How do preferences work when it comes to allocating applicants to places?
Applicants will be allocated to foundation schools in score order of their total score (academic quartile score plus score for application questions), starting with the highest scoring applicant. Each applicant will be allocated to their highest preference school with available places. If their first choice is not available, the system will look at their second choice, and so on down their list of preferences until it finds their highest preference which still has a space available. Where applicants have the same score, the system will randomly select the order for allocation of applicants with that score. Here’s how it works: Lucy’s top five foundation school preferences were: Wales, Severn, Peninsula, Wessex and Oxford. She scored a total of 70 for her application (academic quartile score plus score for application questions). This placed her 400th in the score list, as 399 other applicants had higher scores than her. When it was Lucy’s turn to be allocated, all the vacancies in Wale
