What has gone wrong with Maths at Westminster?

[committedparent]

Only 1 pupil applied from Westminster to do Maths at Cambridge. 13 pupils applied to Oxford for maths or computer science. There were 0 (zero) offers from Oxford maths. Staggering.
Does anyone know what went wrong this year?
I am told that overall 25% of pupils took a gap year to re-apply last year. I don't know how this group have done with their applications.

summerends - sure French people can get loans, but they can also get them in the UK.

I think perhaps that chatting to your friends doesn't give you quite as much fact-based knowledge as you think!

You're right grovel, it's significantly more intense than the places you mention, though have the numbers applying from top schools actually gone down? I would expect the numbers, when out, to show that they're holding up well.

Needmoresleep the leavers' list for 2013 indicates that (just as you would expect from an excellent school) classics, English, history etc. as well as PPE are very generously subscribed, just as much as the subjects you mention.

Bonsoir this discussion between us is rather offbeat and tiresome for others so I will finish our little interchange with this post (although I am guess you will continue making further useful contributions). I am sure your experience is very valid and you I think have lived in Paris for quite some time? I on the other hand have nationality and several generations of immediate family (let's not count friends) experience but am based presently in the UK. There are bourses rather than loans for high achievers at Bac and of lower income. These help make HE in France more affordable for those and they would balk at the cost of loans for a UK degree.

Selection Criteria for Westminster School

(a) be a boy - that is half the kids ruled out (250,000 out of 500,000)
(b) live within sane travelling distance of SW1 ( rules out around 150,000 of the 250,000)
(c) happy with a Christian ethos school (rules out another 25,000 of the 100,000)
and only then
(d) able to pay the fees ( being generous, 15% of the population of London can, so another 63,750 gone)

so that is a maximum market of 11,250 boys
fighting for lots and lots of available school places in London

even before they sit the exam and filter out the "nice but dims"

The whole number of applicants debate is an utter red herring because
one child can only take one school place, but can make multiple school applications

When I was leaving Junior school I applied for about 8 schools and was offered places at several - including a couple of scholarships if I remember - and then circumstances changed and I went somewhere completely different.

There can be no most selective school in England because there is no possible free market in pupils.

I don't doubt that Westminster picks, grooms and pops out very bright boys (and girls in 6th form) but they are selecting from a very small corner of the pond.

Top Universities, because they are all live in have a much bigger pond to fish from.

And Westminster is very pink.

The beauty of flawed logic TP :)

Molio Please educate me.

Well, the assumptions which inform your figures are breathtakingly trite for starters TP.

It would be much more intelligent and realistic to acknowledge the very obvious fact that Westminster is super selective, delivers a fabulous education and sends its students onto an excellent, albeit narrow, though uniformly excellent, range of destinations.

I'm sufficiently intelligent and realistic (and also not so chippy) to acknowledge just that but the really interesting thing to me is: with the super selectivity and all those super rich, super ambitious parents and the genuinely super education and the super intensive and experienced Oxbridge preparation - why does Westminster not actually fare better with bagging offers?

why does Westminster not actually fare better with bagging offers?
Maybe because the Universities can see right through the point you have made?

My figures were guesstimates apart from the start point.
I suspect the unique "pool" of candidates for any individual school is significantly smaller.

www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/apply/statistics/archive/undergraduate_admissions_by_apply_centre_2013_cycle.pdf

link for Cambridge applications and admissions by school, as referred to by Uilen up thread.

TheWordFactory - not at 10, no, but by the time boys left my prep school at the age of 13 - nearly 14, in some cases - it was pretty clear which of them had the a) intellect and b) intellectual drive and curiosity to make them viable Oxbridge (or other highly competitive institution) candidates.

They can see right through which point TP? Do you mean the two universities essentially agree with you that Westminster is a flaky school, taking in pretty thick but rich C of E kids from central London postcodes who've blanket applied to other London schools but failed to get into any others, so have to make do? Yeah right.

'Guesstimates' is an excellent euphemism :)

And what does your last sentence mean?

alma a lot can change in those four years. I think I might possibly have anticipated only one of my six to have been in with a shout aged 13. And I'm the mum, so I know them well.

Molio
Where, when have I ever said
Westminster is a flaky school, taking in pretty thick but rich C of E kids from central London postcodes who've blanket applied to other London schools but failed to get into any others, so have to make do? Yeah right.
You are letting your prejudice impose itself inordinately.

Westminster is a highly selective school that gets excellent results out of an excellent intake.
It is one of many in a highly competitive market.
BUT
Universities are getting better at evaluating the source of grades - as the figures in the link and the OP clearly show.

Molio what might be interesting is to know what percentage of Oxbridge applicants from the cohort of Westminster sixth form entrants are successful compared to boys admitted at a younger age.

I have no beef with private schools. I was privately educated myself, and taught in an excellent London school (not Westminster) before moving to Scotland.

However, these pupils are hugely privileged and, it is hoped, Universities are beginning to look for potential as well as the products of high quality teaching.

When I see my son endeavouring to teach himself Maths via YouTube tutorials and a textbook because he either has no teacher or the teacher can't be bothered, I hope to goodness that this kind of hard work, which should get him a top grade, will be recognised and rewarded by the universities. How sad if he does apply for Maths, at any University, and he loses a place to someone who has benefitted from keen competition, excellent teachers and an amazing school.

That said, I am wary of young adults being penalised by Universities for choices made by their parents. But in the case of my own children, I hope their extra struggles are recognised.

(Can't move school, too remote. Also work there which is bloody difficult when your see how crap a subject is and can do nothing.)

Sorry. As you were, ladies.

I have no prejudice as far as Westminster goes TP, you can't impute one where there's none. I merely paraphrased what you said. Quite accurately I think.

On what possible basis can you know that Oxford and Cambridge are 'getting better at evaluating the source of grades'? And what makes you think Oxford and Cambridge are even grade obsessed? If they were, why the pre-tests and written work and interviews?

Yes summerends, I agree. Lots of questions thrown up by the link to schools' success rates too. Though it would be good to have a similar sheet for Oxford as it's very often the case that individual schools have far more success at one university or the other, so just having data for one may skew things quite a bit.

spare moment so found this link for Oxford (2013 data so comparable with Cambridge).
www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/admissions-statistics-school

Ok for Wesminster almost all of the year(170ish of 189) apply to Oxbridge, most to Oxford and about 50% got offers from both. Winchester most of year applied (100 ish from 120 ) equal numbers to Oxford and Cambridge with a slightly higher acceptance by Cambridge (just under 40%).
Haberdashers Boys have a particularly high acceptance rate (particularly from Cambridge) with about half of their year applying. Eton has 200ish of 260 applying, mainly to Oxford with about third getting offers (to both). Peter Symonds (comprehensive with academic reputation) I am not sure how many take A levels (?about a 1000), ~150 applied, again most to Oxford, with 30% accepted by Oxford, 40% by Cambridge. I could go on but getting bored.

Seriously, talkin you are worth a bob on.

You clearly know the square route of fuck all about W, its entrance tests, it's catchment, it's cohort.

You clearly know about the same in respect of Oxbridge.

So why do you give your opinions ( based on what?) as FACT?

It just makes you look very very daft.

Out if interest what do you think molio?

Given the quality of applicant, why would you say there are fewer offers than you might think?

I went to Oxbridge (from a state school). I think that one or two year's results can't possibly be interpreted as a trend. I think it's quite possibly a mix of luck, and, as you imply word, the increasing effectiveness of widening access. The quality of candidates frim Westminster is undoubtedly superb - but there will of course be superb candidates from elsewhere (and one sensible point made by Talkin - girls are underrepresented at W - so that will have an impact, it's bound to). In the past - when we were there, word, strong candidates from W, St P etc, were more likely to get in. These days, they are less likely perhaos, not because of anything to do with them or their school but because more kids like us are realising they are not in with no chance. You'd need to look at the results from several years before drawing any conclusions though. And even then - as we have seen from other posters in this thread the environment changes year on year. People persuade themselves that actually Oxbridge isn't all that, they apply elsewhere - perhaps because deep down they wonder if actually they won't get in or perhaps because they genuinely prefer the thought of somewhere else (possibly in the US). Someone else pointed out that the opportunities for eg the arty are now better understood and there are more of them. Some of the people I knew at college might have preferred to go to a drama school or a conservative (I might have done so myself) but in our day, those places were much more limited.

I think the fact that it's impossible to be a "shoo in" for the top universities is relevant, regardless of how outstanding the candidate (and also relevant that you can only apply for O or C and not both).

Ok, I know nothing of Westminster or other similar schools but I know from sitting in the staffroom of a grammar school in the sticks, with a happy tradition of success at prepping for Oxbridge, a decent prepping programme, and a good attrition rate, that every year the Head will comment on "I'm shocked x has received a Cambridge offer; they were a real outsider" or the following day, "so disappointed y has had a rejection; she was my absolute certainty."

Every year there are threads here talking about how having straight A*s, full UMS and a PS checked by an admissions tutor is no guarantee of anything - that sense of it still being a lottery must be relevant.

I meant relevant to the stats for W in the OP, not to whether kids decide to bother to apply, because clearly they still do.

Excellent no nonsense post at 08.28 Word. Saying it how it is :)

I wouldn't like to hazard a guess about the reason behind the figures but it's certainly striking that Westminster isn't head and shoulders above a large number of other schools in terms of success. Teaching the kids to perform any circus tricks that the Oxbridge tutors direct clearly isn't enough to make a very significant difference. Not that I'm sniffy in the least about the success rate they do have - clearly it's top of the league - I would just have expected much more clear water between it and the rest, based on ability, teaching, parental ambition and income and all that those facilitate also preparation programmes etc.

Comma, what does the prep for Oxbridge at your school consist of? Your school may be unique, but I doubt that many grammars with their limited resources can even begin to compare to the programmes put in by the independents such as Westminster, the St Paul's', Habs, Winchester, Eton, RGS, Magdalen College etc. Their programmes must be beyond the wildest dreams of most state schools, whether grammar or comp.