…hopefully.

Congratulations @prancerlancer Well done to your DD!! We had fabulous offers at all 3 independent schools- rather generous academic and drama scholarships at Reigate , Caterham and GHS. To top that, our little has also been offered Wallington and we were very pleased as we are out of the catchment area. But we have gone for GHS as she chose it. We live much closer to Reigate and the bus for RGS is like a 2 minute walk from our home. But after much discussion and loads of bribing involved- nothing would change her mind and we will now be schlepping up and down the local train station! From a family point of view, Reigate would have suited us the best but hey ho. Not moaning and really grateful to be in this position but we have made our "peace" and paid the deposit :) xx Wishing your little one all the very best of everything

@pianistly Apologies for the delay in reply. In all honesty, it was mostly preparing for CEM tests. My advise is to focus a bit more on verbal reasoning as out of all the tests, DD found that a little tricky. Also, creative writing made a difference, I suspect as it had a surprise element and my DD particularly enjoyed it. We did not realise that it was a part of her assessment on the day of her interview and found out about it after it was all over! Preparing for GHS was relatively easy as my little had put in work for the highly selective grammar schools and I believe that it contributed hugely to her achievements in independent school exams. Happy to chat about various sources we used on a separate thread if you wish to. :)