Queen Elizabeth's Hospital

Before anything else: QEH takes boys only from Year 3 to Year 11 and becomes co-educational in the Sixth Form, so a girl cannot apply at eleven. For a boy, Year 7 is the main entry point, an intake of just under ninety, assessed in English, maths and reasoning on the school's own computers, then a taster morning and an interview. It is an independent day school in Clifton, in the middle of Bristol, with around 750 pupils from seven to eighteen.

The name is not a joke and it was never a hospital. A Bristol merchant called John Carr left provision in his will of 1586 for the education of poor children and orphans, and Elizabeth I granted the charter in 1590, which is where both halves of the name come from. The school has been on Berkeley Place since 1847, in a Tudor Gothic building that is listed and which Historic England singles out for its early use of internal cast-iron beams. Elizabeth II became patron in 1984, nearly four centuries after the first Elizabeth chartered it.

Carr's bequest still does something. The school draws on endowment income to help families of limited means, and financial assistance has its own deadline in the admissions calendar, earlier than the main application, which is worth knowing if you might need it. Sport happens off site at Failand. The Good Schools Guide describes 'a commitment to really looking after its young people', and says the school's 'expertise in educating boys is evident everywhere, from the structure of lessons to the strength of its pastoral care'. It suits a boy who wants a city school with a long memory.