Passing SGS but not Wilson's

[Juliapal19]

My son has met required standard for both SGS and Wilson's after second stage. We put Wilson's as first choice and SGS second. He was offered SGS. What does this actually mean?

I understand that Wilson's counts 20% stage one and 80% stage two whilst SGS is more like 40/60. But SGS selects only 135, are they in order of ability only? Does it mean his second stage was weaker?

Many thanks.

[streathammum]

The SGS admissions criteria are available on their website. They reserve a certain number of places for priority postcodes and the rest of the boys can live anywhere. Within each of these streams offers are made in order of test score, with distance being used as a tie-break. There may also be places for looked after or pupil premium children but I can't remember off the top of my head.

It is possible that your son's second stage test was weaker (compared with the cohort) than his SET, which would mean his score for SGS was better than his score for Wilsons. Or it could be that more people chose to put Wilsons higher on their CAF than SGS, so you just need to perform better overall to get a place there. You'll never know, so there's not much point in dwelling on it.

What you should be able to find out at some point is where you are on the waiting list for Wilsons, which will give you an indication of whether you may be offered a place before September.

[Oneoftwothings]

As above, it could mean that his second stage wasn’t as strong, relatively. However, the ranking that Wilson’s (historically) offer to on offer day is no lower than 400, while SGS go to around 500 on offer day, so it could also be that your son’s score fell between these rankings.

[Juliapal19]

Thank you very much for the clarification