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.

If he said that he's a moron.

It reminds me of the old joke, a man and a woman at a bar:

Man: "Would you sleep with me for $1 million?"

Woman: "Sure, ok!"

Man: "Actually would you sleep with me for $100?"

Woman: "No, what kind of woman do you think I am?!!!!"

Man: "We now know what kind of woman you are. Now all we're doing is haggling about the price."

You want your kid to be a better tennis player? You get him a tennis coach.

You want your kid to play piano with Lang Lang? You get him a piano teacher.

You want your kid to have a better chance at the Ivies? You get him a college coach.

We got the best one in London, and I would not change 1 thing.

Not really. He named his price. It’s a price that other than the Gates’, Bezos’ or Musks of the world would be able to pay and it stopped the nouveau riche trying to buy their son a place. And given that the likes of Bill Gates prefers not to waste money in air travel in any other class than economy I doubt he’d be spaffing £1bn on progeny who couldn’t make the cut on their own merits. And tbf with those gene pools you probably wouldn’t need to be paying either.

Since 2010, the UK has been awarded 16 Nobels and the US won 77 of them.

So? The US also has five times the population of the UK.

I would LOVE to see a statistic or two supporting it.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics... admittedly coined by a great American writer. Get back to me when you learn how to use statistics properly.

Give me a break!

I can't take seriously someone who thinks a job at Citi is a good result after all that input. Couldn't you have gotten your DC a job at a bulge bracket if they wanted to go to 'Wall Street'?

Gates: Harvard

Bezos: Princeton

Musk: Penn

Look at the 2024 election, it's a Penn Election. You have Trump (Penn) versus Biden (Penn lecturer, Penn Biden Center, son and grandchildren alumni).

The path to power flows through the Ivy League.

(please people, do not tell me "oh, look at this ceo he didn't go to college" or, "oh, this ceo went to U miami" or whatever)

The fact is, the TINY numbers of people who go to the Ivies have a totally outsized influence on the world.

Good for you. Not sure what point it proves other than your child needed help? Some kids have an innate talent for things - tennis/piano/maths whatever. Plenty on here didn’t to seek help, trusted the process and that’s ok too.

The big question is, why do you feel the need to tell us all? your opinion is that Westminster is not a great school. Mine isn’t. But I didn’t start a thread about it being ‘the best school of earth’ school only to then continually slag it off. Maybe consider the fact that you chose the wrong school for your child and then subsequently put him under considerable pressure to work with a consultant for 5 years to achieve your dream? I really don’t understand why you can’t see what the rest of us are observing on this thread.

Kids need to be able to work things out for themselves - it makes them better adults. Continually snow-ploughing any obstacle/difficulty from your son’s path does not make you a ‘better’ parent, it just makes you someone who is vicariously living through their child. 🤷‍♀️

Westminster School has a capacity of 770 pupils, compared to Eton’s 1,400 pupils.

According to a recent annual report, Westminster’s endowment income is £5.5 million, whereas Eton’s is £33 million.

Westminster spends £2.6 million on utilities and facilities maintenance, while Eton spends £8.2 million on building maintenance alone.

This is clueless.

Do you think there is 1 professional piano player on Earth who did not have a piano teacher?

Are you nuts?

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Eton's endowment is £568 million as of August 2022.

Do yourself a favor and google "eton annual report".

You sound really angry OP. You keep saying people's replies are hilarious / so funny but it's clear they are really rattling you and making you cross.

You're happy with your choices.

You say your son is happy and thriving.

Why are you wasting time being combative, defensive and massively over invested in a thread on Mumsnet over the course of days?

Your attitude on the thread is bizarre and makes you come across as far more insecure than the people you keep labelling as such.

Go enjoy the life you've built! Rejoice in the face your choices have in your mind been the right ones. Chat to your son, chat to some mates.

Life's too short to angrily defend decisions you believe were right, unless you're deeply insecure.

Just enjoy the fact your decisions were right for your son and perhaps work on your communication style. You seem surprised it's had such a reaction on here, but surely if so many strangers individually react in the same way to you then it might be worth considering if your communication style is a large factor in that 🤷🏻‍♀️

Trump’s Dad paid for him. Enough said - a bigger man child on all of God’s green earth you’d struggle to find..

The rest made it into IL on their own merits. Biden’s also managed to produce his own man child who isn’t covering the family name in glory either.

Why you’d aspire any of this for your child is beyond me. And frankly for whom this is all entirely irrelevant because neither party is searching for one kid who is currently behind a desk at Citibank (along with the Billy Smith’s formerly of a state comp in Preston followed by Imperial London) and not running his own start up in SV…..😆

Out of all the people on this thread, I don’t think I’m the one who is ‘nuts’. You do seem overly fond of attacking any poster who points out that some kids have natural talent to begin with. Or has a different pov.

Yes Lang Lang, Federer, Zuckerberg or Stephen Hawking all had tuition to make them the best they could be - but they had an innate ability to start with. Plenty of kids from Westminster (and other schools) every year get to IL without 5 years of a consultant alongside a £250k bill. or maybe that is your issue? That other successful candidates didn’t need to spend the money and you’ve ended up feeling a bit miffed?

Totally this. It is very odd indeed. I can only liken it to Liz Truss’ constant whinging about how she didn’t crash the economy it was everyone else who was out to get her and how she was right all along.

Maybe Go and wrote a book OP like Liz Truss did and explain your ‘story’ so we can all marvel at your parenting. A bit like we did by the book written by the nation’s shortest term PM.

Yes and any kid getting into the Ivy League has "innate ability to start with".

I love this!!!!!!!!!!

You recognize an obvious fact in all fields (piano, tennis, math, whatever). Young people get coaching to help them to a goal.

I pay for a college coach to help my son to a goal? "Oh no, your DS needed help, he got to a place he didn't deserve, etc."

You have no idea what you are talking about, and you have an internally inconsistent argument.

This is so funny I really mean it. Love it.

I'm talking about endowment income, the annual income generated from endowment investment activities.

Well I don’t think the term ‘inconsistent’ can be levelled at me tbf 😂

What insult was it that the great sage Rebekah Vardy levelled at Colleen Rooney during the ‘wagatha Christie’ trial? ‘It’s like arguing with a pigeon’ I think she meant to quote ‘it’s like trying to play chess with a pigeon’ . She didn’t win that argument in the end either.

I didn’t say he got a place he didn’t deserve, he got a place because he had assistance. There is a difference. What seems to be a continual sore point for you is that he needed the assistance. Maybe he just wasn’t exceptional? There are exceptional kids in every year (the ones who get early acceptance) and we can’t all be a mother to them.

I have every idea about what I’m talking about given that my DC did actually attend Westminster and did very well despite not having a mother clearing every obstacle in their path…

But anyhoo, I have other things to do today than argue with some random about a school neither of our kids attend any longer.

If you are an interested reader, I’d wholeheartedly recommend Westminster as a great school who selects the type of student they think will do best there. No other tuition needed 😉

Cut her some slack. It's obvious that attention to detail isn't her strong suit.

I'm not sure why so many people on this thread are continuing to feed this troll but, if you must, you might want to have a look at this first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

I think @statesmom just has different cultural expectations. If it is the norm in the US to get an educational consultant for Ivies, so be it. I have friends who are internationals (Indians, Singaporeans, living in Dubai etc) and they are also doing it. Because their DCs are classed as “international students” in the UK, of course they are choosing the better funded Ivies over top unis here. Here they would have to pay overseas fees to subsidise everyone else, because they are not tax resident here, so US uni is better value for them. Like @statesmom explains, the endowments make for nicer facilities, more course options etc. - far more choice.

So I think I understand what @statesmom is saying. And I suspect therefore some of the kids at eg Sevenoaks School who can cope with the IB and are all rounders and doing service and extra curricular and would have to pay overseas fees too at e.g Imperial or Oxbridge, may also choose a top US uni. In addition, UK unis are not great at giving IB the full credit. We looked into it as an option for one DC because it sounds amazing, but from a UK uni perspective and given the huge workload, it does not make much sense. The research shows IB students do really well at uni, but they do not do as well getting into top unis so that is a failure of our uni system, in my opinion.

And perhaps the path to aspiration and success in the US for an international person is now better? So Indians/Chinese/Middle East rich people prefer those unis now?

The game in the UK is different. You have to be understated, send your DC to state school and play an entirely different game than in the US. Maybe @statesmom just did not appreciate that and so regrets not opting for Eton which is also a more centrist place, politically speaking. Westminster School has always been a little left leaning. Perhaps it infiltrates the teaching and he or she didn’t like it much?

@statesmom - could I please ask a question? In the US, is it culturally acceptable to disclose how much extra tuition your kid is having, that you have paid X consultant and managed to get Y amazing piano teacher. Is that kind of information openly discussed between mothers and shared and seen as a good thing? Because you are an aspirational strong mother that cares. And even if your kid does not really need it, it is a good thing to not leave it up to chance if you have the means to support as much as you can.

Because I find in the UK the opposite is the case. People are embarrassed to do that and like to pretend they did nothing and it is all down to natural ability etc etc.
So could this just be a big cultural clash?

Again, my friends in India use loads of tutors and help and it is perfectly acceptable and seen as a good thing. All my Chinese and Russian friends discuss it openly as well. It is OK and good to be pushy and aspirational.

In some countries, you are meant to hide that. I bet that is the case in plenty of European countries too. It does not mean people are not doing it, they are just not allowed to show off about it.

This is a really interesting discussion. I agree that the game in the UK is different, getting into Oxbridge from a state school with no extra support is super high status. Having lots of tutors on top of private schools is slightly embarrassing and certainly not something anyone would want others to know.

I suspect there may be a difference between what you want to brag about at a party with people who actually know you, and what you want to brag about in an anonymous forum, and that difference may be bigger than any difference between the US and the UK.

I think this is exactly right.

Most mothers in London would never, and I mean never, say to anyone other than a close friend that their kid was tutored.

There are tone of stories of moms who do not know this, and when trying for the 11+ ask around and the other moms say, "Oh we're just doing some Bond books with him on the weekend, no stress".

Ant the naive mother doesn't do much with the kid. He doesn't get into Habs or wherever and she later finds out the other kids were tutored to death. She cries, knowing she let her child down.

It's a weird culture, this tutoring business.

We tutored to get our son into the Great School, for the exam. Once he was in we didn't use any tutors. We hired a US college consultant in his first GCSE year and worked with that person over time.

This to me is acutally not much outside help. Then he goes to the Ivy League and he's off on his own. Fly, little bird: fly!

Eton which is also a more centrist place, politically speaking. Westminster School has always been a little left leaning

This is one of the ridiculous things I’ve read this month.

I think this is also very true.

We hired a tutor for the 11+ and when we asked around at his prep school the moms were like: "Tutors? Oh no, not us!"

Total liars. When I found out later, when a few of the boys were over our house and just chatted with them socially and they said how much tuition they got, I at first felt a bit betrayed, and angry. Why would these mothers lie to me?

But whatever, people are insecure.