I'm curious. Does anyone ever appeal to Pates on grounds of non- qualification and actually get a place? If so, they must surely have to make a very strong case! We're not going to put ourselves and DS through it because he's in the Top 150 for everywhere else and only missed qualifying by 5 ranks - so we have no case really! I can't say he didn't perform to the best of his ability because he clearly did amazingly! And I can't argue with the way they rank with minimum pass marks for each section, because that's their right. I also don't think that they'd be particularly moved by the argument that we wanted Pates because he could have walked to school!
So I'm left thinking that the only way you would succeed at appeal for Pates is if you have a genius for a child (there was one in a previous year at DS' school and he did get into Pates) and some very strong extenuating circumstances. Not just that your child did really well but didn't quite fit the profile Pates look for (very good at everything rather than outstanding in some areas and not quite so good in others).
Hence my question! We've now submitted the CAF and taken Pates off so we definitely won't be appealing (focusing instead on finding out all about Tommies) but I am curious.

The responses to these FOI requests imply that there were successful appeals between allocation day and the start of year 7 in many years since 2008 (possibly more successful than the starting number over PAN suggests, if parents subsequently turned Pates down, presumably either to take up a place at an indie or because they came to their senses re the negative prestige : exhaustion ratio of the proposed journey?):

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/actual_y7_intake_against_pan_2?unfold=1#incoming-1149276
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/actual_y7_intake_against_pan#incoming-374831

ETA It doesn't say what type of appeal, though.

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So it looks like in those years there may have been 2 or 3 successful appeals? I wonder how that compares to the other schools?
I always said to DS that if he didn't get a GS place at all I would appeal, at least to Crypt and possibly Tommies, because for that to have been the case something would have to have gone very wrong, and I'd be throwing every bit of his strong academic evidence at it! But I also said I wouldn't appeal for Pates as I read anecdotally on here that they don't encourage appeals and they stand little chance of succeeding. That didn't stop him asking when he heard he hadn't qualified for Pates though!

I find this interesting as my son qualified for Pate’s for 2017 entry (but he scored in early 190’s) so didn’t get a place. He was on the waiting list until June when I was told that 5 or 6 children had got places on appeal (we didn’t bother as I didn’t think we had grounds to appeal) which had taken them well over their PAN. It was at this point that we decided to take him off the waiting list as it sounded like the waiting list children didn’t have a chance of getting a place and he desperately wanted to go to STR anyway. According to this FOI, only 147 children started which seems that they were under their PAN (quite a few must have not started in the September after all) I’m therefore wondering if there is a possibility he might have got a last minute place. Oh well.... I do think STR was the right school for him but for those that really want a place at Pates it might be worth hanging on until the start of the new school year!

If it helps in regards to numbers, my daughter's best friend from primary joined her at Pate's last week having been offered a place from the waiting list. She narrowly missed initial allocation with a rank of 185.

That is really interesting and shows that it's not too late, even after term has begun.
But the big difference is that these are children whom Pates has deemed to meet the qualifying standard, but just doesn't have room for. I think appealing when you haven't met the the qualifying standard must surely be harder.

Must admit I've not looked at the whole appeals process stuff - If someone gets in on appeal does it mean that whoever was at the bottom of the admissions list for that school suddenly find they've lost their place?

If so, do they then have a chance to also appeal and make a case that their result was "lower than was expected" as well (when they has presumbly been working on the basis that they didn't need to).

There seems to be a risk that this all reduces to not how good the individual child is, but how good their parents are at "creative writing".

If a child gets in on appeal it puts the school over its PAN, e.g 151. But if a child drops out they would not be replaced from the waiting list, the school would then stay at 150.

Thanks for the clarification - that's what I suspected was the case, as it would be massively unfair if someone lost their place because someone else got in on appeal.