Aren’t private elementary schools easier to get into and better ask some of my clients? The answer to the first question is definitely not, and the answer to the second is it depends. As one pundit put it:
By kindergarten, the children of elite professionals are already a full two years ahead of middle-class children, and the achievement gap is almost unbridgeable.
Daniel Markovits, Yale Law School Professor and author of The Meritocracy Trap
If the goal is to keep calcifying a two-year gap between the haves and have nots, then absolutely! Private schools are worth it. But I want to challenge everyone going through any admissions process on what the right question to ask actually is. Because I guarantee you it is not what is the best school for my child. Today we’ll take a look into the admissions process for private kindergarten schools and see how they differ or are similar.
Priority groups exist and it’s not just about $$$
One of the most anxiety riddled portions of the kindergarten or elementary school admissions process is the fact that there is no such thing as a meritocracy. This is not a new phenomenon and rivals the process we are familiar with at the college level where legacy admissions, children of faculty, and athletes have always taken the first available spots. For private elementary schools, the biggest entry point is typically Kindergarten, meaning the greatest number of available spots exists only at that year (the next big entry points are 6th grade and 9th grade for middle and high schools).
For Kindergarten, siblings have priority just as they do in the public school and gifted and talented admissions process. Kids of staff and faculty also get set aside spots, followed by diversity candidates (always in demand, especially after 2020).
Each class is curated to ensure there is gender, socioeconomic, racial, and skills diversity. So in some years, some private schools have actually not been able to take “regular” boys at all (only boys who are siblings, boys of faculty/staff, or boys of diversity).
Being a huge donor doesn’t necessarily land you a spot, but having powerful people vouch for you and your willingness to write charity checks as well as volunteer for school activities can (but doesn’t always) help. For most families who get into a private school, the work is equal to public school expectations. The volunteer requests and donation requests exist in both systems. What differs is the amount and intensity of the requests. Most families attending private schools are doing so with an eye to the next race – either middle school or high school admissions, so they have to continue to “perform” whereas those in the public school system are free to do as they please.
The sheer number of things to do for admissions is a part-time job
At a minimum, parents applying to private preschools and elementary schools have to:
- Attend independent school fairs to get a leg up on meeting admissions directors/staff (at least 2 hours)
- Tour schools (at least 90 minutes per school)
- Complete applications (sky’s the limit; plan on at least 5 hours)
- Have a parent interview (if selected) (~45 minutes if selected)
- Bring kids to the child assessment (~60-75 minutes if selected)
- Attend ancillary events hosted by the parents committee and other committees (varies; budget 60 minutes)
- Attend ancillary events hosted by the admissions staff or other administrative groups (varies; budget 60 minutes)
- Prep their kids (depends; at least 60 minutes)
- Apply for financial aid (at least 60 minutes)
- The ERB assessment was phased out in 2014 and replaced by the child assessment so at least you got your time back there
Conservatively, you’re looking at 15 hours of labor end to end for each school you’re applying to, and extra time for the decisioning process to winnow down the list to schools you’d actually put more time into.
On the public school front, there is of course touring which is about two hours per school as well and then the ranking process itself which if you’re not careful, sucks more minutes than you cared to. It’s less than 15 hours/school. More on how to make better decisions in a future post.
Public schools are not free – are private schools worth the incremental difference?
I’ve detailed before that in NYC the cost of attending public schools is actually closer to $15,000-$16,000 per calendar year. Non home-based daycares for 3s, PK, and K typically command something in the range of $30,000-$44,000 a year but don’t require additional summer programming, so the cost of private preschools and private Kindergarten isn’t THAT much further off.
When you break private school costs down, you still have to pay the $10,000-$15,000 for 10 weeks of summer care, and the incremental tuition price if you’re estimating $40,000-$50,000 for the 9 month year is really around $20,000 when compared to daycares, and $35,000 when compared to public schools.
So the question becomes, what is your $20K-$35K buying you?
- Access to beautiful facilities
- More frequent (as opposed to once a week) and on-site enrichment (apart from art, music, and PE, most reputable schools will have some ongoing language component and specials after school like tennis, coding, etc.)
- Curated classmate and parent community
- Experienced teachers (though caveat emptor – it takes six years of teaching to be considered experienced)
- Theoretical fast pass to coveted private middle and high schools
- Bragging rights
For some families, this is a no-brainer investment. Especially if you get into a feeder Kindergarten school, the allure of believing your family is set and your kids are on the trajectory to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale is unavoidable. But if you’re an ordinary citizen, attending even the feeder school is no guarantee of this trajectory.
The question parents should be asking isn’t which school is best for our child.
The question really is what is a good education and how can I translate that for my child?
