Is Westminster School the best school on Earth? STATESMOM returns

[statesmom]

I have a lot to say, don't know if anyone remembers the thread. Let me know if you want to hear from me.

@statesmom if you didn't write in such a waffling way maybe people wouldn't be getting your "facts" wrong.
I'm still confused by the point of this thread.
You paid lots of money to send your kid to a school that turns out you didn't think is that great.
You paid lots of money to get help to get him into an Ivy League College.
He is now at expensive Ivy League College.
So.....and....what?

This is sort of getting, uh, tiresome, but I (mostly) have given you all factual information. Of couse much of it has been my opinion, but I trust if you can read you can tell fact from opinion.

And the fact of the matter is that there are more UK nationals living in the US (716,000):

https://www.statista.com/statistics/970672/gdp-per-capita-in-the-uk/

Than there are US nationals living in the UK (166,000):

https://www.statista.com/statistics/759859/non-british-population-in-united-kingdom-by-nationality/

Why do you think that might be? Is perhaps the US a bigger draw for human beings than the UK?

Whatever you and your friends on your street think, which makes no point, I am talking about national numbers, which makes the point in its entirety.

This is getting a bit tiresome, people. Is there no one out there with any non-hysterical, factual points they'd like to make?

Thank you.

Ex ante, I started a thread about Westminster School and whether it was great and should I send my son there.

Ex post, as I did send my son there, 10 years later I thought maybe people might be interested in my thoughts on the place.

I am happy to share any of them.

In brief: The school was fine but not great, it doesn't add much value to a highly performing cohort, it is clueless on US universities and its poverty ties its hands behind its back on many measures.

Why do you think that might be? Is perhaps the US a bigger draw for human beings than the UK?

Could be any number of reasons, really. Chasing higher salaries (I’ll agree people are paid more in the US, but not everyone is money-oriented). Many Americans being hyper-nationalistic (or just being poor and not being able to afford to leave) could also be a factor?

@statesmom to be honest I wouldn't expect an English school to be as obsessed with American universities as you.
Because it's an English school 🤔

Greatest civilisation in the world? I think you are hugely biased.

And until you deal with your gun crime and lack of humanity within health provision you can stick it.

100%

I mean everything I say here, and the fact that you think this is a comedy manifests the poverty of your imagination.

Or the lack of intellectual diversity in your friend group!

As someone who lives in the USA: Educated Americans do like to live abroad. The issue is that it's not easy for them to do it. The British also emigrate to Australia, NZ, Canada -- I think it's much more about opportunities and lifestyle elsewhere rather than the magnetic draw of America in most cases. (In some fields America would be a draw as with it being a much bigger country there might be more opportunities; think tech and sometimes academia.)

We don’t live in the UK. DH and I moved to Canada. We rejected the US as somewhere we wanted to live due to the threat of Trump, gun crime and women’s rights. We value our quality of life.
DT’s graduated a couple of years ago - neither wanted roles in any US city - they chose Brussels and Amsterdam.

Having used three independent schools, I think they add value in different ways. Sports are often better with coaches, Westminster has a boathouse on the Thames. Most schools don’t have this. Independent schools often have first class drama and music facilities plus great teachers. We noticed a huge difference between state and independent although our County orchestras are renowned but families are not. We saw lots of debating, formal dinners, learning how to speak in front of an audience, hugely supportive parents and, of course, decent results. Dc had a huge amount of opportunities. The value is not purely academic. It’s more a way of life you can be part of. Especially if you board. Op should have gone to Eton.

@statesmom do we really want to talk about how fantastic Mississippi is?

reproductiverights.org/case/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban/abortion-in-mississippi/

It reads very like the musings of a comedic troll who used to grace the boards of a certain SF forum.

But what's that got to do with the price of fish ?

I'd argue the Egyptians were a greater civilisation. They had hieroglyphics, mummys and pyramids. Much cooler.

I agree with the point about the problem of trying to build a decent endowment. I believe the US school that uses the Westminster name and similar branding has an endowment 30 times more than Westminster (London). Same for St Paul's (USA). I speculate that its about legacy entry. I think some UK schools are starting to experiment with that. I speculate that Americans see a more direct link between their success and the school they went to and want it to keep going to burnish their own claim to have gone there. Maybe it is that there are tax advantages. Like, give a painting to your school, make a huge tax loss, school sells painting for a huge amount. I feel like Westminster is too concerned with propriety to do something like making money through a tax scheme. It feels like it is really an arm of the monarchy. It has always been here, it always will. Clearly the China venture was a very wrong headed mistake. I am not sure why they don't try other locations more suited to Wesmintster.

Just curious OP about why you chose Westminster over Hotchkiss, Choate or one of the Phillips academies.

Is it that you are based in London for work reasons snd did not want your DS too far away? Or did the English system seem better on the face of it?

@Whatevers They do favour dc of old girls/boys. Especially rich ones. I’ve been involved with trying to build relationships with rich alumni. Of course the schools want their money. However not all pupils find their old schools worth the effort. Many schools have quirks and people move their charitable giving elsewhere as they and dc mature. The very rich do support schools and fine towards bursaries. I don’t think my DDs would send their do to their schools now. Changes have been made and not always for the best. It’s a personal feeling and others would disagree.

@Whatevers Tax advantages abound for donations to endowments etc in the US. And there is a whole different culture to donations for naming status that has strong roots in the history of “new money” in the US. Sometimes with very negative results - see the Sackler controversy.

I also think the OP @statesmom is coming from a place that is bit…odd

Should we be surprised that the facilities and teaching at Westminster aren’t the best given the fees? No. It’s in Central London. Of course it has limited abilities to build new facilities. What are they doing to do? Ask to knock down the Abbey to facilitate expansion? I kicked London day schools out of consideration early on because of that - ditto schools like Kings Canterbury. Far better to be on a campus with a lot of room for development. So that “surprise” makes me laugh! That bleeds through to quality of teachers - the best ones would far rather be in a nicer environment for school years. It’s a totally different story for academia though. No serious academic would chose where to publish from based on facilities. I don’t think the OP understands academia at all. Or Cambridge and the research kudos it still has.

Are we surprised that a UK school would focus more on UK university admissions? No. It’s a small percentage that go on to US universities - most don’t want to take on that debt, be that far away etc. although Westminster does sound a bit shit compared to a lot of other UK public schools in helping the pupils that do want that as an option. DD is on a course next week organised for her school about how to prep for that. Entirely free. It’s part of the fees.

I work in tech at a very very senior level. my background is from a different industry but headhunted in because I’m actually pretty good at my job. The OP is utterly misguided in thinking that senior people in tech waltz up through being recruited from Stanford. That’s absolutely not true at all. Product engineers, data people etc get recruited from places like that when they graduate, for sure. And their starting salaries are immense. But they sacrifice pretty much everything else in life for that. And the current crop of top CEOs tells you that they aren’t the people running the companies - they come from very different backgrounds usually. Most of the people I interact with in my role didn’t go to an Ivy League university for their bachelors.

Microsoft CEO - Bachelors in India. MS and MBA in the US but not Ivy League, Wisconsin for his MS and Chicago

Apple CEO - BA at Auburn in Alabama. Duke MBA (not Ivy League)

NVIDIA - Oregon State for BS. Yes Jensen went to Stanford for his MS but interesting that his daughter went to LBS for her MBA. And she is very very clever and would absolutely have been offered a place at Stanford.

Alphabet CEO - also Bachelors in India. Yes then Penn and Stanford. But still.

Amazon CEO. The only Ivy League bachelors alumni in the top 5.

That’s the 5 biggest companies in the workd based on market cap today. Doesn’t say a lot for why you would pay for an Ivy League bachelors. Great if you want to be a tech grunter. Not if you want to run the company. Those people come up through a different path. India produced two of those five. Taiwan another one (Jensen).

I’ve already told my DD that unless she gets a full ride scholarship to the US for her bachelors I’m not that interested in paying for it if she has a good option that’s a lot cheaper. I’d much rather save that money and invest more in her post grad MBA - I’d rather self fund that and have her be a free agent to take whatever job she wants at the end Vs a company funded route.

Sorry for the essay. The OP is just a bit deluded and I don’t think is actually that knowledgeable.

I will add that I know absolutely nothing about investment banking careers at all. But I know a lot about tech. And I’d rather be in the latter industry than the former. I’ve been offered both. It was an easy choice for me.

It’s also odd because the richest people I’ve come across at various schools, Times Rich list top 100, don’t seem to worry too much about what their dc do. Maybe their money isn’t on the radar in the USA, but they’ve seemed quite relaxed about dc. People from Saudi just go anywhere to avoid being back in Saudi. They just pay for USA uni and who cares about a job? They don’t appear obligatory,

Marrying well - that’s another matter.

That's because their DC don't have to do anything. I've known a few kid from that background who were quite serious minded but also plenty who doodle around in music or arts, talented or not, because they don't have any real need to earn a living.

There is a bit of a reputation in certain circles (parts of tech and finance) that the prestige firms recruit primarily from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT, for the US recruits. Some of the big tech firms are facing a lot of scrutiny for that as it very much skews the profile of their recruits. I don't think it's good for business, personally: forget the usual DEI arguments, what you get is a group of people who have all been educated the same way and already know each other, like rich Tories. It also means that these universities are increasingly dominated by computer science, economics, and maybe mathematics (for the future quants).

It does depend also on whether you're being recruited out of undergraduate or you're planning to go to graduate school. If the latter, the name of your graduate institution counts for more. And this is really only true for a certain group of firms. There are cities where local and regional connections matter a great deal.

That said: yes, you see quite a few CEOs et al who did not go to top tier schools. However I've heard some people (VERY successful) say they fear someone from their background (less prestigious institutions) couldn't succeed like that today, because the funnel is too small.

Does your high school matter here? I don't think more or differently than the UK. Middle to upper middle class people move to be in the catchment of good state schools, unless they have some pressing reason to go private like religion. Some people, usually well off in large cities, care a great deal because they believe it's the route to a prestigious college.

To be honest, at this point, I wouldn’t be particularly motivated to fund bursaries and collaborations with state schools when the time money and effort seems to make no difference and resulted in a society that thinks it is OK to place a 20% tax on your work. No. Self preservation should be the priority. Getting Eton-level rich to protect from the current political environment. Raising money is hard. People need to see a reason if the “places to poor kids” one falls away as a consequence of the next government. I think Westminster could credibly claim to be setting an educational standard that is world class. Even for non-alumni that could be an attractive idea to fund as well as being an entre in a London community. iDK. I hope they do.