Latymer Upper

[questions]

Really surprised and gutted that DS has no interview at Latymer.

Still no letter, but I couldn't wait and called them up this morning.

[pebbles]

We got a positive from Latymer, having received a rejection from our back up. How that happened is anyone's guess - a good day at one exam or a bad day at the backup. It just confirms how all of this is a complete lottery. Good luck to everybody.

[Inga]

Sorry to hear that news Questions,good luck on saturday at Colet Court.

Congratulations to Pebbles DC.

[MmeH]

I too think Latymer can be a bit of a lottery simply because of the huge numbers that apply. I was quite surprised when my DS didn't get an interview 2 yrs ago. I phoned up to discuss his performance and it seems they set great store by the reasoning papers as they are convinced they measure "innate potential", rather than how well tutored a child is. Rather naively, I had done minimal reasoning prep with DS as he seemed fine with it but I think in the stress of the exam he was unnerved by unfamiliar question types and just froze and scored badly.

This year with DD I made sure we looked at all the question formats. I think my DC are of similar ability, perhaps DS at the same age was slightly better at maths and slightly worse at English, but little in it. However, with the advantage of more extensive familiarisation with reasoning questions DD does have an interview this year. So definitely a lottery as the numbers applying mean they resort to a rather arbitrary measure of ability to decide who they will interview.

Good luck with Colet, Questions, and good luck everyone else too!

[Humbug]

That's very interesting MmeH, and rather ironic if true - as your extra reasoning work with DD will have convinced them that her 'innate potential' is higher than DS's! Were you pleased with the school he got in the end?

There have been some strange outcomes at our school too, but I think when you're dealing with nearly 1000 candidates it must be hard to know where to start, and certainly lots of very able children will not get interviews.

[MmeH]

Yes, I agree Humbug; that's my contention. To make the number of candidates "easier" to analyse, Latymer mark the multiple choice reasoning and the first section of the maths, as that is relatively quick and easy to do, and then just look at the other papers in detail for the top 500 or so to decide who to interview.

Fortunately Latymer was not our first choice for DS and he is doing very well at his first choice school, phew!

Good luck to everyone interviewing tomorrow.