what else has gone wrong at Westminister (branching off from Westminster Maths thread)

boys3: I am experienced in Oxbridge admissions and my own DC attends an independent which has a small but high achieving sixth form. (The school is high in league tables but wasn't on your original list because it doesn't send 30+.)

I have another hypothesis that could contribute to the relatively lower offer / application rate that Molio might have expected from Westminster and similar (based on anecdotal evidence). I think some very able sixth formers actually focus their efforts to the USA with a more 'allrounder application and set of skills which may detract from the 'depth required for Oxbridge interview. They however still apply to Oxbridge so as not to close off that option.
Peteneras, your colleagues must have a GSOH.

No Word, seriously, in real life and especially at lunch break, my colleagues who would all be gathered at the staff room after their meals, couldn't wait for 'The President' (that's what they call me - now I'm in danger of outing myself) to arrive to give my opinions on things they want to know.

One just walks in on an open forum to give one's opinion(s). There's no need to barge in! I walked in to see what 'had gone wrong' with Westminster School only to find earth shattering data and statistics on Oxbridge entry. Hope you've learned something from me . . .

pet if you weren't so terribly busy and important and had read the thread, you'd know that most posters have not been saying Oxbridge is the best university.

I wonder if you barge into conversations in RL, only to make a fool of yourself?

You CANNOT be serious, grovel . . . Oxbridge is categorically, undisputedly, absolutely the BEST in the universe! The Professor must be out of his mind!

I heard a funny story from a friend of mine who teaches at Oxford. A Professor was about to retire recently. The great and the good of his subject laid on a dinner for him and asked if he'd like to invite three of the best undergraduates he'd ever taught. He did. The assembled Oxford glitterati were stunned when it turned out that the three guests had all been undergraduates at Durham where the Professor had taught previously!

For the life of me, I've never seen such intense obsession anywhere on earth before. Didn't read through everything - you must be joking, there's life out there for me - just half a dazen or so and I'm already convinced there are people who have some very serious problems . . .

Of course Word, and that's exactly the approach any sensible DC applying to Oxford or Cambridge should adopt. My point is merely that the sheer wall of numbers still applying suggests that the culture hasn't shifted that much.

I don't think the two things are incompatible molio.

One can apply, give it a punt, whilst not being remotely wedded to the idea and perfectly open to other posibilities.

Poison that angst is one reason amongst many that I've been delighted not to bring up DC in London.

I too see and hear lots of comments about the merits of options other than Oxbridge but the numbers applying from Westminster speak for themselves - the message appears not to be getting through.

forago good point that has already been made

• as has the point that Oxbridge is percieved as a pressured option that not all want

• as has the point W actively open their boys eyes to other options

• as has the point that Oxbridge is now so competitive both nationally and internationally, combined with the widening of access, that the selection process can feel to pupils like a lottery they do not necessarily want to put themselves through

• as has the point that these pupils may in reality be open to a subjectivity which may indeed, not without good reason, favour state school applicants (And have not seen any Oxford tutors come on here and say, or heard it from any IRL either, they think they are 100% effective in selecting the "best" pupils, certainly not to a "top" 1% by any way you might want to define it, simply that they aim to select the candidate's they believe will be best suited to what Oxford has to offer and make best use of the opportunity - Cambridge admit as much by putting so many pupils "of Cambridge standard" in the pool).

One look at the entries and the success rates for London day schools does suggest a disparity with where they lie in terms of selectivity / position in A level league tables. However there could be other factors (the inadequacy of A levels as a measure of academic ability for one) and numbers are so small you'd be pressed to get any sort of meaningful correlations. Maybe next year W will have a cohort who lemming like throw themselves at Oxbridge and the tutors lemming like take them all in some subjective backlash, as Word says there is a concern they are missing bright applicants from schools they know produce successful students to other Unis where they may be / are getting firsts. A single dysfunctional cohort could see a school plummeting down all these tables.

In the Context of the aim of our society being (since it is the policy of all shades of political party) to make it a fairer process for those without the advantages of a W, or other private school, education it isn't a bad thing.

The schools encourage the pupils to see other options as being potentially as good even better for individuals depending on their ambitions and the pupils see other pupils going to other institutions and doing well and having good experiences so there is not much angst there. And they have had an undeniably good education that sets them up to realise their ambitions whatever they may be.

It seems to me the main problem in adjusting to this environment is those parents who are so wedded to seeing Oxbridge at the head of a hierarchy, sine qua non, rather than one excellent educational opportunity for students to realise their potential, amongst many, some of which may better suit individual students, that they post threads titled "what has gone wrong at Westminster / SPGS / Hampton /LEH /JAGS (Delete as appropriate, to name just a few threads / posts I have seen in the past) manifesting the angst being expressed over dinner tables across London.

Discuss

Aren't you making the massive assumption that the top achieving kids in a school always want to and do apply to Oxbridge?

I really don't think that is the case - it's very hard to make a 17y old do something they dont want to do, I imagine. I know of a boy at a competitor of W who was being pressurised to apply to Oxford, went on to get 4A* at A level but refused to apply and happily went to Durham. Equally, I hear a lot of noise about people wanting to go to the London universities or even the US over Oxford, certainly, possiibly not Cambridge, if they are scientist/maths/academic career bound.

Westminster Under School sends 80% of its leavers to Westminster. I know that progression is not automatic but very few fail to get in if they want to. Now WUS is a great prep but W's available talent pool is presumably limited by taking so many from one school (about 40 a year).

I think the only real answer is the one you've already given uilen - that I must be overrating the selectivity of Westminster. Even so, given the fabulous education the kids receive and all the home support, I'm still determined to remain a little surprised. I think I'm also going to be surprised by SPGS too, for the same reason. DS3 could hardly move for girls from there at his interview and I dented his confidence on the phone by saying they were all slam dunk.

boys, if you're thinking of compiling a grammar table, I would say that only three year averages make sense. Cohorts can differ quite markedly; a single year may be unreliable. Also, some super selectives are vastly more selective than others, so you can't really lump them all in a pot.

Yes, I agree. Sorry, just quibbling with absolutes.

I don't think I'm saying that - clearly there will be people who don't apply and the definition of who is "top" is a grey area. Change 1% to 2% or 3% or 5% if you like, but it seems to me irrelevant for the original point - Oxbridge are selecting from a much bigger pool than Westminster so why should one be surprised if some Westminster students don't get in?

But you are supposing that Oxbridge have all those students applying to them or selecting them or, even for those applying, that the application process is watertight to select the 'best'

I said the top 1% (of the whole population), not the top 1% of university undergraduate students. This is quite a soft claim when you look at the % of 18 year olds going to university at all or getting AAB or above at A level.

However, Oxford takes around 3000 undergraduate students each year. There are around 500,000 new undergraduates each year in the UK. Given those statistics, suggesting Oxford select mostly from the top few percent of undergraduate students would not be an unreasonable claim.

boys3 lots of , that is the most useful data format so far (albeit limited to that particular cohort). I'm afraid I would n't be able to list all the superselective state grammar schools but ones like the Tiffins, Camp Hills, Colyton, Colchester ones, Reading / Kendrick, Pate's, Wilson etc come to mind.

Myths to dispel from this and other 2013 data snapshot

Independent 'comprehensive' schools or even partially academic selectives co-ed ones like Oundle do not get a better offer / application ratio from Oxford (or indeed Cambridge from raw data) than state schools despite potential subject bias and academic boost from international sixth form applicants.

Selective state education in most cases might result in better exam grades but not in prorata numbers of students wanting to apply to Oxbridge.

Uilen I would question whether Oxbridge does select or even have access to applications from the pool of top 1% of students. That is quite a claim.

But the question raised was why do many students from Westminster not get into Oxbridge. The answer seems simple: Oxbridge can select from a much larger pool than Westminster and is therefore more highly selective than Westminster.

I do think that people over-estimate how selective the "top" schools are. So yes they are "highly selective" but nowhere near as selective as top university courses. Roughly speaking Oxbridge probably is taking students from the top 1% while the top 5% go onto a wide range of good universities.

And just like for universities the admissions statistics for schools are often misleading: x applications for y places is not meaningful unless you know how many other schools the x candidates applied to.

uilen I don't think any highly selective school claims to only take DC in the top 1%.

Certainly W does not!

And I don't think any highly selective school claims that the entrance test is infallible or that there are no DC as or more clever outside its hallowed doors.

What these schools mean is that there is a bar that must be reached by all applicants. And some schools set that bar higher than others. W is pretty high.

It's a bit like Oxbridge. These universities select rigorously from those that apply. However, IMVHO the process is still fallible and of coruse there are many people as or more clever that never do apply. Does that mean that Oxbridge is not highly selective?

I am always dubious about the extent to which private schools can really be "highly selective". Most of the kids are selected at 11+ or 13+, but you can't pick out the "top" kids so early and selection at those ages is heavily affected by earlier education. I suspect that the "highly selective" schools get a lot of top 5% children but not so many top 0.1-1% children.

Schools which cost 20k+ per year also manifestly exclude huge chunks of the population. For example, as a family of academics, we can just about afford two sets of day school fees but we couldn't stretch to two sets of boarding fees, even with 10-20% scholarships. (Yet we earn well above the thresholds for bursaries.) That means that my children (who are very high achieving) could only go to a handful of boarding schools which offer larger academic scholarships or day schools within reach of our house. Looking amongst my colleagues' children - many are extremely high achieving, as you might expect for academics' children, but very few are attending "top" private schools. Those who are typically have one parent working outside academia pulling in a much larger income.

And then there are large numbers of families who just wouldn't apply to places like Westminster, even though they would be eligible for financial assistance.