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.

@statesmom people in America who are diabetic can't afford insulin.
People in America can get into debt and go bankrupt because they gave birth to a baby and the birth didn't go perfect so they needed longer in hospital or extra medical treatment.
Children in America get shot at school.
Yay.🇺🇲

My DS is starting private school in August and you're that stereotypical private school mum that I dread. Thankfully it's a 'cheap in comparison' day school in Scotland where parents live in the real world. Your money has gone to your head love.

😂

Perhaps "Oxford Community College" 😂

Yes but can they speak Spanish and French, have a good training in Latin and Greek, be able to talk through the causes of the world war 1, play cricket, tennis and football well, be in the top 1000 maths students in a cohort of 750,000, analyse intelligently Romeo and Juliet….at age of 13. We got computers that play piano

Britain's GDP= Equatorial Guinea 😂
This is comedy gold!
Brilliant, OP 👏

OP is correct in everything she says. Unless you move in those circles you just won't get it. OP, it looks like not many people on here do.

Let's give some hard facts shall we:

More millionaires are leaving the UK than anywhere else in the world, except China:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/18/business/uk-millionaires-loss-record/index.html#:~:text=The%20continuing%20exodus%20from%20the,last%20year's%20record%20by%208%2C000.

And some more evidence:

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/25/nicholai-tangen-norges-bank-investment-americans-work-harder/

Shout all you want folks, but the OP is right.

UK and Europe have been falling behind for YEARS.

You have no idea what's coming it seems... most of you.

Well said @ProfessorPeppy

Two of my dds graduated from Oxford with firsts. There is no way we could have afforded Ivy League colleges in the US.

Looking forward a future post in AIBU by “my darling boy” ‘s partner about his MIL 🥴 …

Through the front door.

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?)

Sorry to disappoint but this was at a British investment bank and more recently British asset management companies.

The difference here is that we're not denigrating career opportunities in the US. They make more money in the US but you can earn seven figures in the U.K. which is plenty enough for those with that type of aspiration.

Not to mention that most of us have no desire to live in the US so the salary comparison is a little irrelevant.

Does Equatorial Guinea have good universities, does anyone know?

As someone who has been through the American admissions process:

Remember that America has 5x as many people as Britain and each university isn't magically 5x bigger. So by sheer numbers, even before we get into things like legacy admissions (which are gradually being reduced but the ivies will be last to ditch them I am sure), a given American university will be more competitive, especially Harvard.

Unlike the UK, where UCAS caps how many universities you can apply to, there is no limit in the US and since the advent of electronic applications and the Common Application, it is very easy to apply to lots of universities. This drives offer rates down, and makes colleges look harder to get into. Every year there's a news article about someone who gets into all 8 Ivy League universities.

As for language degrees -- given the state of languages at English universities right now, none of us should be throwing stones.

One good thing about the US system, which won't apply so much to someone like OP: The eye-watering quoted prices for the Ivy League include room, board, books, and other expenses. So if you are not high income and you get good financial aid, your total out of pocket cost can be surprisingly low.

Hmm.
A bit suspicious of this but I'll play. (Hi Melania!)
This kind of ridiculous bigging up of the US, (despite the extreme negatives that we know only too well) doesn't go too well over here as a rule.
We've had several threads here by mumsnetters asking for advice when they or their DH have been offered a posting or new job in the States. It generally boiled down to the specific area. But the main negative was school shootings and other massacres, then health costs for the family, especially if you have a child with a serious condition. Also the very low annual holiday allowance -- two weeks as opposed to five or six here. A very poor work/life balance in general but hey, you can choose between 82 different toilet roll brands in the supermarket.
It is a fact that Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial are indeed excellent, world class universities and, despite your unevidenced opinion, I'm sure they will survive.(You sound somewhat bitter here, OP -- did your son not ace the Oxbridge entrance exams? )
BTW, I have a friend with an Oxford PhD who also taught undergrads there. He found the American students unimpressive in general - whiny, wanting to be spoonfed and immature compared with their European counterparts. Even with the extra year needed for your first degrees. They were particularly incensed when they didn't get the top marks for their work they were used to at home. But sadly most were simply not up to Oxbridge standards.

For myself, I went to a standard but established and well-regarded British university which led me to a very good career as a financial journalist at an international news and business information company.
When I first graduated I shared a flat with an American post grad who had been to Princeton and was thrilled to be doing his PhD in chemistry at Imperial College. He still lives here, is an entrepreneur with his own business. Never went back...
Finally, I hope for both your, and their sakes, that you don't have daughters or grandaughters. The future doesn't look great for American women and girls with the loss of reproductive rights and men increasingly being allowed free rein in womens' spaces - sports, refuges, prisons, changing rooms and more.
Oh, and lots of luck with your likely new President. Whatever you may say about whoever our next PM will be at least he's not a rapist.

🤣❤️ post of the thread!

lol are you drinking. Is this a tongue in cheek thread?!

I know plenty of kids that went to the best London day schools/ boarding schools and they do go to uk universities. The odd one goes abroad, or the ones who are international to begin with, but the Londoners are mainly interested in going abroad if they are sporty, or plan to do post grad overseas.

I must say I am a little confused by this thread.

UK and US university undergraduate education have less in common than what is called football in the UK and US. So a student who suits a UK university well is not going to be well suited to a US degree. Even more importantly the university and degree that suits any given student best is most likely not an Ivy League uni or Oxbridge. I am a little surprised that someone who has paid a lot of money to a university counsellor has not understood this, either the counsellor wasn't worth the money or perhaps the client wasn't listening.

On the subject of football and Ivy league, I always think is worth noting that the Ivy league is a sporting league of 8 private universities in the NE of the USA. It has nothing to do with the quality of education, or indeed says that they have many similarities in their education.

well they need to make more because they need to pay ridiculous insurance premiums + extra on top everytime they get sick
everything is generally more expensive

Hmm, so sorry this thread is devolving into hysterical anti-Americanism.

Let me tell you a fun fact:

2 American companies, Nvidia and Apple, combined are worth more than every single publicly traded company in this nation.

Does that mean that money is the most important thing in life? Does it mean that money means happiness? No and no.

But it does mean that America is wildly more successful than the UK. What UK company actually matters, globally?

I've lived here a long time and have come to accept, and to be amused, by this hatred of America. And it goes back to what I said earlier: people in Europe generally are jealous and they want to tear down success. This is pathetic and sad.

The facts speak for themselves. There are many more UK nationals living in the US than US nationals living in the UK.

Perhaps, people, there is a reason for that. You can talk guns, abortion, blah blah blah.

Jealosy is the most base of all human emotions.

In any case, my son did love Westminster and he's loved the Ivy League!!!!

@statesmom surely most UK nationals live in the UK and US nationals live in the US.
The vast majority of people are perfectly happy to stay in the country they were born and bred in.
So I don't see your point.

True story.

Moscow. 1980. The Moris Torez (sic) Institute. This contained one of the foremost interpreting faculties in the world: it trained simultaneous interpreters for the UN.

I was only there for five months, together with other students from Scottish universities. There were also students there from all over the world: Soviet satellite states, but also other western countries: France, West Germany, the United States.

We all had classes (solely in Russian) during the day. The expectation was that we'd be immersed in Russian: we were all at least midway through our degree, so were expected to have a decent command of Russian. We were there mainly to work on our oral and aural skills.

The Americans had an interpreter with them.

The facts speak for themselves. There are many more UK nationals living in the US than US nationals living in the UK.

Demonstrating perhaps that those who were educated in the UK end up being more open minded and willing to travel and experience new cultures than those educated in the US?

I do find it tiresome when someone offers anecdata about another country's students being lazy and wanting to be spoon-fed based on their experience with a single institution, especially since the American HE sector is as diverse as England's. You wouldn't compare Greendale Community College with MIT any more than you'd compare an FE college to Oxford much less anything in between. I would say that some British degrees are pretty easy as well and have very limited contact time.

The American degree structure is actually based on the Scottish one.

OP is doing a marvellous job of a wind-up though, townhouse in Manhattan!!

Yeah, maybe.

But maybe the life opportunities in the US pull more UK people in than the life opportunities in the UK pull US people in?

Which do you think is more likely?

Good heavens, I do love people making up wildly weird explanations to heap opprobrium on America.

It is amusing.

Why don't we all do a sort of thought experiment redolent (slightly) of Rawlsian Justice?

If you could do it all over, and you could be born in any country, where would you choose to be born?

An honest answer, for most people on this planet, would be America. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

I tell my kids all the time: you have won the life lottery. You were born American.