North London Collegiate School
NLCS admissions guide
NLCS sets two written papers on paper and no reasoning test at all. What is in them, what the interview asks, and the dates for 2027 entry.
By Richard and Freddie, who joined The Perse in 2019 and left in 2026 after Year 13 to become expert admission tutors.
Last checked 11 September 2026
Almost every school a North London family applies to alongside NLCS tests reasoning on a computer. NLCS tests comprehension, writing and maths, by hand.
That single difference should reshape how a family prepares, and it is the reason the reasoning drilling that dominates London 11+ tutoring earns nothing here.
At a glance
- School
- Independent day school for girls
- Where
- Edgware, London
- Ways in
- 11+ and 16+. No Year 11 entry.
- Assessed by
- Two handwritten papers, then interview
- Reasoning test
- None
- Registration closes
- 4pm, Friday 13 November 2026
- Papers sat
- Thursday 3 December 2026
- Fees 2026/27
- £10,365 a term, £31,095 a year
Checked against the School's own admissions, fees and bursary pages on 11 September 2026.
Two papers, on paper
| Paper | Time | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| English | 1 hour 15 minutes | Comprehension and creative writing, together |
| Mathematics | 1 hour 15 minutes | One paper |
Two and a half hours of handwriting in total. The English paper is the one to look at twice: it carries comprehension and extended writing inside a single 75-minute block, so a candidate has to divide her own time between them. That is a skill in itself, and it is not one a child discovers on the day.
What the other schools set
This is the comparison worth having, because a family applying to several of these is preparing for genuinely different things:
| School | First assessment |
|---|---|
| North London Collegiate | Its own written papers, on paper. No reasoning. |
| Godolphin and Latymer | London 11+ Consortium assessment, 100 minutes online |
| South Hampstead High School | London 11+ Consortium assessment, 100 minutes online |
| St Paul's Girls' School | ISEB Common Pre-Test, then three written papers |
| City of London School for Girls | A one-hour computer-based test, then two written papers |
Four of those five are computer-based and all four test verbal or non-verbal reasoning. If your daughter is sitting NLCS alongside any of them, she is preparing for two different exams, and the hours are not interchangeable.
The interview
Candidates who do well in the papers are invited back in January, between the 11th and the 22nd, for about thirty minutes. It includes spoken maths and English questions.
That is the part families routinely do not prepare, and it is a real skill: working a problem out loud, in front of someone, without the page to hide behind. A girl who is strong on paper can find it genuinely disorienting the first time, which is a good argument for it not being the first time.
Dates for September 2027 entry
| Registration opens | Friday 1 May 2026 |
| Registration closes | 4pm, Friday 13 November 2026 |
| Entrance examinations | Thursday 3 December 2026 |
| Interviews | Monday 11 to Friday 22 January 2027 |
| Offers | Mid-February 2027, with acceptances in early March |
The registration deadline is also the scholarship and bursary deadline. Families who assume funding applications run on a later timetable miss them, and there is no second chance in the same cycle.
Places
About 70 to 75 places go to external candidates, with roughly 45 more girls moving up from the Junior School. The School does not publish an applicant-to-place ratio.
Fees
For 2026/27 the Senior School fee is £10,365 a term, which is £31,095 a year.
The inclusions are better than most: the School states that no additional charge is made for textbooks, stationery or examination fees. Fees can be paid termly in full, or in ten equal monthly instalments from 1 August to 1 May, which is a genuinely useful option and not one every school on this roster offers.
Registering costs £150 for UK applicants and £200 from overseas.
Bursaries
Awards reach 100% of fees. The School's own guidance is unusually concrete:
- Below £40,000 of family income with limited assets, a full award is likely
- Above £150,000, fee assistance is unlikely
- Partial awards cover the range between
Seventy-eight pupils currently hold one, roughly one in ten of the Senior School.
A bursary also covers lunches, coach transport at half fare, uniform, essential curriculum materials, examination fees and compulsory school trips.
We sell tutoring, so it is worth saying plainly: if a bursary is realistic for your family, apply for it before you spend anything on preparation. A full award is worth more than any amount of tutoring, and the deadline is the same November date as registration.
Scholarships
NLCS awards the Sophie Bryant Scholarship and the Handel Music Scholarships. A scholarship recognises particular talent, promise or commitment, and is a separate thing from the means-tested bursary — a family may apply for both, and should where both are plausible.
The deadline is 13 November 2026, the same date as registration.
Entry points
11+ into Year 7 and 16+ into the Sixth Form. Occasional places come up in Years 8, 9 and 10 by expression of interest, but they depend on a girl leaving, so they cannot be planned for.
The School offers no Year 11 entry at all, which is worth knowing if you are considering a move part-way through GCSEs.
How to prepare
Reading and written English first, from Year 4 or 5. The English paper rewards a girl who has read widely and written often, and neither is buildable in a term.
Practise by hand, under time. Seventy-five minutes of writing is physically demanding at ten, and losing marks in the last stretch of the maths paper to a tiring hand is the commonest way a strong candidate underperforms here.
Skip the reasoning. It is the single most-sold category of 11+ preparation and it earns nothing at this school. Put those hours into comprehension and extended writing instead.
Rehearse thinking out loud. The interview asks for spoken maths and English. Make the first time she does that not be in January in front of a stranger.
The shorter version of all this, with the assessment laid out beside our preparation for it, is on our North London Collegiate School page.
Common questions
- Does NLCS use the ISEB pre-test or the London 11+ Consortium test?
- Neither. NLCS writes and marks its own papers, and unlike almost every comparable London girls' school it sets no reasoning component at all. Godolphin and Latymer and South Hampstead use the Consortium assessment; St Paul's Girls' uses the ISEB pre-test; City of London School for Girls uses a computer-based first stage. NLCS uses none of them.
- Are the NLCS papers on a computer?
- No. They are handwritten. That is worth planning for in itself — two and a half hours of writing is physically demanding for a Year 6 child, and a candidate who has only ever practised on a screen finds the last twenty minutes of the maths paper harder than the questions warrant.
- What is in the NLCS English paper?
- Comprehension and creative writing, together, in 75 minutes. They are set as one paper rather than two, so managing the time between them is part of what is being assessed.
- Does NLCS publish sample papers?
- Yes, on its own admissions pages, and they are worth more here than at most schools. Because the format is handwritten and carries no reasoning section, commercially sold 11+ practice material is preparing for a different exam. The School's own samples are the only reliable picture of what a candidate will actually meet.
- How much does NLCS cost, and what do bursaries cover?
- £10,365 a term for the Senior School in 2026/27, which is £31,095 a year, with no additional charge for textbooks, stationery or examination fees. Bursaries reach 100%: a family below £40,000 with limited assets is likely to receive a full award, and above £150,000 assistance is unlikely. 78 pupils hold one, and two thirds of those are full awards.
- Can you join NLCS in Year 11?
- No. The School offers no Year 11 entry. Occasional places do come up in Years 8, 9 and 10 by expression of interest, but they depend on someone leaving. The two rounds you can plan for are 11+ and Sixth Form.
Sources
Facts on this page were checked against the following on 11 September 2026. Where a school does not publish a detail, the page says so rather than filling it in from elsewhere.
Where next
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