Is Westminster School the best school on Earth?

[statesmom]

Just looking at their website and they have 97 places for their students at Oxford and Cambridge this year?!

We have an 8 year old son and want to focus on getting him into this place, just next to the Palace of Westminster. It looks amazing! Any thought on parents with children at the school very welcome indeed, especially any thoughts on the application process. Thank you for someone new to London.

"if you have a kid that does not have a below average IQ it seems pretty clear to me that other things being equal it would be hard to find a better place for someone to go to secondary school"

Hilarious.

As has been said, they get the Oxbridge entrants because they take the top of the top (5%? Perhaps. But near there.). My DS just sat 11+ (today!) for Westminster Under (the attached prep). He is definitely top 15% (having passed tests for a couple of other schools with a lower barrier). Lets see if he gets top 5% (or whatever). And then we might still reject it on pastoral and other grounds ....

Here here Meditrina. We looked at St Pauls and KCS as they were equidistant - we discounted Westminster because of the journey although admittedly we chucked ours in when he was 8 and it was lovely to have him there for 10 years without the bother again. And we only entered him for the one we thought he'd do best at, no tutoring. We just took the view that it would be good to let him have a go and if he got in fine, and if not, we'd look at other schools like Hampton, KGS, etc.

Wasn't a project at all, far from it. He had a laid back time at school, never had to lift much of a finger except in 6th for- homework never ever seemed onerous.

No doubt the OP would think that was a neglectful approach. I think it was a realistic one.

meditrina: "And it's not hard to find equally good places - St Paul's and KCS have a similar (highly selective) profile and equalyl good leavers' destinations. No one of these three is "best" in terms of academic London (mainly) boys day schools."

That is not true for Oxbridge and the Ivy League.

Here are KCS's results:

www.kcs.org.uk/2013-university-outcomes

Which by my account has about 30% to these 10 schools.

The difference of 30% at KCS to 50% at Westminster is huge. You have a 50% better chance at getting into Oxbridge at Westminster than at KCS. They are clearly NOT "equally good leavers' destinations."

Now, maybe you can say: I want my kid to go to Imperial, or MIT, or whatever. Doesn't matter, take a close look at the results. It's not even close.

Statesmom, these schools are not aimed at kids with merely 'not below average' IQs.

I wouldn't like to put a figure on which percentile they are selecting from, and it can be misleading, because for instance you can be have an IQ in the top 5%, say, but be 0.001% for Maths, and the latter is far more useful than a mere top 5%.

I have heard it said that Oxbridge is +2SDs, i.e. a 130 IQ, or the top 2%.

Selecting the top 1 or 2% and then expressing surprise when they do well is rather naive.

Westminster sends 1/2 to Oxbridge, as opposed to 'only' 1/3 at Eton. But that doesn't prove Westminster is better at this job in the slightest. A boy might actually have a better chance of making to Oxbridge from Eton than Westminster. The raw stats don't prove anything.

What I would say is that Eton has more money and much better facilities, and there's more to it than just obsessing about Oxbridge. In fact they aren't focused on Oxbridge at all in terms of their marketing. Whereas Westminster's incredible success in this area might well be self-selecting in terms of the parents who go there.

Even at Westminster, with perhaps the brainiest intake of all schools, who, based on IQ tests, should perhaps ALL be going to Oxbridge, still have 'half' failing'.

Finally, Oxford and Cambridge are certainly inferior to US colleges in terms of their funding and probably opportunities too, and it's a very arbitrary benchmark to define a school as the best in the world on that basis.

For someone calling yourself Statesmom, I think if you want to find 'the best school on Earth', you need to look over on the other side of the ponds. The likes of the Phillips Academys have a billion dollars floating around in their endowments, and there are plenty of schools in the US sending a similar % to the top elite US universities as Westminster does.

We obviously can't all agree on happiness being important. Otherwise there would not be quite so many sad children at schools that don't suit them, including at Westminster.

Anyhoo, if you want to define success as "getting the highest proration of kids into Oxbridge and Ivy League", then Westminster is certainly one of the most successful schools around. But as others have said ad nauseam, that is a very limited definition of success ... And you seem to be in the grip of a delusion that the school is the main determinant of the high proportion of Oxbridge / Ivy entrants, rather than the self-evident fact that the kids are selected for likelihood of getting in to these unis when they apply to Westminster.

If your son is clever enough to get in, you should be able to understand the flaws in your logic. And it would be nice if you could stop being so chippy. There's no point asking questions in public fora if you just get cross when people post answers you don't agree with.

"The difference of 30% at KCS to 50% at Westminster is huge. You have a 50% better chance at getting into Oxbridge at Westminster than at KCS. They are clearly NOT "equally good leavers' destinations.""

No you don't.

Take two boys:

Boy A, aged 13, has a 90% chance of Oxbridge success, based on testing
Boy B, aged 13, has a 10% chance of Oxbridge success, based on the same testing

Now if KCS takes all Boy Bs, and Westminster all Boy A, then KCS is doing an amazing job, and Westminster is doing a shit job.

Of course it doesn't work precisely like that, but you don't seem to understand that school admissions are extremely competitive. Many of these schools compete for the same boys. If a boy gets into two schools, one more prestigious than the other, then 8 times out of 10, he will go for the more prestigious one.

So basically KCS is actually taking boys in that have been rejected by Westminster because they didn't meet up to Westminster's standards.

There isn't of course a 100% overlap, but private schools are still hugely, hugely stratified, such that the top private schools are comprised mainly of Oxbridge fodder, and a couple of rungs down the ladder there might be only one such child in each year. The second school is not worse, necessarily, at prepping for Oxbridge, and actually where you send the 140 IQ child to school with a class full of kids with 105 IQs, he might get much more attention, and a much better chance of getting into Oxbridge, than if you send him to Westminster with an entire year full of super-bright kids, where it's survival of the fittest, and you are just a small fish in a big pond.

Statistics are HUGELY misleading.

I went to Westminster and then Oxbridge. Something that must be taken into consideration is that the 50% statistic probably includes a skewed proportion of pupils admitted at 6th form. I would think that way more than 50% of the girls go to Oxbridge due to later academic selection and because they have to be super keen and very tough to get into Westminster and survive. That means that probably less than 50% of the boys get in. So I'd say that if you have a girl, getting them into Westminster gives them a more than evens chance of getting into Oxbridge, but possibly not if you have a boy. NB this is based on my experiences when I was there some years ago and may not be the same now

AgaPanthers: I'm not statistician, but it seems pretty clear to me ceteris paribus that the conditional probability of getting into Oxbrige given that the kid is accepted to Westminster is 66% greater than KCS.

That is from the two websites with Westminster at a 50% rate and KCS at a 30% rate.

Statesmom, you are right that you're not a statistician based on that line of reasoning! You are attempting to ascribe all the differences between Westminster and KCS Oxbridge acceptance rates to the schools' performance, ascribing none to the selection pools, and none to random variation or statistical artefacts (eg small number problems).

"I'm not [a] statistician" - I think that's the least of your problems, but to find out where your abuse of statisics falls down google the difference between correlation and causation.

Wow lots of ad hominems on this site. Why are people so aggressive?

No, I'm not a statistician and I'm not saying that you pick a bum on the street, put him into Westminster and POOF he gets into Harvard.

But against its natural competitors, who are all likely choosing from the same pool, I stand by the statement that the conditional probability I discussed is correct.

Now, you can say: well, Oxbridge/Ivy acceptances do not inform how good a school is. To which I would reply: then why does everyone talk about this, such that there are 250 responses on this thread?

Why are people getting personal, as if my saying this school is so good is somehow a slight to them or their children. Weird.

This is getting boring now...yes, statesmom.....it must be the best school on earth and Oxbridge is the best on earth and if your DS gets into Westminster and then Oxbridge or MIT then you must be the best Mom on earth whose DS will get the best job on earth and will surely become one of the global elite....happy ?

Jesus you're not a statistician are you.

You also haven't allowed for the fact that Westminster have a large 6th form intake of mainly girls, KCS only take in about 25 - its pretty easy to spot Oxbridge potential in someone with 12A* GCSEs. There is no split available for how many places were offered to the new intake.

St Pauls average 60-70 offers a year which is only about 35%! but then they have no extra 6th form entry and these are places gained by the boys who have been there since Y9.

You are coming across as seriously nuts. Do you really think a boy is disadvantaged because he attends a school that only received 54 Oxbridge offers?

oh, and I speak as one who went to Oxford...and it ain't all that ....

"I would think that way more than 50% of the girls go to Oxbridge due to later academic selection and because they have to be super keen and very tough to get into Westminster and survive."

statesmom, are you actually the slightest bit interested in anything anyone has to say on the subject? People who have experience of the school itself, and of the London independent school admissions system as a whole, have made some very salient points which you have pretty much ignored in favour of your own peculiarly wobbly statistical analysis. So it's hard to see the point of this thread at all.

You are obviously set on Westminster for your ds. That's fine. Best of luck.

The natural competitors are not all picking from the same pool. Westminster will take the best in that pool, or many of them. Therefore to send a higher proportion of its pupils to Oxbridge isn't surprising.

If you think your DS has a chance then go for it. Talk to his headmaster about the feeder schools.

But don't base your decision on the fact the Queen may rock and drop the Latin tags too.

Rock up

exactly - it's outrageous really given how much you pay in fees, that amount of culling etc at fifth form, is not made a transparent declaration by some schools and then how many of their stars cane later after boosting sixth form enormously with an even more selection ....so many ways to massage league table figures...not particularly aimed at Westminster but a lot of privates do it ....you cannot really compare apples to apples as a result ...some cull less than others and may have poorer Oxbridge results as a result.

When I was doing my A levels I decided to go and do a 'gap year' in the USA and took my SATs
Both Phillips Exeter and Phillips Andover were happy enough with my marks to give me written offers.
Unfortunately I failed my A levels and had to stay in the UK.
Otherwise I might have followed my parents and grandparents to Williams or Vassar.

Its really hard to compare systems until you have the humility to sit back and listen for a while, rather than starting threads with such silly comments.

I am going to open the greatest school in the world.

I will only be open for entry for upper 6th and will only accept pupils who already have Oxbridge offers. I am hoping to see a success rate in excess of 95%. There will be no sport,music,extra-curric etc I may not even hold classes, just have a nice big library where they can teach themselves (ideal prep for uni) but it will be the best in the world.

I'll send you an application form.

And you don't have to be a statistician to know that a 13 year old going to a school where 50% go to Oxbridge after sixth form does not necessarily = a 50% chance of getting there simply by joining a school at 13 because you have to take to account of 1) any subsequent culling of the original cohort when he joined at 13 and 2) how many others from other schools are later super selectively chosen at 16 to boost the sixth form. Of course impossible to calculate when there is little transparency in this aspect.

"But against its natural competitors, who are all likely choosing from the same pool, I stand by the statement that the conditional probability I discussed is correct."

Er, no.

My son applied to two schools. One is higher in the league tables than the other. This precedence is clear - higher Oxbridge, and slightly better A Level results.

My son is very bright, top 0.0001% according to testing, in mathematics ability (but not overall IQ). So he could probably get into Oxbridge to study Maths or Physics or something. BUT, he's not good at English, and with work he will hopefully get a B/C at GCSE.

Now he was rejected by the higher ranked school and accepted by the lower ranking.

That could mean a lot of things, but basically the bottom line is that the better-ranked school (still below Westminster) can afford to reject a highly intelligent pupil on the basis (perhaps) that he would damage their 90%+ A*/A GCSE stats, whereas the second school, which doesn't have quite the same Oxbridge success, is interested in spite of that.

With a free choice from every pupil in the country, Westminster should get 90%+ Oxbridge. They don't have that, but what they do have is to a great degree first choice over the brightest in London.

Other schools will have a different ability spectrum than Westminster, so there really is NO REASON to believe that a given boy is more likely to get in Oxbridge from Westminster than (say) Eton.

at last an intelligent analysis of what lies beneath the stats...

As someone said 8 out of 10 applicants who get a place at these best schools and one not quite so good will take the one higher up. Whether an individual child does better because they are the best child in a not so academic school or one of the worst in a very academic one is an issue for parents. I did not like being just about the only bright girl in my class where most girls did not go to university never min good ones and most did not even manage A levels and having my essays read out. I thought I was pretty clever and still do so may be it helped with self confidence but when I suggested to the Head I apply to Oxbridge she said as i was a year young (17) I could not apply (my younger siblings went to Oxbridge). My children in very selective schools would not have had that feeling they were different and much brighter than children in their class with no one to discuss class work with even of the ones supposedly interested in it. Whether that made them do better or worse who can say?

Most parents keen on these kinds of schools try the child for a few and take the offer at the best one. If their child doesn't get in they find a good enough school a bit lower down the pecking order. It's not worth getting into a state about. Just have a god. Life is all about how we deal with things that might not go as we plan and that's one of the most important lessons in life.