Queen's Scholar
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The longest-established Queen's Scholarships are the forty scholarships (8 per year) at Westminster School, (re)founded in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth I. These scholars take part in the coronation in Westminster Abbey, acclaiming the new monarch by shouting "Vivat". They also have the right to observe parliament.[1] They have the abbreviation QS on school lists; their house is "College".
12- and 13-year-old boys annually compete for them in a competitive entrance examination known as The Challenge, which approaches the normal GCSE to A level standard for 16-year-olds. For 400 years the best of the Queen's Scholars were elected to Closed Scholarships at Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge; since the 1970s, Westminster schoolboys must win open Oxbridge scholarships by public examination, but the Queen's Scholars still frequently do so.
During the reign of a King, the Queen's Scholars become King's Scholars, in contrast to the earlier King's Scholarships at Eton College who retain that title in honour of their royal founder even when the current monarch is a Queen.
Notable Queen's Scholars
- Ben Jonson
- Richard Hakluyt
- William Cartwright (dramatist)
- Abraham Cowley
- George Herbert
- John Dryden
- John Locke
- Robert South
- Robert Hooke
- Warren Hastings
- A. A. Milne
- Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian
- Andrew Lloyd Webber
- Ian Bostridge
- Kim Philby
- Alastair Sooke
