`Crazy Friday' Comes for New York Parents Seeking School Slots

`Crazy Friday' Comes for New York Parents Seeking School Slots
Bloomberg, 15-Feb-2008-02-15
By Beth Jinks

Parental anxiety in New York rises a notch for today's annual ``Crazy Friday'' as the city's private kindergartens issue decisions that may launch youngsters toward Harvard, Yale or Princeton, or not.

Letters, e-mails and phone calls from schools today will say ``accepted,'' ``rejected'' or ``wait-listed.'' Then the kindergarten shuffle begins, with parents balancing waiting-list spots at their top choices against acceptances at so-called safety schools.

Many parents submitted more than a dozen applications to raise their child's chances, according to New York education advisers. The application flood means some of the $28,000-a-year schools including Brearley, Spence, Collegiate and Dalton in Manhattan have more than 10 contenders for each desk, with competition fiercest for about 2,500 prized seats at the most- sought schools.

``Everybody wants to go the same 15 schools, but they don't have 500 kindergarten places. They have 30 to 60,'' said Amanda Uhry, who charges $15,000 to help families through the admissions process. ``It's like a parental feeding frenzy. You can't buy your way in. If you've got $5 billion, there's probably somebody who is applying who has $10 billion.''

The Trevor Day School in Manhattan had 600 applicants for 64 spots, up 15 percent from 2007, a trend repeated elsewhere, said Deborah Ashe, a board member of the Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York and Trevor's application director.

Legacy Kids

Some spots go to children graduating from the schools' preschool programs, others to ``legacy'' kids whose siblings or other relatives attended the same kindergarten. That leaves precious few spaces for parents trying to secure a kindergarten that will guarantee their child's prep-school path, according to Ashe and Uhry.

``Families are in the middle of the, `Where-am-I-going-to- get-in' panic, it's Crazy Friday,'' Cynthia Bing of the nonprofit Parents League of New York said in a phone interview. Her group doesn't charge to help families apply.

The ``panicked response'' has been building in recent years, Ashe said. ``We don't know if applications are going up because there's more people out there, or if there's just more panic out there.''

New York's five boroughs have 575,823 children younger than 5, according to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, up 5.8 percent since 2001. Manhattan's under-5 population jumped 22 percent to 98,361 over the same period, reflecting high-paying jobs that keep more families in the city instead of moving to the suburbs, said Ashe.


Automatic Entry

The 2,500 slots are at 60 kindergartens of private schools that are members of New York's Independent School Admission Association. Acceptance grants children automatic entry into grade school, and can secure their place in the best private high schools. The association represents 127 New York private schools, including 112 in Manhattan.

Families must decide whether to accept admission offers by Feb. 27. If they decline, then those on the wait-list are offered the slot.

Some parents begin angling for the right kindergarten even before conceiving, Bing said.

Amanda Brokaw, a public relations executive, said she and her investment-banker husband are already studying schooling options for their 19-month-old daughter.

``I'm amazed that I'm dealing with this so early,'' she said. ``I grew up in Manhattan. Looking at the future, between the finances and competitiveness of getting in somewhere, it's causing anxiety. No sleepless nights yet, but anxiety.''


Brooklyn's Crazy, Too

It's not just crazy in Manhattan, said Ana Patel, who works for an international human rights organization and lives with her lawyer husband and 4 1/2-year-old son in Brooklyn. After applying to five schools, they won acceptance at a private kindergarten in Brooklyn Heights, where the child can continue through high school.

``You find yourself having the most inane conversations with other parents because it suddenly becomes a big deal whether they get in or not,'' Patel said. ``Do you call the head of development during the first round? Do you send her flowers? Do you send her a thank-you note? Is e-mail OK or should it be handwritten, or on some kind of stationary?''

Application fees, interviews and waiting lists are features of most private New York kindergartens, even those far down in preference lists. Parents submit essays explaining why they'll fit in with the school community, and toddlers take aptitude tests and have ``play dates'' with other hopefuls.

At first-come kindergartens, parents or their nannies line up before dawn on application day. Other schools began applicant lotteries to avoid the spectacle.

`Melissa Moms'

Uhry said that her business, Manhattan Private School Advisors, has doubled since 2005 to about 1,400 families and that 2009 will be the most competitive yet. The key, she said, is selling your family and customizing each application to fit the school's criteria.

``You don't want to look like every other person who lives on the Upper East or Upper West Side. The husband works on Wall Street, probably for Goldman Sachs, the wife doesn't work any more, her name is Melissa, she's 40 years old, has a 2-year-old kid and wears those pants with the word `Juicy' across the butt,'' Uhry said. ``You know how many of those `Melissa Moms' we see around here?''