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.

What a strange thread 😅

You don't need to be rich or sporty to go to an Ivy.

You just need to be very well rounded, academically and socially, and you need to start preparing around age 12-14.

There are several extremely selective Ivies and Ivy equivalents (U Chicago, Stanford, etc) that offer needs blind admissions to international students and also offer to cover full demonstrated financial need. Going g to one of these elite institutions could wind up costing you less than the bill for a leading British university.

I would KILL for fifteen minutes in the Westminster staff room with a photo of OP and a bottle of Veritaserum-laced wine

🤣🤣🤣

There are a few misunderstandings here.

The first is the cost thing. Financial aid and scholarships are two different entities. The first is basically a waiver, or a write-off, and perhaps loans from the institution itself. International students are eligible for needs blind admission and full demonstrated financial need covered at a select few universities and liberal arts colleges. Scholarships are specific funds offered by organisations to specific categories of students.

Your annual bill will include tuition plus room and board plus any miscellaneous fees.

In the US, you can enjoy a much higher starting salary than you would in the UK with just an undergrad degree under your belt. Engineers are particularly well paid, and finance majors are too.

Graduate school includes medical school (four years, followed by residency) as well as MBA courses, Masters in Finance, law school, midwifery, masters degrees in various humanities and arts areas, Masters in Education, and PhDs. A PhD can take four to seven years. It's not a one size fits all proposition.

🤣🤣 Never ever comment on these threads ( read often however!). Safe to say op is on the wind up - combo of greatest civilisation on earth/ top kids reference clinches it. If Alan Partridge was an “elite” school parent! 😬

Op is sleeping it all off, she'll be back tomorrow after a full English.

Define 'top kid', OP.

Look, the biggest difference between (and I'll use these phrases for ease of reference, but I mean good schools in the US and UK) the Ivy League and Oxbridge is 1 thing: money.

Oxford has been around for 900 years, how big is its endowment? £6 billion. That is risible. Some guy wrote a check to Stanford a few years ago for $1.1 billion on a random Tuesday.

What does money get you? Opportunities like you wouldn't believe. It buys the best buildings, the best facilities, the best dining halls, labs, professors, study abroad facilities, you name it. At these schools, they have people to walk you home at night if you're at the library too late and you don't feel safe, OK?

Have any of you been to a college at Oxford or Cambridge? It's like you walked into a dorm room in the 1970s. They are faded and tired, as is their mediocre faculty. Anybody good left for the East Coast around the turn of the century.

So, yeah, if you could afford it, anyone in their right mind would send their kid to the US and to an Ivy. If you can't afford it? If you loved your kid, you'd remortage the house, as my father did for me.

Why would I need to define that? Someone with all 8s or 9s in GCSEs, 4 As at least at A level, an SAT with a 15 at the front of it, and lots of internships, experiences, founded clubs at school, terrific references, etc. The top kids in London have started companies and founded charities, in my experience.

So, yeah, if you could afford it, anyone in their right mind would send their kid to the US and to an Ivy. If you can't afford it? If you loved your kid, you'd remortage the house, as my father did for me.

You can love your dc without remortgaging your house. Could your dc have got decent jobs without all the intervention?

I was at the Oxford Open Day this week- half the students showing us around seemed to be from the US.

Lots of people in the uk don’t have enough equity in their house to get a mortgage big enough for us uni fees! Plus living costs. If you don’t get needs blind you need seriously deep pockets. No discounts for Brits! So for the majority, money is an issue.

Of course the USA is richer than here. The giving ethos is very very strong. Not here in the same way. Lots of rich here aren’t British either. Oxford and Cambridge colleges are ancient (mostly) on restricted sites in grade 1 buildings. So no, we aren’t pulling them down.

Well said!

I have no idea what exactly this thread is about but there's part of me that wants the OPs son to scream "screw you Ivy League society and your fancy pants facilities" and go live off grid in the woods raising goats 🤣

Are you upset that despite Daddy remortaging, you completely failed to nab a rich American husband to spend your life over there? After all, you're clearly still slumming it in middleage (and probably in a semi in Zone 6) to have the kid you're desperate to have live out the life you wanted in the first place.

No guarantee he's going to invite you to go over and move in with his gorgeous American wife and his adorable children in the future, by the way. He might just decide that he prefers you to be an entire ocean away so you don't attempt to rule his children's lives the way you've done to him.

I ask anyone reading this: If you had a choice to send your child to Stanford, and be near Silicon Valley's opportunities, or to Cambridge for, I don't know what, punting on the river; which would you choose?

Cambridge every time. Well, Oxford actually. Very bizarre to assume everyone wants to work in Silicon Valley.

Not sure whether to laugh or cringe! A bit of both, maybe. Could you be any more stereotypical if you tried, OP? I have never even had any particular desire to visit 'the greatest civilisation the world has ever known TM', never mind study there. Oxford was very lovely, thanks. Many of its alumni have done rather well. You've probably heard of one or two of them. Oh and it's not all about money, you know.

The UK is poorer than Mississippi.

If you take London out of it, which after all is where most Brits live, I don't know, maybe it's Equatorial Guinea.

If you have 1 iota of a chance to send your kid to the US, you'd be crazy not to take it.

I really don't find this to be a controversial view.

But, back to US universities, not only do they have more cash, more opportunities, more courses, more everything, the fact that in this declining nation you only study 1 thing at university is, to me, nuts. I mean, you're 18 years old and you're never going to take another history course, or another math course?

And this is after you're funnelled down to 4 A levels?!

The broad education one gets at a US college further seals the deal. The best education I think you can get is a top UK day/boarding school followed by an American university, and that is the path we chose for our darling boy. And lucky he is for it.

You sound quite mad OP.

Oh bore off, OP. Good for you and your son and he's where you wanted him to be, but most of us haven't written off the UK entirely.

If I was gong to send a child to private school and I could choose any of them, Westminster would certainly be on the list..

The thing is about the US you can have a lot of money on paper but only get a couple of weeks annual leave and not be able to walk around the city where you live for worrying about crime. People work longer hours too and you don't get much maternity leave.

Places like Finland often come top of those quality of life surveys but I actually fancy the Mediterranean lifestyle myself. Italy is amazing. Culture, sunshine, seaside, mountains, incredible architecture, amazing food. If you are fairly affluent it seems ideal.

And Oxford is a beautiful place.Who cares if it's a bit crumbly in places? Depends what you value.

Many 'top kids' in my DC's school didn't apply to US universities. Only international students or those who are in the middle are applying because they are not so confident about the Oxbridge application. US and UK applications are quite different. Oxbridge is mainly merit-based and US Ivy application is an all-rounder and needs consultancy involved as you mentioned. BTW, 15 in front of SAT is quite easy and all the predicted 4A star applicants should easily score that without preparation.

Thought this was a thread about Westminster - what are you on about OP. You sound like a barking mad lunatic.

I am a private school mum but my god I didn’t know people like you existed - you are a caricature

clearly you want your son to be a CEO of the next Meta- and that’s cool

And clearly you love the US- with its woeful holiday rights - not to mention human rights record, gun crime and commitment to the constitution above all else (women’s rights - they don’t matter). But I’m a Brit and very happy to live in Britain. So I’ll bring up my kids to get the best education they can - and to be successful on their own terms.

If they want to go to the US I’ll support that but I won’t be pushing it.

The problem with going to a university in America is that you’re then likely to end up living and working in America, which is pretty awful. I mean it’s nice enough for a holiday but living there? With all the stuff that’s going on there? No thanks.