Secondary Admissions: Do You Lose Out by Listing a School 3rd?

[karmi2010]

Hi everyone, I have a question for those with experience in secondary school admissions, please :)
I keep hearing that you should always list schools in your genuine order of preference, and that even if you list a school as your sixth choice, it won’t reduce your chances of getting in. But I’m struggling to fully understand how that works in practice.
For example, Grey Coat Hospital offers 15 places based on language aptitude. Let’s say our daughter sits the test and we receive an email suggesting she has a good chance of being offered one of these places.
Grey Coat is a fantastic school, but it’s quite far from us. We also have a good local school nearby (though we’re not sure if we’re in catchment) and a grammar school that our daughter will be applying to. So, our genuine preference would be:

1. Grammar school
2. Local school
3. Grey Coat Hospital

If we list Grey Coat as our third choice, but other students who are also eligible for the language places list it as their first choice, doesn’t that mean those places could be filled before our application is considered, simply because we ranked it lower? I’d really appreciate clarification on this – thank you!

No, because order of preference is only taken into account if you satisfy the admissions criteria for more than one school. Otherwise you go into the "admissions pot" for everything on your list.

So everyone who applied to Grey Coat Hospital (no matter what order of preference) is ranked in order according to admissions criteria. The top 15 on the list who satisfy the language aptitude are notionally in the running for the language places. However, if some of these people "qualified" for a higher preference school, they will be offered that place instead, which means the language place offering moves down the list.

If your child is higher up the Grey Coat Hospital list than any other language aptitude child, they will always get offered a place ahead of the other child. Unless they get their 1st or 2nd preference instead, in which case they aren't in the running.

thank you so much @redskydelight very helpful!