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.

To be fair, if you are interested in education and are British, you don't need to check Westminster's results: knowledge of its intellectual pre eminence floats around in the ether. Nor do you have to worry much about academics once in as you know they will be taken care of, leaving you to worry about other aspects of parenting your child.

As for money buying access and status. Um... Yes. Especially in the US where legacy candidates are given some preference for College entry, so there is some legitimacy to that approach if it is what you are used to .

Oxbridge is a gold standard, as is Imperial and The Courtauld and, for some subjects, Warwick.

Westminster has a claim to being the best. I think someone said earlier that one year it didn't figure in the league tables. That can only have been because the school didn't submit its results.

"To be fair, if you are interested in education and are British, you don't need to check Westminster's results: knowledge of its intellectual pre eminence floats around in the ether. "

Well there are a number of 'top schools'. It's by no means the stand-out.

"Oxbridge is a gold standard, as is Imperial and The Courtauld and, for some subjects, Warwick."

Odd comment. The Courtauld has a few hundred students and isn't comparable to normal universities.

I don't know now (I am sure it has changed), but relatively recently, Oxford didn't even have a credible computer science course. I'm sure there are similar examples for other subjects, where Oxford and Cambridge aren't the #1 choice.

To use the example of The Courtauld, SOAS is going to be a much better choice for something within its remit than Oxbridge.

I'm not sure what's so special about Warwick.

And if you want to do a high-tech/IT degree, then you are much better off at MIT or Berkeley than anything in the UK.

Just checked, Westminster sent 80 to Oxbridge in 2011, and admits 70 at 16+, out of 193 total sixth form.

It's obviously going to be very much easier to pick Oxbridge candidates at 16+, so it's perfectly possible that, say, 50 out of 80 of their Oxbridge candidates came in at 16, and only 30 were there from 13. If that's so, their Oxbridge success rate for its 13+ intake is potentially actually worse than several other schools, because none of the other top private schools have such a big sixth form entry.

I think my comments are reasonable and the universities I named were listed in a post immediately above. Why is The Courtauld less than gold standard for what it teaches?

Westminster is illustrious and it sends its pupils to illustrious institutions.
Why nit pick?

Neither of which are in the Ivy League (East Coast old institutions only). I hope to send my child to the university which best suits his interests and stands him a good chance of getting the sort of job he is interested in. As his current interest is programming that will most likely be somewhere like Caltech or MIT more than say Oxford or Harvard. OF course he will have to work his butt off too, and that goes for whatever school he is at.

Westminster brings in about 60 girls for Sixth form. They are exceptionally strong.

Again why this obsession about Oxbridge. Several of the sixth form entrants will be attracted by Westminster's experience with US applications. Others may want to be medics. Others still might see product design at Northumbria as preferable to whatever Oxford might offer.

OP is the one who suggested Oxbridge places as a measure of success. I think it is more important that 17/18 year olds have sufficient enthusiasm for their subject to choose the course that suits them most.

(Warwick challenges Oxford on a number of subjects including maths and economics.)

Oxford's Computer Science dept is at no 3 in the QS tables, behind two US institutions. The Telegraph puts it top in the UK as does The Times, but The Guardian doesn't mention it at all.

So fairly credible then.

"I'm not sure what Westminster's financial resources are like. In this country Eton has a the strongest resources by far, and it can pay its staff a lot more than somewhere like, say, Manchester Grammar (which is academic, high in the league tables)."

Westminster were beneficiaries of AA Milne's will , so they get a percentage of worldwide royalties for Winnie the Pooh, so they're not badly off.

Rich and a cute bear. A veritable Sebastian Flyte of a school. Although I think he went to Eton , and he didn't finish Oxford. If only he'd gone to Westminster .

AgaPanthers

That is very relevant info. for judging possibility of chances of a 13+ entrant re: destinations after sixth form and judging A level results stats and until those things are made more transparent on schools' websites, you will never get a truly clear picture.

But was he the right type of boy?

I wouldn't imagine that Westminster are badly off, just that Eton are miles in front of everyone else, but still far behind the US schools.

I had a look at their accounts, a few legacies and trusts, no mention of AA Milne though.

A A Milne did leave a legacy to Westminster as he was an old boy. The manuscripts are at Trinity, Cambridge.

The rights to A. A. Milne's Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries: his family, the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club.[22] After Milne's death in 1956, his widow sold her rights to the Pooh characters to Stephen Slesinger, whose widow sold the rights after Slesinger's death to the Walt Disney Company, which has made many Pooh cartoon movies, a Disney Channel television show, as well as Pooh-related merchandise. In 2001, the other beneficiaries sold their interest in the estate to the Disney Corporation for $350m. Previously Disney had been paying twice-yearly royalties to these beneficiaries. The estate of E. H. Shepard also received a sum in the deal. The copyright on Pooh expires in 2026.[23] In 2008, a collection of original illustrations featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and his animal friends sold for more than £1.2 million at auction in Sotheby's, London.[24] Forbes magazine ranks Winnie the Pooh the most valuable fictional character; in 2002 Winnie the Pooh merchandising products alone had annual sales of more than $5.9 billion

Fair point Sibyl.

Or possibly Lady Marchmain was the wrong sort of mother

Either that , or she was a more formidable statistician than came over in the novel.

Oh for goodness sake Sybil . What a tiny irrelevant list! gold standard of what? Perhaps in the subjective judgement of some 50 year old corporate city lawyer (no offence to 50 year old corporate city lawyers but someone has narrowed the field for new graduates since they were selected, and even then only down to Oxbridge UCL Bristol and Durham and the like) or perhaps even when I was at uni when it really was not such a competitive playing field but get in touch with some real gold standards. I am sure Westminster, St Paul's etc are

Now on my second go through this process with an DC in the last four years, not including my return to uni in 2005. Oxford is agood university but not for every course. Most serious Scientists aim for Cambridge where The Natural Sciences course will give them the cross disciplinary background now valued for a career in Science. World academics rate it 6th in the QS world tables behind Imperial in 5th and UCL at 4th. It is third for economics in the good university guide tables ( for illustration, there are other tables that rank slightly differently and really it is about how a uni scores for the things that matter to your DC) behind LSE and Warwick. It is 5th for English behind Durham, Cambridge, UCL and Exeter, but then if you want research excellence York is third. Fourth for History behind Cambridge Durham (and that is a course it is really hard to get on to ) and LSE. The only problem these days is deciding between all these universities if you have a DC who is predicted the grades to get in everywhere. Of course if you are set on the brand, the dreaming spires etc. and who wouldn't be, then there are all manner of courses whose gold standard status is and anachronistic, one of DDs friends went to do an essay based course on Physiology I mean who needs labs and scientific experiment when you can write essays instead (and there really isn't a justification, don't even try)

Courtauld is great for History of art but it only does that, and won't have the strength a department will have with cross disciplinary links with art, literature and history departments.

Go for an interview for Chinese or Middle Eastern Studies and the , in all likelihood, former SOAS academic will tell an undergrad that they will get just as much of a gold standard there.

Still all these shades of grey are so much more difficult than steering your way with subjective preconceptions

Shootingatpigeons, you're right.

There is also something called fun. My DS's Oxbridge friends (they're 22/23) all admit that the Durham/Bristol/Exeter experience seems a whole lot more enjoyable than the contemporary Oxbridge experience which one of them described as "unbearably worthy and dull".

grovel - I think I agree, based on what undergraduates and recent graduates are telling me.

Universities - even highly respected ones - have different personalities and that is one of the hardest things for prospective undergraduates to find out about when they come from outside the system (be that from abroad or from schools/communities that send very few DC to university).

Oy Shooting! I wasn't making a tiny list! I was repeating a short list trying to point out that there are various gold standards. Oxbridge being one of them.

My sister did her PhD at the Courtauld. She could have stayed at Cambridge, where she was an undergraduate, but she thought the Courtauld would be better

Grovel/Bonsoir, Maybe if true it is in part subject specific? Some are harder work than others. Nevertheless I don't really hear the same, except in so far as students al have different personalities and interests and some will be happy and some not.

And was it better?

Yes, probably - she didn't particularly like being a woman reading History of Art at Cambridge - thought it easier at the Courtauld.

If you are wanting a career in art history then the Courtauld is amazing for postgrad, on the spot with all that amazing art, chances to curate etc. I wouldn't mind myself, but then I'd happily to spend the rest of my days doing a range of Masters degrees at London unis until they carried me off in a box. however as an undergraduate experience it is a bit limited, it isn't even affiliated to ULU. I think it may have a bar, and a weekly yoga class?

Bonsoir was she worried she might be asked to be a spy