All about Latymer Upper 11+ preparation

[GentleMintCat]

Dear all,
My DD is in year 5 and we are dreaming of Latymer Upper (yes, dreaming as using word aiming frightens me a bit). We love the school's ethos, teaching, community, innovative curriculum, inclusive bursary program that reflects on its community. My daughter loved the school and since she can't stop talking about it. Basically , she only wants that school and works so hard to get in.

I know that competition is fierce and chances are not high. For example, some very bright children who received offers from Godolphibn and St Paul's, City, didn't get through LU exam stage. One of my friends daughter, super bright and also well tutored, said LU exam was most difficult out of all the local schools. This makes me really nervous. Currently we are tutoring, but not sure if this is the right type, having feeling that it's more of a grammar school type of ruition, rather than LU which I know is highly focused on creative thinking and creative problem solving. During open day, they even said that they aren't interested in skillset, but how this skillset is applied to creative problem solveing.
So, please I want to hear everything that can be useful or potentially useful. Especially from parents who's children succeeded. Would love to get some tips, recommendations, tutor suggestions that have relevant LU exam experience. Also, if you could share some online resources, papers and platforms that are useful. Thank you! 🙏

Well done on getting through to interview. I think it could be different depending on the school. At ds school the headteacher sends a letter, but they get feedback from the teachers. Some school's requested recent reports, but we had to send those ourselves. I would speak to your head about this. For the references, we spoke to her about which schools we were applying to and I made sure she sent the references.

Good luck! Ds very happy at Latymer.

Did your child get an offer at the end?
I’m waiting for results next week so nervous!!

I have a DC at Latymer Upper and, while it’s a lovely school, it’s nowhere near as competitive to get into as SPGS as implied here.

The difficulty of an entrance paper doesn’t mean a school is harder to get into. A better indicator is how much a school over-offers and its acceptance rate, which you can see quite clearly from popular feeder prep schools’ offer and acceptance (leavers’) pages. For example, typically sends around 10–15% of pupils to Oxbridge, whereas SPGS is closer to 30–40%.

As others have mentioned, there is definitely a degree of hype around Latymer. Part of this reflects the growing popularity of co-educational schools, but it’s also because Latymer attracts a large number of state-school applicants (we were among them) through its bursary provision. In our state school, nearly half the cohort applied to Latymer simply to see how they would do, given that it could potentially be free. Parents in this group — myself included — I think can be often more nervous and less familiar with the independent-school process, so they tend to seek a lot of information and reassurance online. In many cases, Latymer is the only independent school they apply to because of the bursary option.

Is your child happy do you know if there is a lot of children from Richmond?

There’s a fair few from Richmond in my DCs year- easy journey on the tube.

Thank you - we are waiting for the offer date next Friday and if my child does get an offer from latymer or Hampton my child wants latymer but worried about tubes strikes etc.

he really liked the teachers on the interview day.

There’s always a way! Train to Barnes then bus up to the bridge etc!
Good luck- both great schools- we had a similar choice

@Sagegrey I agree that knowing ratio of offers to acceptances is a very good indicator of popularity - but that data does seem hard to come by with any certainly. I'm less convinced that the number who go to Oxbridge necessarily has much relationship though - it indicates that the most academic girls tend to have SPGS as a first choice more often than LU perhaps, but that doesn't mean that overall there are more applicants who have SPGS as first choice than LU. I know of quite a few people with both boys and girls who applied for only co-ed schools which included LU. I have heard that LU is less competitive for girls though than for boys due to the acceptable ratios being very different (fewer boys schools). At this point, everyone who had an interview is in with a pretty good chance I think anyway. Good luck everyone!