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.

Do yourself a favor (if you care): google "Penn annual report" and "Edinburge annual report" and you will see a universe of difference.

Edinburgh OP. Edinburgh.

You seem to have a very fragile ego and also appear to attribute people challenging you as them being jealous of you.

If lots of people have an issue with you, individually and separately, do you never think that the problem might in fact be the way you communicate?

This is so funny, I actually thought I was reading some sort of parody 😂
No one actually cares OP
My DS was state educated but totally focussed from aged 15 about where he wanted to go and how he was going to get there. Now aged 23 he’s landed his dream job, is earning in excess of £70000, loads of international travel and the sky’s the limit. He did it because he was driven, not because we threw money at the situation.

But none of that actually matters. As long as he can pay his bills that’s fine.
What matters is a human being who knows how to treat his fellow man. No one really cares about status. Only the shallow people.

Let me summarize the nature of some posts:

statesmom: "there is much more opportunity in the US than in the UK. for evidence, I point out that there are about 7 times the number of UK nationals living in the US than US nationals living in the UK. that is a huge revealed preference:
random poster: "well I know one guy who lived in the US and now he lives in the UK"

statesmom: "there is much more opportunity in the US than in the UK. for evidence, I point out that the average wage in the US is 40% more than in the UK, and that the per capita output of the UK is lower than the poorest state, Mississippi"
random poster: "well, I knew one guy in London and he was paid £10 million one year"

statesmom: "The Ivy League offers hugely more opportunities than Oxbridge. for evidence I point to their relative endowments, revenues, admissions rates, facilities"
random poster: "well I knew a kid who went to Oxford and he loved it"

Really people?

Mike Bloomberg gave $1 billion dollars to Johns Hopkins yesterday, allowing most medical students to go there tuition free.

Meanwhile, something called the University of York has admitted to accepting overseas students with lower grades than British students and the director of something called the Higher Education Policy Institute said that there is a "real risk that a UK university will go bankrupt in 2024."

Now, please: don't anyone come back with something like, "Well, I went to Oxford in 2005 and it seemed like things were OK. So you're wrong, see?"

@statesmom - you’re obsessed - by money. The UK will always be richer than the US as it doesn’t have Trump - and has way better women’s rights.

Bloomberg's gift was wonderful.

However, you need to compare like with like here. A lot universities that charge international student tuition at a higher rate, in multiple countries, have been caught lowering standards for international admissions, or lowering academic standards for degrees. Hopkins is one of the top medical schools in the country, and Bloomberg has donated an unbelievable amount of money to them over the years. I see a specialist there and the children's hospital is already named for his mother and the school of public health is named for him. Places like that will not have difficulty attracting money.

And less prestigious American universities are caught in a squeeze, either for tuition or enrollment reasons. Smaller colleges are closing or merging. Even aside from the massively over-inflation rises in tuition fees, colleges are facing a shrinking pool of students. The most prestigious will be fine, but the lower tier ones will not. It's going to be true in the UK too, especially as there are fewer Chinese students to recruit due to political pressures.

I am not in the slightest way obsessed by money; I have found those obsessed by money are the people who possess little of it.

I do think that money is one important way to measure opportunity and success. It is surely not the only way and people can find happiness and personal fulfillment without it. It is strange that people think I don't understand this common truth.

In any case, if I were an 18 year old young woman there is no doubt in which country I would want to go to university in or to start my career in. It is not my opinion that the US is more successful than the UK and has a greater future ahead, I think many facts prove this quite easily.

It is incredibly richer, scores higher in the world happiness index, contains practically all of the world's most important companies, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, it creates way more intellectual property (over 10 times the international patents than the UK).

I mean, do you want to compare the UK space industry to the US?

That I even need to begin to explain that the US is by every measure better, stronger and more stable than the UK is quite funny. It's like arguing with someone over the relative benefits of a cell phone versus two cups and a piece of string.

@statesmom - you seem to ignore Trump is in America, it has poor maternity outcomes, gun deaths in schools, loss of womens rights over their own bodies.

That I even need to begin to explain that the US is by every measure better, stronger and more stable than the UK is quite funny. It's like arguing with someone over the relative benefits of a cell phone versus two cups and a piece of string.

Better by every measure?

What about women's reproductive rights and gun laws?

Genuinely, do you think their policies on those two issues are 'better' than those in the UK?

The problem with the US is that averages obscure incredible levels of variation by geography, race, and class. I'm not saying this to say "and therefore it's okay," but that your chances of bad outcomes aren't simply blind luck. If you have the right metrics (and this is true in the UK too but not as dramatically for most indicators), your odds are very different to someone who doesn't. You could be a middle class person in suburban Boston, or you could be a poor Black person in the Mississippi Delta. If you're the former? Your life in the US might well be better than that in the UK.

Gun rights still aren't quite as tight in Massachusetts, but they are strict and reproductive rights are ironclad there.

https://msmagazine.com/2024/07/03/texas-mother-miscarriage-abortion-ban-republicans-women/

there is so much wrong about the US. Am very relieved my DD accepted a job in Brussels rather than New York.

In any case, if I were an 18 year old young woman there is no doubt in which country I would want to go to university in or to start my career in.

I’d prefer to live in a country that allowed me access to basic reproductive healthcare tbh. Plenty of them to choose from - sadly the US isn’t one of them.

I am not in the slightest way obsessed by money; I have found those obsessed by money are the people who possess little of it

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😉😂

and I’d repeat that 10 years ago you were convinced that based on university metrics Westminster School was the best school on earth and now (with actual experience of the school and since you live in the UK, you don’t have actual experience of living in the US at the moment) you think it’s a bit pants, so I’m not going to pay very much attention to your recommendations for the best anything

Exactly that. The OP seems unable to countenance that she might be in any way wrong - until she’s proven wrong by her own experience. It’s an extraordinarily immature lack of critical thinking.

I remember her posting a thread about Amy Chua at the same time as her original one about Westminster being the best school in the world. She completely missed the point of what Amy Chua was saying in the book. And is missing the point that you can’t compare admission stats when the process is very different.

I don’t think she’s the brightest, TBH, no matter how bright her son might be. And TBH having several friends and family with kids in Ivies who didn’t spend a dime on expensive consultants to get them in, I question that as well. The similarity to heavily tutored children vs the naturally gifted.

I find it faintly amusing when ignorant people denigrate Scottish universities.

One of mum’s classmates at Cowdenbeath Primary School went on to do a wee bit of research at Glasgow Uni and elsewhere.

As Sir James Black, he became a Nobel Prize winner. Thanks to him, we have beta blockers.

I’m more and more convinced that the OP is having fun doing a bit of trolling.

Yes, absolutely.

When I think, if I were a young person today, and I asked myself: where is the future? New York or Brussels.

Obviously I'd say Brussels. Lot of opportunity there. Great choice.

Do you see people? This is what I'm talking about.

I deride Scottish universities as equivalent to primary schools, which they sort of are.

And this person brings up a Nobel winner from 36 (THIRTY SIX) years ago and says: "See statesmom? You're wrong."

Will someone please bring me a worthy adversary?

I am not looking for an adversary, but due to a ton of insecurity, relative poverty and ignorance there have been many adversarial posts.

I'm just looking to help, people. I come here once every 10 years.

Tried and failed to edit on my phone. The knighthood came after the Nobel Prize, I recall.

Not bad for a state educated lad.

I misread that as “coming FOR help”.

😅

Yeah, and SO WHAT??? The smartest person in the world is probably in India or China in some school with a dirt floor. This is most likely.

Just because ONE PERSON, THIRTY SIX YEARS AGO, who went to a state school won the Nobel Prize, that proves NOTHING about schooling, in the US, or the UK or whatever.

Do you understand this?

Do you have a diagnosed disorder @statesmom? Or are you just really lonely irl?

“I’m not looking to be adversarial.”

”Will someone bring me a worthy adversary?”

😆