As a part of market-related education reforms of international origin policy of school choice has been adopted to the compulsory phase of education in many countries. The possible effects of school choice have been intensively debated among scholars through comprehensive empirical research done mainly in the English-speaking countries. School choice (referring to parental choice as well as to some school selection) was introduced in the big cities of Finland in mid 90's, besides the traditional policy that still allocates pupils to comprehensive schools on the basis of residential catchment areas. This paper examines the operation of school choice in the Finnish public comprehensive school system in relation to other countries. The study captures the pupil flows between schools among transfers to the 7th grade (i.e. lower secondary) and outlines the positions of schools in the new market-like situation. Also the social compositions of the schools under different policies are examined. The data consist school preferences of an age cohort of the 12 year olds (N 5152) and a postal questionnaire sample (N 1523) of them in four big cities consisting 52 (lower secondary) schools in Finland.