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It’s an entirely different kind of school rush.
When Zohran Mamdani won New York’s mayoral election last November, Caven Wagstaff’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing for weeks.
Wagstaff runs his own firm, wrangling places for wealthy American families keen to land their kids a perch at tony British private schools.
Mamdani, as mayor-elect, turbocharged his biz.
“It doubled,” he says now, of the 10 families per week who hit him up for his Anglo-friendly expertise.
“They were saying to me, ‘We want to get out.’”
A couple of years ago, the twentysomething former teacher spotted the surging interest in overseas applications to British private schools — they call them public, as opposed to state-run — and set up his firm, CJE Consultancy.
Demand has always been strong, Wagstaff explained — American students have long flocked to the UK for higher education. Around 20% of the undergrads at St Andrews, where Prince William and Kate Middleton are alumni, are now from America.
As one parent put it on an online forum on the topic: “Children finishing school (K-12) in Britain are functional adults. It takes another 4 years of college or 2 years of trade school for Americans to come close.”
Now, however, he said, interest is starting much earlier — sometimes as early as middle school. That matches up with a report from the Independent Schools Council in the UK, which said American student numbers at that level jumped 8% in the year ending last January.
Half of Wagstaff’s business comes from the US — and that’s almost entirely comprised of families from the Tri-State area, largely due to the changing of the political winds in the New York City area, he said.
He helps families find the right fit, and then works to score them a spot at these highly competitive schools — like Eton (for boys) or Cheltenham (for girls), where combined costs can run close to $100,000 a year, not unlike in New York City.
Most consultants like this make money through kickbacks on fees at schools where they place kids — a conflict of interest at best, Wagstaff believes. His firm simply charges families a flat upfront fee of £20,000 (around $26,000), which covers the application, paperwork, and ongoing support once any child is billeted at boarding school. This frees him up to focus on which school is actually best for each child, he said.
That was crucial for one boy for whom attending school at all would be a new experience — having spent the first ten years of his life living on a yacht, being homeschooled with his siblings by a tutor on board. His family’s home base was New York, but they preferred to bring their kids along wherever they went; if they stepped off the yacht to go skiing, for example, the tutor tagged along.
They told Wagstaff it was time for their eldest to have some stability, and tasked him with landing a spot at boarding school in Britain, where they figured he wouldn’t stand out for his wealth.
“At a boarding house, everyone is the same: the dorms, the food, the lessons. You’re all in the same boat,” the expert said.
Most UK-eyeing parents plan well ahead, often four or five years before what’s known as Common Entrance, the exam that would-be Etonians, for example, must take when they turn 13.
Others, including those Mamdani-scared callers who started ringing last fall, are more panicky.
“A family came to me one March asking whether their son could start at Eton College that September,” he says, noting that this is a near-impossible task.
Still, Wagstaff was able to get him waitlisted — and then he snagged a place as soon as it opened up.
“He was very mature for his age, and he had great initiative — he contacted the director of admissions himself.”
Not all kids are so self-reliant.
Another of Wagstaff’s American clients had been at one of his family’s homes, in France, for a visit, then headed back to school in a rush, forgetting his sports kit, including his rugby boots.
“So his parents got someone to stick them in a helicopter so they were there in a few hours, ready for the next day,” he laughed.
Others aren’t as sporty as their parents might claim, hoping to win them favor with a school.
Take the boy who proudly told Wagstaff, unprompted, that his dad banked $150 million a year. That father had boasted of his son’s prowess when riding, as an up-and-coming national showjumper and dressage rider, even sending a video of him horse riding as part of the application process.
Believing the story, CSE placed him at a school that would nurture that skill, and even went along for the boy’s first lesson after helping to buy him a brand new kit.
“But he got on the horse and he was terrified. It was like he had never been on one in his life,” Wagstaff recalled, adding that it turned out the video was a ringer, and it was the parents who hoped their son would become a passionate rider.
“He had two lessons — then he told us he didn’t want to do it anymore,” he said.
Other parents are even more unscrupulous. Wagstaff remembered one child, who was already in the UK, placed at a starter school by another agent. His folks wanted to make sure he could score a spot at one of the top public schools when he turned 13.
“They said they hadn’t spoken to anyone, but when I called all the schools, they say they’d already been in touch,” he explained.
His suspicions were already heightened; then, when he asked the boy to take the standard test, he drilled all clients through to help better understand a kid’s academic potential.
“The results they claimed he had? Another child had taken that test. I did my assessment and it was nowhere near what they said.” They were quickly cut as clients.
The reasons all these parents are jonesing to send their kids to British boarding schools are both rational and emotional. (Apparently, only one in 20 families will reference Harry Potter and Hogwarts when coming to CSE.)
And it’s certainly not about saving a buck — sending a child to a top British prep school can cost around $80,000 per year for a pupil to board, covering food, lodging and education.
That’s not much of a savings over Avenues, Poly Prep and other top-flight NYC schools, which charge $70-75,000 per year just for classes — and then still more, often much more, for donations and fundraisers.
But it’s definitely about one-upmanship, in most cases.
“Wealthy people want to throw shade, tell their friends their child is at a certain school,” Wagstaff explained. “They throw money at it so they can talk about it at dinner parties.”
Increasingly, for America’s richest families, it’s a smart investment to send their kids across the pond as soon as they become teens.
“They look at children as an asset — it’s wealth management for themselves.”
English (US)