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.

You have misunderstood the term "financial aid".

It does not refer to sports scholarships, which are called NCAA scholarships, and come under the umbrella of the National Collegiate Athletics Association.

NCAA scholarships are awarded for athletic prowess. Students receiving them go to the university that recruited them; this could be a university or liberal arts college of any quality.

Ivy League colleges and universities do not offer sports or merit scholarships of any kind.

The financial aid I'm talking about is offered by some Ivies and other extremely selective American universities and liberal arts colleges to international students demonstrating exceptional academic potential. It is basically a waiver of a huge chunk of the cost of attendance at one of these elite institutions. Cost of attendance means tuition plus room and board plus incidentals (various fees, a very basic living allowance, book and materials costs, and sometimes a travel allowance).

The financial aid offered by these academically elite institutions is based on the demonstrated financial need of the admitted applicants. Your rowing prowess (or slight stature, ability to swim, and willingness to learn to cox) might get you onto a crew once you arrive in Harvard or Princeton or wherever, but it won't get you in in the first place, and it won't pay for your four years there.

Christ, what have the Welsh done to deserve that?

The King of Wales was "snowploughed" to Cambridge with its merit admission, and then he discovered his love for horticulture after graduation.

No I haven’t. I do understand your points but Some of my DC’s prep school friends who attend non elite Indie schools have received full rides to us colleges (not Ivy League) playing Rugby. I don’t think their financial circumstances are terrible either. I don’t know the system because DC did not apply to US. But I see no reason why they would make it up. However the question was asked why so many indie school and grammar school kids apply to US and in part it is down to the offer as a whole. And financial aid for those who might need it - which is more likely at an IL for a uk student coming from a grammar.

@statesmom - 'we hired a US college consultant in his first GCSE year and worked with that person over time'
I'd love to hear more about this having read an article in the Times 3 years ago that alerted me to the fact that this was even a thing in the UK.

Can you share what sort of things the college consultant did for their fee? Specifics would be great...4 years of professional advice is a big investment & not one we can stretch to. I'm not here to attack any info you share - I'm genuinely interested & given you only appear once a decade the time to ask is now! DD is considering US applications & I'm slowing info gathering.

@Bettydrapers - you mentioned 'applying early action' to your son's top choice...what did you mean by that. Also fascinated to hear the process he went through, albeit a very different one to Statesmom's son.

Finally, there has been mention of 'early decision applicants to MIT'...what does that mean? It was in the context of bright Westminster boys accepting Oxbridge over IL offers (with the exception of early decision applicants to MIT)

I'm sure in time I can glean this from the Higher Ed boards in time but this thread has been so lively I may as well take advantage of the traffic

Early decision at MIT for overseas students is very low. I think last year only 2 students (not just Westminster) were offered it. They are the kids the IL really want and it is a notable thing to be offered one. MIT vs Oxford is consideration of next steps beyond the first degree hence why not many would turn it down if it is affordable for the family.

Early decision is what it says on the tin.

The OP has changed her mind from a 5 year college consultant process in earlier posts to starting in Y10. This gives 3 years at the max - Y10,11 and Y12. Applications for the US is done and dusted by the early part of the Autumn term of Y13 (as is Oxbridge). I have no idea what the fee would cover but 3 years and an £250K expense wouldn’t be VFM in my household. I’d also take everything claimed by the OP with a pinch of salt….

Thanks for the reply @DDberzatto - when you say MIT vs Oxford is next steps beyond first degree & many wouldn’t turn it down do you mean at postgrad level? Why would the same not be true at degree level ? If I’m asking stupid questions please forgive my ignorance - I’ve not started even investigating the higher ed application process yet but my interest was piqued by this interesting thread.

Also, what is it about early decision students that differentiates them. What part of the US application process flags them up? Or might they already have some kind of established record like twice representing their country in the IMO for example.
Sometimes I look on TSR for insight but it seems full of urban myths!

I’m no expert in this field. Early decision is in the main part just that - a decision before the main offer day. The applicant can choose only one college for early decision. However, for a lot of colleges (MIT is not one though) it is a binding agreement that if they make an offer the student is bound to accept - regardless of whether or no a financial package is offered or indeed what size that offer might be. Therefore you would need to be confident you are top of your class and that your family can afford the fees even if they are due in full. However MIT (and I think Harvard is another) do not make their offers binding. Confusingly early decision for some colleges is not even really that early either. An early decision is either acceptance, rejection or being deferred (similar to the pooling system in Oxbridge) and an offer may be made alongside everyone else. MIT has a very low acceptance rate in general so early decision is considered prestigious for that reason.

In my DC’s years early decision students (one or two) were those who were at the top of their year.

I’m sure someone else will be along to explain the process in more detail if they’ve been through it.

The financial aid I'm talking about is offered by some Ivies and other extremely selective American universities and liberal arts colleges to international students demonstrating exceptional academic potential.

Most students at the Ivies, etc., do not demonstrate exceptional academic potential, unless you consider top decile, or so, to be exceptional. At these schools, there is no expectation or intent that all students should become academics. Your chances of gaining admission go up with academic achievement up until a certain point, which reflects the level that the university expects to teach its classes at, but then plateaus until a child really does get exceptional. A few students will be admitted because of truly exceptional academic potential. Most students will be admitted because of other demonstrations of potential.

The financial aid offered by these academically elite institutions is based on the demonstrated financial need of the admitted applicants.

That is true. They have almost all shifted from merit-based scholarships to need-based aid, on the theory that merit-based scholarships tend to reward students who were already advantaged by having a lot of resources to develop their merit.

Your rowing prowess (or slight stature, ability to swim, and willingness to learn to cox) might get you onto a crew once you arrive in Harvard or Princeton or wherever, but it won't get you in in the first place,

That is not true. Once a certain minimum level of academic achievement is demonstrated, Harvard and Princeton look for demonstrations excellence in something, and that something is usually not academic. The idea is that someone who has the discipline and hard work to compete at a national level in, say swimming, and still maintain acceptable academics even after 20 or 30 hours per week of practice and competitions, will be able to keep up at the university and will eventually find some other area in which to apply their discipline and hard work and, hopefully, excel.

and it won't pay for your four years there.

That is true. You are not obliged to continue your sport or music or any other activity to maintain your need-based aid. You are, of course, required to achieve sufficient academic results to remain at the university, but these requirements are nowhere near 'exceptional'.

And with regards to Oxford v MIT - if you can afford it, it makes sense if a career in the tech arena is something your DC is planning on pursuing. A lot of kids are recruited directly from there. Not to say that they aren’t from Oxford but not at the level they are at MIT.

I work in tech at a very high level. That’s true if you’re talking about product engineers etc - ie the people working on the production side. That’s absolutely not true at all for other parts of the business. And I’m in no way saying one route is better than another. I wouldn’t have a job without the product engineers etc who created what I work with (not sales, BTW, more application of the product). But it’s not a single route in. I went to a red brick and just worked my way into what I do now. I’m by no means a unicorn in tech companies like mine. Yes if I tried to do what I do now I’d probably advise someone to get an MBA in a good US institution. But I don’t think an undergrad degree there is the be all. Even now.

I also think there’s a difference between people with an entrepreneur streak than people happy to be salary + bonus (I’m a bit of a combo of both). If you’re the former there are non Ivy colleges that better support that.

Um -- most Ivy students are academically top, not just top decile. At that point, in many competitive schools the distinctions get so fine they are meaningless which is why some American schools have abolished rank. Yes, activities are part of how they distinguish between all those students, and despite not having official sports scholarships, a really good athlete may get an offer with less good grades (hence, Varsity Blues scandal).

The schools my oldest applied to said binding early decision offers could be broken for an inadequate aid offer, at least for domestic students. That's become a thing because poorer students were afraid to apply ED and ED students are more likely to get in for various reasons.

MIT is a bit of a pipeline for certain fields, but they aim for academic prowess in a way the Ivies don't. The Ivies want "well rounded." MIT cares less about that. It will always care more about you placing highly in Math Olympiad or Odyssey of the Mind than about your swim team record. It is very high pressure though and some students can absolutely crack under the competition.

As I say the American system really suits students who aren't sure what field they want or who have unusual combinations of interests. A friend's son is passionate about both mathematics and linguistics, and I don't think there's a university in the UK that offers that combination. It could be a perfect foundation for work in either computational linguistics or artificial intelligence.

MIT recruits average 2-3 UK applicants each year (including REA and Rd). This year two are from UK rowing team. Even get to IMO won't do anything good unless top gold medalist.

The ability to have strange combinations was a big attraction for one of my DDs who is double majoring in Physics and English Literature in the US

Happy to talk about what the college consulatant did.

First off, he spent a lot of time talking with my son and going over what his academic interests were, his extracurricular interests in school, his interests outside of school and so on. What was he considering studying, what sort of books did he like, I mean really getting to know him.

After that he went away and put a sort of plan together and we all sat down to discuss, and when I say plan I mean the next 4 years of things to have to do and have to think about. I should have said that it was slightly before his GCSE year that we engaged the guy.

First thing he did was go over his recommendations for GCSE choices, we went back and forth on pluses and minuses for a few of them and my son made his final choices with some interesting and thoughtful advice to aid those choices.

We talked about what his "edge" or "story" was going to be and how in four years we wanted that story to look. I won't share what my son's interests and so on were but each kid will have his own interests and desires and the consultant helps to maximize the impact of those desires on the applicatio process.

What clubs should you join?
What clubs should you form?
What internships should you go for?
What prizes should you go for?
What should you do in the next 3 summers, 1st summer this, second summer this etc.
What essay contests should you go for?
What volunteering should you do?
What businesses can you start?

And so on. We would speak to him every now and then, some weeks not at all, some weeks 5 times to agree a final decision on a decision my son had to make.

He's sort of lay out the pros and cons of a decision and my son ultimately would make them. I didn't agree with a few of his choices but he had to own this.

Then he helped us decide which colleges to visit, how best to prepare for the SAT, which A level subjects to take.

So he was kind of guiding us throughout this time on becoming the best candidate my son could be for the schools and programs he wanted to try to get. He then helped us decide where to apply (we got in ED) and then worked with us on all of the essays, how to present his extras, the entire application process iteratively going back and forth.

We got the best news we had hoped for and, though my son surely may have been able to get in without this advice, I believe we swung the percentages in our favor and he was the best candidate he could have been.

And you paid how much for this??
Also what’s going to happen when he has to apply for work after university- will you have someone coaching him and holding his hand for that?
At what point is he going to learn self reliance and, more importantly, dealing with failure? How we cope with the curveballs in life is what builds resilience. So far it looks like you’ve shielded and protected from every negative eventuality by paid handholding.
At what point will he be allowed to make his own decisions? You keep referring to “we” in your reply which is interesting. Surely it’s “he”?

@statesmom

Here’s the thing. You posted this in 2014… when your son was allegedly at the time 8 years old…by any stretch of the imagination, he hasn’t in the last 10 years been through college, got a job at Citibank/wherever. At all. He’s 18…😉

statesmom · 01/02/2014 17:20
Just looking at their website and they have 97 places for their students at Oxford and Cambridge this year?!
^^
We have an 8 year old son and want to focus on getting him into this place, just next to the Palace of Westminster. It looks amazing! Any thought on parents with children at the school very welcome indeed, especially any thoughts on the application process. Thank you for someone new to London.

Oh, and for a mum who ‘wasn’t prepared to consider boarding’ it seems very odd you asked this question in 2017… when your Son would’ve been going up to Eton. So I think we can deduce that the ‘super tutor’ you worked with to get your son into Westminster in 2014 did not get the result you wanted. As suspected, you were not a Westminster parent, you were possibly a parent of a boy at Eton. Which is also contradictory given that on your first thread you seemed very keen to denigrate Eton’s leaver destinations as being inferior to Westminster’s. At at that point, Oxbridge was your preferred destination given that ‘between you and your husband you had 3 legacies covered at US colleges’.

Back in 2014, you’d intended to gift to the school £1-2k per annum (generous for a parent whose son had no connection to the school but hardly in the notable family league of donors to the school) because of the ‘American Lady’ who ran the college admissions ‘to get her attention’. This would be the same lady you came back to traduce as being ‘useless’ 10 years later then? A woman who on the balance of all probabilities literally had zero input into your child’s education?

statesmom · 17/08/2017 18:02
At Eton, does anyone know whether one can clip a reading light on the bed frame for extra light? Or is a bedside lamp more common/popular method of lighting?

@DDberzatto Very interesting couple of posts!
I wonder how that will be defended? Maybe he skipped a few years? 🤷‍♀️

Well this is awkward 😬

So he was 8 ten years ago. So 18 now.

And you claim:

But, in any case, he wants to be an investment banker and has a job offer in the six figures. He'll be 22 and is a happy, intelligent and cultured young man with friends all over the world, a few I reckon will be lifelong.

He is in his first year of university and has a six figure job offer already secured for when he is 22?

Oh OP, you went too far to be believable!

I’ve had my suspicions…and waiting for one of the DC early this morning gave me the time to check.

I think we can rule out the OP as a member of the BBC Verify team…. 😂

Hats off to her for stringing us along so well! 😁

Are there two DC?

She won’t be back now.

I think a previous poster mentioned how odd her behaviour was (I think the word unhinged was used) for a school that her son had left ten years ago… and it did strike me as very bitter. The timing of the thread starting coincided with leaver services / prize giving and my assumption was that maybe her son’s prep school contemporaries who had actually gone to Westminster had managed to achieve a place at their choice of university (both Oxbridge and IL) without spending ‘six figures’ on a college consultant. Or maybe she was taken for a ride and the money was a sunk cost and he was off to a non IL or…perish the thought, a red brick in the UK. Either way she has described a fantasy about her son’s future life.

One of the amazing things about Westminster is the level of (free) and continuous support if your DC is disappointed with their university offer. Or indeed if they have done better and wish to reapply for y14. The OP described unfairly an establishment I did not recognise and as such, it turns out of which she had no first time experience of….