Henrietta Barnett Round 2 invite updates for 28 September

[PrimaDonnaMum]

Hi all,

As we approach the 28th September date for Henrietta Barnett School Round 2 invites, I thought it would be helpful to start a thread where we can share updates as they come in - similar to previous years' threads.

If you receive (or don't receive) an invite, it would be great if you could share:

Approximate time you heard (by post/email/portal)
Whether it was an invite to Round 2 Test or a rejection
Any general observations (without breaching anonymity of your child)

This should help other parents get a sense of timing and manage the wait a little more easily. Wishing everyone the best of luck - I know how nerve-wracking this stage is!

Look forward to hearing how everyone gets on.

Rejection emails have started appearing for HBS

we haven’t received anything @17:02

No news is good news, sadly only kids with rejections have been receiving emails so far x Haven’t seen anyone with invitations yet x

Hi - we got rejected, cut off is 344.94, we were way off! But good experience for mine certainly. Good luck to everyone else! Email came in at 4.50pm

My friend’s DD received an invite at 5pm today

@Workingmomsg could it be possible that your friend’s DD received invite for Sutton stage 2? As no one else has received invite for HBS stage 2 today.

She received both HBS and Sutton invites. HBS email was before Sutton.

@Workingmomsg That’s surprising. HBS advised they have not sent out any invites today, they have just released the results to students who didn’t progress into next stage. The top 300 will be emailed in the due course.

This sounds plausible 🤞as no one else seems to have had an invite and on another thread no one has had an invite either. We hold out in hope 🫣

I think someone by the username Daogroupie on another thread said invites have been sent at 3pm today.

HBS website says will inform everyone who sat round 1 test by Monday 28 Sept so it’s still a few more days to go

yeah on EPE forum, they also most definitely meant HBS results have been received not invites as no one’s got them yet!

They did use the word invite though, but I’m certain it’s a wrong choice of word as school confirmed No invites have been sent yet x

My DD took the Sutton SET and HBS Round 1 with little specific preparation. She told me she could answer almost every question on the SET with zero guessing, whereas HBS involved a huge amount of guessing and felt thoroughly uncomfortable. She received her rejection email from HBS at 3:30 today and got her Sutton invite 1.5 hours later. Digressing a bit, have you seen anyone ever make it through Henrietta Barnett Round 2 without intensive prep?

I believe the difference could be that Sutton round 2 invites about 35% of the girls back whereas HBS round 2 invites less than 10% of the girls back, so the clearance bar is much higher too?

There were offers yesterday but as 90% will be not invited, you will hear more about the girls who will not progress than the 300 that did

You make a good point, obviously. In fact, my DD's score in HBS would have been enough to get her into the second round if they used the Sutton Grammar standards (206, which means 103 per subject) instead of HBS (344.94, which means 115 per subject).
However, I want to emphasize another part: English and maths are very standard and don't need much school-specific preparation. But HBS first round is quite strange—surprisingly, it doesn't test maths, which happens to be my DD's strongest subject, and the time for her VR and NVR was extremely tight. My DD is very strong at NVR (always 141 in CAT) and also good at VR; she said she could have solved all the questions given enough time, but there simply wasn't enough time, so she had to guess a lot.
To be honest, we didn't prepare much—we just bought one set of practice papers, and she actually prepped for many of the NVR question types on the morning of the exam. It's not sour grapes, but both my child and I feel that this type of selection method isn't ideal, and the margin for error is far too low. English plus maths is a much more straightforward approach.

I just assumed they dont test maths because they know the large proportion of applicants are heavily maths focussed so they want more of a balanced approach

Received email @12pm with invite for 6 Oct.

DD2 Received invite for round 2 @11:46. Good luck to everyone.

To those who didn’t make it-My DD1 didn’t make it to round 2, 2 years ago (0.4 point away) , we were gutted but she is truly happy in her current grammar school. So your child will thrive with everything you have instilled in them throughout the 11+ journey. Whatever the outcome.

Congratulations!
I thought all invites were sent out on 23rd September. We received our invite at 12 pm on 23rd
Just curious if any rejections were sent out after 22nd Sept?

I thought the same. Perhaps a confusion with Sutton? HBS definitely didn't send invites on 22 nd