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

Molio, I agree. I wonder if there's a limit to how many pupils from one school Oxbridge can and will accept, I'm not suggesting an actual cut-off just do they just expect more from them?

A friend's DS who got a place at Westminster for sixth form was told by a staff member that Oxbridge would be much easier and less competitive than achieving his spot at school. He is a genuine super-brain and went on to do so and is flying high at Uni too, I'm sure he gained hugely from the education there and he loved it but equally he would have done brilliantly in a comprehensive in special measures.

boys. Blimey you've been busy!

I realise that you're focussing on 'cohort success'. I've already made it very clear that I'm in awe of Westminster on all sorts of levels but 'cohort success' is as problematic a criterion as 'applicant: offer ratio' where the fact of very low numbers are completely disregarded. Westminster is hugely selective with huge resources and hugely ambitious parents and teachers. My initial point was: why so little difference between it (and other very selective independents) and certain state schools who put in 'good' numbers of applicants without the advantages that Westminster has. The numbers on that score are fairly approximate. Westminster is still in the lead by some way, but not massively, massively so. That surprises me still. I'm far more surprised by the fact that so many Westminster kids get turned down, than the fact that so many get in. But I'm not losing sleep over it - it seems quite positive in fact. And that's said with the very clear caveat that I have no quarrel with independent schooling at all. What I find most interesting/ concerning about your numbers are how few pupils get entered at so many schools.

I can't help feeling that The Sutton Trust et al are barking up the wrong tree.

It's rather obvious why fewer pupils overall in, eg, Rochdale get to top universities and why more from Sutton do. You need to compare like with like. Does the grocer's daughter in Rochdale do worse than the grocer's daughter in Sutton? Or, even, does the grocer's daughter in Grantham have less of a chance than the Sutton one?

For further reading see the Sutton Trust Degrees of Success

My comment was not specific to Westminster: if one looks at a large group of "top" co-ed schools women are under-represented in top maths sets. Of course any one school might be an exception, as might one particular year.

needmore yes indeed.

W could certainly cherry pick 60 girls to boost their Oxbridge stats, but they seem to take a nice mix.

DD has been offered a place and isn't from overseas, won't be boarding and isn't a genius .

uilen, not quite. DS claimed that top maths set at W had a slightly higher ratio of girls, or to be more specific Asian girls. However there were girls in all sets. Given almost half the year take double maths, this is quite a lot, even if girls are more likely to take humanities. He claimed girls, bar one or two exceptions (I think they had one girl go to Cambridge and another to MIT in his year) were not necessarily brighter...but they worked harder. (One argument for co-ed sixth forms!)

I dont know exact numbers but I think it is about 600 applicants for about 70 places, 60 for girls. These come from all over the world as Westminster sixth form is seen as an ideal stepping stone for a top UK or US University. If W were determined to improve their results I think they could by taking in more boarders, and simply selecting the brightest. A certain amount of anecdote suggests that is not the case, and that to some extent weighting is given to girls who will contribute to both the school and the classroom. But presumably Oxbridge does the same.

xpatmama, 5 out of the 5 new entrants my son knew. They were all very impressive.

I think it gives a misleading picture to look only at schools putting in 15+ applicants to Oxford and Cambridge. There are many very highly respected schools which simply don't have those kinds of numbers since the sixth forms are small or the schools aren't as superselective as London/high profile boarding schools schools can be. Yet such schools may well do better with Oxbridge potential students than schools on this list do.

BTW for point 1 on needmoresleep's list: only 15% of Cambridge maths students are women, although 25% of applicants are female. Oxford has a high fraction of female applicants and offers for maths but women are still in the minority and less likely to receive an offer. Many reasons and explanations are offered, but already in the sixth form the top maths sets in the top co-ed schools tend to be mostly male.

Needmoresleep, I think your point 3 have really answered my question. i don't know how many girls intake (overseas included) in W in lower sixth, I guess around 30 ( may be totally wrong) I bet 2/3 will gain a Oxbridge offer. Also like you mentioned 10 new boys in Sixth form, 5 got to Oxbrigde, which is 50%. So actually the sixth form intakes really helped in achieving that statistic.
With this sort of track record, I'm sure will attract many parents to apply.

Xpatmama, I am not sure this is as big a factor as you may think.

1. Our observation was that girls were reasonably well distributed across the maths sets. I assume the primary function of taking in girls is to turn the sixth form co-ed, and even at this stage it would not be good for the more delicate male egos to have lots of girls in top sets and only boys in the bottom.

1. Only about a third of the intake will be boarders. These too are a mix of girls from overseas, girls living elsewhere in the UK and girls from places like Wycombe Abbey. Again Westminster only offers weekly boarding before sixth form, so the numbers of students from overseas before then is very limited. Some very, very bright girls join from overseas but most seem to arrive ready to engage fully with school life, rather than simply focus on results and Oxbridge. The main intake will be from London dayschools, and with a catchment from across London it is quite a cosmopolitan mix from quite a range of schools.

1. The London grapevine has it that it is easier for girls to gain places for lower demand subjects (classics, history of art, Russian) where otherwise there may be spaces in the classroom. Though this may simply reflect a girl bias towards humanities and languages and a boy bias towards maths and science. Westminster teaches classics, history of art and languages extremely well, and these can be less competitive subjects at Oxbridge, so in this sense taking in girls might boost W's Oxbridge intake.

1. There will be one or two girls who will look back and say that they enjoyed ther time at Westminster perhaps too much and they might have done better academically if they had stayed at their old school.

Competition for the small number of places, roughly 10, for new boys at sixth form level is very strong, and all five my son knew went on to Oxbridge. They woud have all been very strong candidates whatever school they went to.

I seem to remember reading something suggesting that the average boy's iGCSE results was higher than the average results for incoming sixth formers in that year. This in part might reflect better iGCSE preparation at Westminster, but also suggests that, perhaps like Oxbridge, you don't need straight A*s to get into Westminster sixth form and other factors come into play.

Sorry Draylon. Too much detail.

What an interesting table.

I suppose "the what's gone wrong" thread is reasonable if as a parent you look at those statistics and pick the school most likely to come up trumps for Oxbridge. After all you can only base future returns on past performance, as all the financial bumf assaulting my letterbox says.

I would also be interested in data which shows subject success and how that contributes to the percentages. We all know that Land Management, Norse & Celtic etc are favoured by private schools and choosing those subjects bump up their numbers. Indeed as does Classics, simply because not that many state schools offer it to A Level.

I am particularly keen to know what the success rates are for subjects like English, History and PPE. I noticed on the Higher Education thread that state-school applicants weren't doing too well on that score. I know loads of state-school pupils locally who've gone to Oxbridge to do Medicine, Sciences, Maths etc but few who've been successful with Humanities applications.

Yes sorry boys. It's not seriously flawed that was overstating it but it is a tiny bit flawed, because of the Cambridge thing. So it overstates the SE bias and leaves out a few schools to the west who do relatively well. It's extremely interesting though and confirms strikingly the point summerends makes about the lack of the 'who dares wins' spirit permeating the state sector - but is that teacher led or does it reflect a less ambitious/ pushy parent body? And that factor hits before one adds in limited resources for helping students who do decide to apply, which can't help but have an impact. Great work though, but doesn't MN now owns the copyright?

Boy3, what a statistics! But I love to find out how many of the sixth form girls entrance had actually helped Westminister to boost that results. I believe many very academically able girls jumped ship (like St. Paul, CLC, WA and many other London Day schoolls) to join W, plus the overses intakes.

Naive I wonder how many DCs (or indeed their parents) are limited by their comfort zone of proximity to home or what they know. That may also limit aspirations post university. The importance is for informed choice rather than based on assumptions of what universities further away are like. Most students at both these universities are from state schools.

Parents with money for private and bright DCs may self select an academic education with more diversity in the curriculum. At least some of the teachers in these schools will be from universities like Oxbridge and therefore have a fairly realistic view of what these universities are about which in turn may encourage pupils to apply if at 16-17 they feel suited to an intense academic degree.

The big flaw with all this is you assume pupils want to go to Oxford / oxford is desirable.

Surely that's another way Westminster self selects? Parents who want their child to go to Oxford chose Westminster.

If you don't want your child to go to oxford you don't choose Westminster.

How many state school pupils want to go to oxford? 5%? 1%? 0.1%?

My DC wouldn't be comfortable at a private school as it's too posh / different values to mine. And I don't think they'll be comfortable at oxford either.

I see from these lists how few children go from my DSs grammar to oxford - and I'm not surprised. None of his friends want to go to oxford. For starters they'd prefer to live at home.

But basically I think the main conclusion we can draw is Westminster attracts parents who want their son to go to Oxford or Cambridegr.

boys remembering from my glance at the original data the major disparity between schools was not success rates of applicants (most had about 20-30% successful) but the number of applicants. In fact some of the Northern state schools with a fair number of applicants (but less than 15 so not in data above) had high success rates of 50% or more . The lowest offers / applications ratios were from independent schools.

I was also surprised by the relatively small numbers applying from some of the superselective state grammars in the South/Midlands. All that is fine if it is informed pupil choice going for their perceived best courses. However it does raise the question whether even in these schools with very supportive parents aspirations may be more limited than the 'who dares wins' mentality of some independents.

Finally Molio with another DC successful your family not only has the highest offer rate of any institution (100% is n't it) but more applicants than a great number of schools. Amazing!

Draylon - so schoolchildren are not important? In my view the extreme differences between schools in this country is a very important and complex issue - not just for parents but for the country as a whole. I make no apology for finding this thread interesting reading. Oxbridge access from different types of schools, including independents (which people often have mixed feelings about; money, social mobility, fairness, quality etc) and state (including grammars), is one striking facet of this. Credit to boys3 (and summerends) for pulling together facts in a useful way, enabling insightful or at the very least fact-based discussion for those of us who think education is worth a bit of attention - and for the humourous reaction to your taunts.

Boys3, I would also not be surprised if a newspaper covers (or copies the approach of) this, as it might sell. Also tempting to try to use it as a basis of comparison for schools not covered by this sample. Thanks!

Well you've got to have a grinch too, so I'll volunteer :) The work you've put in is admirable but has a serious flaw in taking only the schools with a minimum of 15 applicants to each of the two universities. This leaves out a number of schools with high success rates but whose geography means they send less to the out of the way Cambridge. I can spot several omissions at a glance.

Caveat: I loathe stats and am bad at them so don't want to be drawn.

Also, my point in the last thread was: why the lack of distance between Westminster, with all its extraordinary resources in the widest sense of the term, and other schools, either in the less selective independent sector or in the vastly less well resourced grammar and top comp sector? I think it's indisputable that Westminster does exceptionally well in absolute terms, but how about relatively? The last thread went some way to answering that, but this thread seems a bit congratulatory without scratching the surface.

Takes all sorts

Draylon you're missing the point this is all about the joy of playing around with data tables. I suppose it might dispel some myths as well for certain parents.