streathammum wrote:
OP, you are looking at it the wrong way around. The algorithm doesn't start with the child's preferences, it starts with the schools' ranks. The schools rank each child who has named the school anywhere on the CAF in order according to the admissions criteria. If the school has 100 places it will look at the top 100 children on this list and if any of them have put it first on the CAF then they will be offered a place. Critically, the lower preferences of those people who get offers are discarded, so they come off the lists of the other schools they named.
Meanwhile, all the other schools are doing the same thing. Looking at the children who are highest up their admissions criteria and seeing if they can offer them a place or whether they have been offered a place already by a school they ranked higher up the CAF.
You can see that you can never leapfrog someone by putting a school higher up the CAF. You will always be offered a place before someone else with a lower ranking than you, regardless of where you put the school on the CAF.
Ahhhh, sorry I thought I understood from the link Tinkers had. But now confused again.
Quote: The schools rank each child who has named the school anywhere on the CAF in order according to the admissions criteria. If the school has 100 places it will look at the top 100 children on this list and if any of them have put it first on the CAF then they will be offered a place. UnQuote
Here in the above quote you are saying that top 100 who has put it first will be offered right? Imagine 100th rank has put school A as second choice but 101st rank had put the school as first choice. So now the 101st rank would be given the last place. Student A didn't get a good rank in his 1st choice school. Now the last place of the school A would have gone to the 101st rank student cos he/she marked the school A as first choice right?
Excuse me if am sounding too dumb
