How admissions works

nota bene: admissions and marking is a complicated topic and I don't pretend to have a full understanding of it. These are my notes made with customers of mine who have gone through the test process. which I wanted to share these anyway, because so many people don't have a clue how it works.

The 11+ is NOT a pass/fail test. It is a ranked test. What this means is that every child's exam results put them in a hierarchy, with the highest mark student at the top and going down from there.

The G7 schools have 1,060 places to give out each year (2026 data). Split by school this looks like:

Each year around 3,000 children register for the 11+ test (from Tommy's). So you can already see that even among the children who have spent extra time preparing for the test, only the top ~30% of those will be offered a place.

After the test, you must put down the school you want to share your rank with, and then the school builds their own list from there.

If you are aiming for Pate's school, your child must score within the top 150 out of all 3,000 who register for the test. Otherwise, you have a bit more flex. If your child is for example rank 300 for Tommy's, it's reasonable to assume that most of the top 150 will choose Pate's, since they are eligible for Pate's. Which means that Tommy's, with 155 places, might offer places from rank 151-306 ish.

In fact, here is a table for the 2026 intake of the lowest rank that was allocated a school place, per school:

Please remember that these numbers are not just how your child fared out of all 3,000 registrations. It is how they fared in the rank of all the children who put down the school as their first choice. Putting down the school you want matters more than the rank. A child who ranked 650 for The Crypt, but put the school as their 2nd choice, would lose out to a 700 ranked child who put the school as their #1.

This is a complicated topic and there is more to discuss, but hopefully this gives you an idea of how the admissions process works. Again, I am not an admissions officer and I have probably made some mistakes. These are my notes from my discussions with parents.