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Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:26 am
by SmileyErn
Is there any evidence to support the suggestion that registrars may be sharing information with selected other schools about who they make offers to? Like between St Paul's and Westminster, or King's and Westminster?

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:51 pm
by Jason Orange
Schools will not know until the very last minute who they are offering to. Don't forget it's the home LA that makes offers albeit on behalf of Admission Authorities. Any sharing of info will therefore be close to offer day. The system of deciding who gets offered must of course be entirely objective so any exchange of info (should it be happening) should be entirely irrelevant.

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 11:09 pm
by Tinkers
The schools the Op is talking about are not state schools and are independent.

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 3:43 pm
by Jason Orange
Fair enough.

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 4:26 pm
by indiemom
SmileyErn wrote:Is there any evidence to support the suggestion that registrars may be sharing information with selected other schools about who they make offers to? Like between St Paul's and Westminster, or King's and Westminster?
It's alleged that they do but I think unofficially so it's difficult to prove or disprove :D

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:28 pm
by Dadofmytwo
I'm pretty sure they do. DD applied to 3 schools. All highly selective... 2 super-selective in fact.

Her 1st choice gave a pretty rigorous academic interview (no smiles or attempt to establish a rapport). We were surprised when she got an offer as we thought that must have been a bad sign.

The other 2 interviews were also academic with maths, non-verbal reasoning and language skills assessment but very friendly.
DD had offers from her 1st and 3rd choice. 2nd choice wrote such a lovely personal letter informing us that she had done very well and that due to keen demand several deserving girls such as DD could not be offered places. The school wished her well in forthcoming music exams. There was no hint from the tone that she did not make the grade and this was not stated at all.

I strongly suspect that this was a case of one offer to go between DD's 1st and 2nd choice school. We had had much less contact with the 2nd choice school before the exam so on paper it would have looked like we were less keen on it than the others.

In my opinion there will be a few DC at the very top who will be offered places by every school based on their exam scores. I am sure that many schools do coordinate offers for other DC from the next tier downwards depending on how oversubscribed they are.

If you want offers from every school I think you have to make every one feel that it was your 1st choice with lots of contact.

Have others had a similar experience?

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:56 pm
by Bazelle
Different experience here. We applied to 6 schools for DS, and to our surprise he was offered places at all 6, despite telling ALL of them that his first choice was x during his interviews. In the end we opted for y because it was as academic as x but they offered him a nice scholarship.

Re: Do schools coordinate offers?

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:41 am
by indiemom
Well done to you and your DC. :D

All the very best