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.

How did the king got into Cambridge?

Because of your rather obnoxious attitude, notice I say attitude not personal beliefs or opinions, I rather wish you didn’t live in London. You must hate slumming it within our third world country, why don’t you b**r off 😂

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?

Well Teesside has a free minibus to take you home if it’s late and you don’t feel safe…..even after just been in the SU bar never mind the library 😂

Not sure, ha! But it wasn't through the so-called 'legacy' system, because neither of his parents went to Cambridge!

That said, it was easier for candidates from independent schools to get into Oxbridge in 1967, when he was admitted. And he got a 2.2.

This thread is entertaining, but the OP is like a parody of a wealthy, right-wing American. The gap between rich and poor in the US is far wider than it is in the UK. I grew up in the US with guns and no health insurance. It's not easy to be poor anywhere, but I would rather be poor in the UK than in the US any day.

The OP's views illustrate how narrow the perspective of the privileged can be.

He got in being part of the legacy system. The university just get rid of it quicker than some US university doesn't mean UK was much different to George Bush then.

www.quora.com/Why-do-Oxford-and-Cambridge-not-have-the-legacy-and-donation-system-in-their-student-admission

As we've been here so long, I have a passport from our third world country (signs: strikes by government workers, non-functioning infrastructure, high debt, low productivity, unstable government, low labor participation rate), and we've decided to stay, thank you.

London is the greatest city in the world, for certain people.

You would take something called "Humboldt" over Harvard and something called "Utrecht" over Stanford, is that right?

Somehow, I do find that hard to believe. But wish you luck.

God, you are odious.

Quick internet search: Horace Mann school, an “Ivy League Preparatory School” gets 20% of its students into actual Ivy leagues and none into MIT or Stanford in the years 2020-2022. Hilarious.

Out of interest how much does a counsellor cost?

To take one example, Harvard's 2024 acceptance rate was 3.59% (and that was the highest in 4 years):

www.forbes.com/sites/annaesakismith/2024/03/28/harvard-accepts-359-of-applicants-highest-rate-in-4-years/

Oxford's 2024 admissions rate was somewhere between 4.6% and 25%, depending on the major, I'd guess it has an overall acceptance rate of 15% or so:

unischolars.com/blog/oxford-university-acceptance-rate/

So your claim doesn't makes sense mathematically.

It is MUCH harder to get into the Ivy League than Oxbridge. This is a fact.

The greatest civilisation...?

They've already reached the bread and circuses stage, admittedly.

To be fair, it could be that more US students are deluded by their cultural ignorance into thinking they are worthy of a place at a top global university. The US universities might need to sift through a lot more chaff to find the wheat.

So my argument is simple: Do you want your kid to stay in this dilapidated country, or have a chance to become a participant in the greatest civilization the Earth has ever known?

So why have you decided to grace this dilapidated country with your continued presence?

This is priceless. You know that because 1 person who went to 1 UK university and got a £25 million bonus proves nothing, right?!

That's like saying: "OMG I can't believe Trump won, everyone I know voted for Clinton!"

I am talking about nation-wide statistics, not some guy I heard about in 1998.

Totally hilarious. You can point to 1 person here or 18 people there that you may have encountered in your career, but it sheds no light on anything.

The fact of the matter is that wages in the US are far, far higher than the wages in the UK. Who you worked with in M&A has no bearing on anything.

I have been quoting facts here (generally), and when I talk about Mississippi being richer than the UK or universities having more money and better facilities the only thing I get back is ad hominem emotional pointless irrelevancies.

And I'm not even looking for a fight!

A rather uncharitable and baseless assumption, but come up with whatever excuse makes you feel good, I suppose!

Uh, maybe it's just harder to get in? Maybe use Ockham's razor.

This is priceless. You know that because 1 person who went to 1 UK university and got a £25 million bonus proves nothing, right?!

You make rude, sweeping statements about the U.K. being full of no hopers who won't earn serious money. I work with people who earn multi-million pound bonuses every year. Yes, it may be anecdotal but it's also true. Financial services, including investment banking, is one of the UK's largest contributors to GDP.

At this point, I think we've all stopped caring given that your comments are uninformed and lack perspective. If you hate the U.K. so much, I suggest you move to the US and line your son up to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Good luck with that...

Even better!

Never said I hated the UK; in actual fact I live in London. We have a townhouse in Manhattan and could move back tomorrow, but we love it here.

I am simply making fact-based statements (mostly) to make a point, as well as giving my opinion.

And the fact is that if you happen to work with people who make millions of pounds, so what? (do they work for an American bank by the way?)

Bankers in America make more than bankers in the UK on average.

Plumbers in America make more than plumbers in the UK on average.

People in America make more than people in the UK on average.

Who you are and what you do means absolutely zero to international comparisons.

OK?

And yet plenty of Westminsters get in. So your uncharitable statements about Westminster and its staff and male students upthread don’t seem justified. What is it about these US students that they can’t get into their own colleges?

But since everyone here seems so keen on anecdotes, despite their lack of generalized insight, let me give you one of my favorites, and I tell this to my children all the time.

A few of the have performed very highly, I mean to a national level, in a few things. My response to that was: "That's great and I am so proud of you!! Also, remember to put it in perspective." And that's when I tell them about the guitar player from Metallica who move to California:

https://www.loudersound.com/news/lars-ulrich-on-how-failed-tennis-career-led-to-birth-of-metallica

“I grew up in a tennis playing family. We relocated to Newport Beach and I was going to play tennis at Corona del Mar High School."
“In Denmark I was ranked high enough to be one of the best tennis players in the country, but there’s only five million people there. when we came to Newport Beach, I wasn’t good enough to get on the tennis team at Corona del Mar High School."
“I wasn’t one of the best 10 tennis players in the street that I lived on!"

OK people?

Just remember, no matter how well your kid does in his piano ABRSM, there are 50 million Chinese kids playing for 6 hours a day.

@statesmom yes why are you here if you hate it so much?
Do you ever leave the utopia of central London and see other parts of the UK - some of which are - shockingly 😱 - actually quite nice?
You made a sarcastic comment about your son going to "Oxford Community College" instead - we don't even have Community Colleges in the UK 🤣
You live here but know nothing about the education system.
I still don't quite understand this whole thread.
You paid bucket loads of money to send your kid to a private school but still had to pay bucket loads more for experts/tutors to get him into an Ivy League. Waste of money on the private school then if you had to spend that extra ££££ 🤣
Yet you're bragging about that 🤔
Could it actually be your son is average ?

If Westminsters were really focused on Ivy League only, it would blow every US school away. Even the male cohort would. It’s just a better training for an elite university education.

Is this a joke? Greatest civilization ever known??

Everything you post is about money - what about quality of life. When DH and I decided to leave the UK, due to our jobs we could get visas and work anywhere. No way would we live in the US with the gun culture, poor women’s rights and risk of Trump being president again.

It's true Americans really do think they are the best at everything and I thought that was just a lazy racial stereotype- clearly not.