Cracking the Kindergarten Code

In the old days, New York City horror stories tended to involve street crime. Nowadays, many of the most chilling tales have to do with getting children into the right kindergarten. “Next year is going to be even worse,” warns Amanda Uhry, the president of Manhattan Private School Advisors, which charges $6,000 to help families get their kids into desirable private elementary schools. “It’s the post-9/11 baby boom. So many more kids were born in the city, and now they’re applying to kindergarten.” Roxana Reid of Smart City Kids adds, “Several nursery schools had ten or more children shut out from getting into school altogether last year” (and had to, gasp, resort to public schools). But is it really true that getting into a good kindergarten in New York City is as tough as getting into an Ivy League college? There’s no question that there’s a crushing demand-and-supply imbalance at the dozen or so top-tier schools, entrée to which seemingly assures future success for junior and unrivaled cachet right now for Mom and Dad. It’s true enough, too, that at those schools—Dalton, Collegiate, Trinity, Spence, Chapin, Brearley, Horace Mann, et al.—your kid’s application might not even be looked at, much less seriously considered, if you don’t submit it within the first few days after the applications are made available, around Labor Day. And since 1997, the number of kids taking the ERB (an aptitude test used by many kindergartens) to get into kindergarten has grown by almost 40 percent. More families are applying to more schools now, too—five or six was the typical number in 2000; now many families apply to nine or ten.

But in fact, the panic and excitement over kindergarten admissions is analogous to, say, half of New York trying to squeeze into the same hypertrendy restaurant on a Saturday night. Sure, you want to go, and you’d love to brag to your friends about sitting next to Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones—who is, incidentally, planning to star in a movie about getting into an exclusive Manhattan kindergarten—but will you have a bad meal if you don’t? If you take a deep breath and realize that there are roughly 70 private schools in New York—and a growing number of great public schools, too—and that many of these, far from second choices, might even provide a better experience, you’ll discover that you can be much more in control of the process than you’d believed possible. Herewith, the strategies and tactics of getting your child into a Manhattan kindergarten.

Who’s the most important person in the application process? The ultimate gatekeeper is . . . your preschool director. “The schools review everything with the nursery-school director. ‘Is the kid really like that?’ and ‘What about the parents?’ And it’s the nursery-school director’s job to tell them,” says Victoria Goldman, author of The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools.

Not only must directors serve three masters—individual families, the class as a whole, and the school itself—but an awful lot can ride on how well they play the admissions game.

Even a “Baby Ivy” preschool like the 92nd Street Y sometimes places as few as 15 percent of its little graduates at the elite elementary and ongoing schools. So at pre-Ks all over the city, directors are faced with the task of deciding which deserving children are a little more deserving than the rest.

The process is called brokering, which sounds kind of evil, but in a numbers game, where a pre-K’s main objective is to avoid a shutout—a kid getting rejected everywhere—“there’s not much choice,” said one harried head of school as she took a break between parent conferences last week.

Always remember that your preschool director is not fully on your side. “Your pre-K director’s primary loyalty is to getting everyone placed somewhere, versus getting your kid placed in your ideal school,” notes Emily Glickman, an admissions consultant at Abacus. “That often places parents and directors in an adversarial position.”

One father of a boy now in first grade at a good second-tier school is still bitter when he recalls telling his son’s nursery-school director at their first admissions conference that the family had a very good connection at Dalton. She pushed them to make Dalton their first choice, but after they visited, they found that they much preferred Ethical Culture and even Calhoun over Dalton. Come January, they sent a first-choice letter to Ethical. “She didn’t say so directly, but she was clearly not pleased we didn’t make Dalton our first choice,” he says. The result: The boy was admitted to neither. “I should have kept my mouth shut until we knew which school we really wanted,” he says.

Should you despair of sending Junior to an Ivy if he doesn’t get into a top-tier kindergarten? Contrary to popular belief, the top-tier schools are not a go–to–Ivy League–school–of–your–choice pass. Only a few of them are able to send as many as a quarter of their graduating seniors to an Ivy or Ivy Equivalent. Not bad but not extraordinary, considering the high number of kids who have an admissions edge at Ivy League schools by virtue of being legacy kids. If you go to one of the top few elementary and ongoing schools, you’re competing against some very well-connected families.

This means that “coming from schools like Spence and Dalton can actually be a disadvantage,” says Michele Hernandez, a former admissions official at Dartmouth who runs a college-admissions consulting service. “The admissions staffs at the Ivies bend over backwards not to take kids from those schools,” Hernandez contends. “Unless your kid is at or near the top at those schools, your chances of getting in from the top of a mid-level school are probably better,” she says.

It’s important to evaluate what getting your child into a top-tier school means to you. “There’s this whole mystique to getting into the ‘right’ kindergarten that goes way beyond putting your child in a school where she’ll thrive and be able to get into a good college,” says Mary Knox, a mother of a second-grader who chose to send her daughter to public school for kindergarten and first grade. “My friends thought I was crazy not to apply to private schools. It speaks to a basic human psychology of ‘Do I measure up?,’ which is magnified by ten in New York.”

So what are the alternatives to the top tier? Many more schools are now worth—relatively speaking—their $25,000-plus tuitions. As it’s become harder to get into the top schools, kids who might have gotten into a Fieldston in years past are going elsewhere and lifting the levels of other schools. “There are so many more schools I’m comfortable recommending to parents as high-quality and academically ambitious than just five years ago,” says Gabriella Rowe, director of the Mandell School.

So go ahead and shoot the moon with a Dalton or Collegiate, but balance that with selections from the city’s many other high-quality schools, preferably ones that fit your kid’s—and your own—style. To find them, look for schools putting their new money to good use via new libraries and gyms, lower student-teacher ratios, and more experienced teachers, often poached from top-tier programs. Allen-Stevenson, Birch Wathen Lenox, Browning, Cathedral, Hewitt, Marymount, St. Hilda’s & St. Hugh’s, Trevor Day, Poly Prep, and Brooklyn Friends get nods as schools on their way up, as do hot schools like Bank Street and Columbia Grammar, which are receiving as many applicants as the top tier.

Fieldston Lower School often gets short shrift because most parents apply to Ethical Culture instead. Claremont Prep is only in its first year but has great facilities, and nursery-school directors say parents are giving it strong recommendations.

What’s the best way to talk to an admissions officer?

The prevailing wisdom states that not only is it unhelpful and wrong to try to give your precious little one a leg up on his classmates, but it’ll come back to bite you where it hurts. Playgrounds are rife with stories of 4-year-olds blurting out, “I’ve done this before,” at the test. ERB testers, everyone warns, are trained to spot kids who’ve been prepped, and admissions directors are on the lookout for children whose test scores don’t match up with the teachers’ reports.

But the fact is, pre-K intelligence tests are notoriously unreliable measures of intelligence—studies show that who conducts the test and where it takes place can alter performance, scores can swing wildly on retesting, and practicing can result in significant increases in performance. What’s more, lots of people prep for the test. “We interviewed 200 families who just completed the application process, and over half reported doing some level of preparation,” says Quinn.

Child experts, from psychologists to educators, warn against outright coaching but say there’s nothing wrong with helping your daughter work on the skills she’ll need to use on the ERBs. “The abilities tested—pattern recognition, comprehension, vocabulary—are skills parents should be stimulating in their children from the time they open their eyes,” says Dr. Chris Lucas of NYU’s Child Study Center.

In other words, there’s prepping, and there’s Prepping.

The same logic applies for the school interview. “Giving your child advance exposure to the kinds of things he’ll be doing or asked in the interviews is perfectly fine, as long as it’s done gently and with your support and assurance,” Dr. Lucas says.

Though most schools won’t hold it against you if you promise your kid an ice cream afterward for playing nice, they don’t take kindly to advising your kid not to tell anyone about it. “That’s a very negative comment on the parent, and we certainly do take note of it if we find out,” says one admissions officer.

A few preparation options that won’t raise red flags: For the tests, get professional help from educational consultants like Sheila Harris, who suggests games, books, and other materials parents can use to help their children develop learning skills, or Roxana Reid, an educational social worker who runs Smart City Kids, and who identifies areas in which children can improve skills that are used in the test and help with the preparation.

Test in the spring. “Kids are often more focused and comfortable in a test setting after nine months of school than when they’ve been off playing for three months over the summer,” notes Reid. New friends, new teachers, and the fall virus season can all result in lower test scores. Also, in the spring the field is smaller and competition lighter because fewer parents think of doing it six months early.

For the interview, let your child know what he’ll be doing. Is it a one-on-one with a teacher, a playgroup, or a combination? Talk about the interview in a positive light. And practice: Arrange show-and-tells with kids he doesn’t know, and have your child speak to unfamiliar adults, first with you present, then without you.

What’s the best way to sway a school?

Why, you may well ask, if so many schools are deluged with applications, should an admissions director care so much whether you tell them that of the eight, or ten, or fifteen schools you applied to, hers is the one you’d most like to send your child to?

The answer lies in the yield—the percentage of families who actually accept a school’s invitation to join their community. It’s a more important number to the admissions department than how many applications it receives. “Admissions directors have to report to boards of directors, and one of the key figures they’re judged on is their yield,” says author Victoria Goldman. In a time when boasting an acceptance rate lower than an Ivy League college inspires yawns, a yield nudging 100 percent is a cause for celebration. “It’s the ultimate indicator of a school’s appeal and the admissions director’s skill,” says Hernandez.

Most schools in the top tier reap yields in the high eighties or nineties. Take 10 to 20 percent for the next rung. “Spence,” says one admissions expert, “supposedly had a 100 percent yield last year.”

Game your choice wisely, because you’ve got only one in your quiver. Some schools just file the letters away; others outright don’t want them. Admissions advisers mentioned Collegiate and Bank Street among the schools that fit into those categories. On the flip side, Trinity, Friends Seminary, and all the girls’ schools except Brearley are said to value them. Schools such as Hewitt and Packer, both making strong efforts to rise into the upper echelons, are also good candidates.

Finally, you may have to use your own judgment, based on the feel you get from touring and interviewing at the schools you liked the most: Do your child’s style and academic inclinations match up with what the school seems to be looking for? And should you send your first-choice letter to the school you like most where you also think you have the best chance of getting into, or the one you most desire? Which strategy you choose often comes down to your attitude toward risk.

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