Foundation Jobs Ranking

Clearly you can't answer this with certainty as it just depends how low you are and what other people's preferences are. What I would say though is that generally people do have a good mix of preferences, and as such its often not as bad as you might imagine. Its not like if you're 150th in the deanery, you'll get your 150th choice of job. It'll probably be a lot higher. Probably.

I got into my deanery being quite close to the cut-off. Around 75th percentile at a guess. I got my ~7th choice of job I think? My wife was about the same and got her 4th choice, IIRC.

You can also kind of predict which jobs will be popular and which won't. The jobs which include the main teaching hospital will be more popular (if not all the jobs include it). You can generally do a quick google and find out which the most popular DGHs are. Jobs with ITU/anaesthetics seem to be popular, because they are both unusual placements and known for being easy.

Hopefully you'd be ok, but you might not be, basically.

I’m currently ranking London at the top of my list, despite having middling chances of getting in, but was worried about the risk of getting jobs very low in my list of preferences if I just scrape into it in the bottom decile of the deanery. Was wondering if anyone had any anecdotal knowledge of how low they/friends of theirs had gotten placed in their jobs?

I’ve looked through last years jobs for NCELFS, and there’s probably at least 40-50% of the jobs that I’d be happy with > being in the next deanery on my list (EBH), which translates to about 100-150 jobs. Is it statistically likely that I’d get one of these even if I was at the bottom of the ranks? Wasn’t sure whether the magic of allocations kinda works out to there being a theoretical bottom to what you’re likely to be given due to everyone’s differing preferences, or if I should still be concerned about getting a job right at the bottom of my list :/

Its a tricky one really, and i guess it depends! If all the posts you really want are the teaching hospital ones, then you may need to rank more highly, but often they arent all popular.
I think trying to game the ranking is probably more effort than it is probably worth.
Apply in the order that you want. [the only FS where you might be more cautious in london is the south Thames, as you may end up on the coast when you wanted central london]
Just make the most of wherever you get!
Did you apply for the priority programmes?