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Honest question, why do people pay 50-70k a year for school? If it was higher education, I presume that's worth it for the connections you get there, maybe, but this is high school. Isn't it possible to get into the best unis from a good state school?
If you are smart and hard working enough you can get into the top units that not a problem.
But it's pretty much taken as a fact that people that go to private schools will do better than if they went to a state school.
So if you get 3xA* in state school, private school isn't much benefit.
But if you going to come out with anything less or generally a troublemaker private schools might be better for you.
So their kids don't have to be with the poors ?
Getting to a good university is only part of the battle and the real prize is the job afterwards. Having a big network is what helps with the latter.
Take law, even at Oxbridge only about 10% of students on that course at either university get into a training contract to become a solicitor. Its closer to 1% at normal universities.
Getting onto that training contract is knowing how to present yourself to the right contacts and go to the right events.
Many subjects are like this, especially for the top jobs.
It is very possible, however housing near the better state schools is typically very expensive, so for many families it is considerably cheaper to shell out for private school instead.
Additionally, the high achieving state schools have selective entry, so even if you buy the expensive house within the catchment area, your child isn't necessarily getting in even if they're bright and studious.
Probably for the experiences. The sort of things kids do in these schools seem more lavish, I mean, as much as I enjoyed my school trip to a farm I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing they'd consider.
Although David Cameron did shag a pig, so not sure if that's true for all of those schools.
It's quite possible, and quite common, to get into the best universities in the UK from state school. More than 67% of undergraduates at Oxford University come from state schools.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/oxford-university-of-oxford-cambridge-university-of-cambridge-university-of-exeter-b2559848.html
Not sure about the UK, but the prep school circuit in the US gives a bump for getting into elite universities, and the connections made there can be just as lucrative as the ones in colleges.
Only if your kids have excellent grades or are star athletes or otherwise exceptional. Most of this ends up as networking, where the rich parents meet other rich parents and eventually someone with connections is involved when it’s time for the kids to go to university, and because rich people like it when other rich people succeed, because they want “the right kind of people” at the universities they send their kids to, (sometimes) they’ll help grease the right palms.
You make it sound like it's rare to get into good universities in the UK from state schools. But most of the students at the UK's top universities come from state schools.
You're right about networking though. Even if you go to Oxford, for example, you can find that there are exclusive cliques and clubs there that are only open to the "right kind" of people. These will be wealthy kids who went to a few expensive public (that is, private) schools. The networking begins long before they even get to university.
That’s true, I didn’t mean getting in a prestigious university was rare from a state school, but rather those are certainly the “exceptional students” considering the stringent acceptance requirements. I only explained why rich parents would spend the money on private schools to give their child an edge. There are certainly cases where admissions are allowed because of family lineage or sizeable donations.
As far as I know you can only apply to Oxford or Cambridge, and furthermore you can’t apply to more than five universities in the UK except for rare occasions.
Honestly, this is why I'm always peeved when I hear parents telling their kids that school isn't a social club. I followed that advice, only to find out that the real world cares more about networking than test scores. Whoops.
In a non-STEM field, sure.
You would be shocked by the homogeneousness of even employers who are hiring STEM. Tribalism is real. They just chalk up the je ne sais qois to "fit"... But you take a step back and suddenly...
Even in STEM. Who gets the Blue Origin job, the person with a 4.0 and zero references, or the person with a 3.5 that partied with Bezos in college?