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.

Its gets better.

DS aged 8 could recite whole episodes of the Simpson's. The Slovak au pair was impressed. I am not sure if he showed off this skill during the Westminster pre-test. I know at St Pauls he talked about Age of Empires and how he admired Ghengis Khan. (They offered him a place presumably seeing the contribution he could make to the school community.)

I suspect Westminster boys are no different from any others in time they waste playing computer games. Probably not good for them. But when did teenagers ever limit activities to what is good for them

statesmom, why do you not concentrate on asking pertinent questions to the parents who have children at Westminster?

Ambition for your children is fine. We all also understand that within a certain income bracket and socio-economic bracket, the range of schools one considers are generally private, and/or selective.

This is true the world over. NY, London, Paris wherever.

So you are not a stranger in the world of buying education.

What you have not grasped is that within that charmed circle, people do make choices based on what is best for their dc.

So while westminster might suit one child. Latymer might suit another, or St Pauls or city for Boys or any number of excellent private, selective schools in the UK.

People aren't cross at you wanting the best education for your child, they are rather sensibly, as purchasers of private education, trying to show you that there are many more choices than just Westminster, to get your child to a world class university. If that is their ambition also.

and who are also sensibly suggesting, that however much money you throw at a child's education, that child will be the ultimate factor in whether you ambitions for them are realised or not.

Only had one Slovak au-pair. I don't think anything we did impressed her - she told us that some of zee children's friends lived better than us because they had nicer houses. Well, they do tend to be a bit nice in frickin Coombe, they tend to be a bit cheaper .

Common person? She'll be talking about 'rough types' and 'the lower classes' in a minute.

What decade are you stuck in love - the 1950s?

So you don't work then Statesmom? Hence the insecurity

OP
I did (engage the question)
Today
about five past seven

Not sure where the whole TV thing came in but I did try to address your question "sans vitriol " etc

Anyway
Good Luck whatever you choose

You have been given various answers
Best wishes with your search for your son.

Do you think she's ever met a real 'common person'?
Or does she call them 'staff'?

Ooh my DH was a bit rough until he went to Oxford. I've spent years polishing him up

I used to watch Neighbours at lunchtime in a classroom at Westminster when I was there ditto in the JCR of my Oxford college

also statesmom, you have got the tone of MN wrong. We aren't here as some kind of bucket of info to draw upon in the measures you wish, in the way you desire.

You will find all kinds of people respond to your OP, and your subsequent posts.

Top tip. Try not to treat MN as some kind of focus group you have assembled who aren't playing the game. it might help.

I think this thread might be a contender for Classics.

Surely there must be a forum where only the well heeled discuss the education of their children? I thought about suggesting the 11+ forum, but hesitated, as those children will be going to grammar schools, full of common tv-watching children.

Do you think she realises that no-one curtseys to you in in the street because you went to a private school? We don't 'doff caps', 'tug forlocks' or mutter the words 'I am not worthy' either. It'll be such a disappointment to her. Spending all that money and getting so little respect.

Exactly, Mrs Bright. I still have to wipe my own backside, no fags to do it for me

Top tip. Try not to treat MN as some kind of focus group you have assembled who aren't playing the game. it might help.

Yes, and assuming you are of a superior intellect because you are American might be a wise move as well.

I also think that society is a good deal more fluid in the UK, in terms of the upper eschalons, than the US is.

It really is do or die over there.

Here, for example, my family have a mix of kids in private and state, they all seem to do pretty well...I have friends who are plumbers and friends who are, well, pretty well to do. Its more of a mindset here than an income thing.

Not to romanticise the UK, but it is less brutal I think than the US. Or just less obvious. Hard to tell.

Stately homes?

I engaged with th OP way back on Saturday, with some info about admissions and asking about her DS's current schooling. That was intended to be helpful on the initial question about how to maximise chances of getting in to an insanely selective school.

I notice OP hasn't actually engaged with anything to do with her DS, so am wondering what she is getting out of this thread.

(And whether she will remain as fixated on this one school if it's one of the others that has a bumper year next year).

Indeed, Auntie, you would think with the number of posters here with children who attend/have attended Westminster, you would do better to engage with them, and the time they spent replying, than spinning off into a diatribe about the evil jealous bitches rearing tv-drugged children.

Though having seen the state of US tv, I kind of get where she is coming from. god bless her, not having Cbeebies or CBBC must be ghastly.

The OP can't possibly be a US lawyer. No honing in on pertinent posts the get the best info out there. No zoning out of irritant posters.

No professional rigour at all! shocking.

My DD watched hours of American teenage TV tripe tonight - do you think she'll turn into the OP? Wouldn't that be AWFUL.

Well said MadameD. If that's the standard of a Harvard education, I'm glad I went to Sussex.

aw, Mrs Bright, its unlikely, given how remiss you have been about her education to date....

Don't you CARE enough?

I want to re-iterate the comment of nibs777

Please please don't mistake expensive high achieving schools as the best place for your child. You need to work out where your child will thrive. In the real world employers don't look at the school your child went to or differentiate between Oxbridge and other top universities (LSE, Bristol, Warwick, UCL, Nottingham etc)

I know, I'm clearly a terrible mother. Crikey, we don't even live in LONDON.