New Yorkers who are used to getting what they want are languishing on private school waitlists or having to make due with their bottom choice kindergartens and preschools \u2014\u00a0and they\u2019re not happy about it. <\/p>\n
A pandemic-era baby bump coupled with concerns about public schools made for a boom in applications for the limited number of slots at private kindergartens and preschools. When decision letters went out last month it was, according to some, a bloodbath. <\/p>\n
Moms are \u201closing their minds,\u201d right now, education consultant Sharon Decker told The Post. <\/p>\n
Private school admissions have been especially competitive this year. Tam Nguyen \/ NYPost Design<\/p>\n
Another admissions consultant, Alina Adams, notes that so-called \u201ctop tier\u201d schools \u2014 or TTs, such as Dalton, Spence, Trinity and Brearley \u2014 have always been challenging to get into. They might field as many as 1,000 applicants for 50 seats, many of which are already taken up by the children of faculty, legacies or siblings of older students. <\/p>\n
But this year, popular schools just outside of that elite realm \u2014 such as Ethical Culture, Avenues, Trevor Day and Brooklyn Friends \u2014 also turned away people in droves. <\/p>\n
In years past, Adams estimates that 80 to 90% of her clients who can afford to pay full tuition \u2014\u00a0now upwards of $70,000 at many schools \u2014\u00a0would get into such institutions. This year, she said, it\u2019s more like 50%. \u201cI\u2019m definitely seeing waitlists at schools that in the past a family would be a shoe-in.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Moms of the Upper East Side (MUES) Facebook group has been filled with woeful posts. <\/p>\n
Schools like Brooklyn Friends are now turning families away in droves. Gregory P. Mango<\/p>\n
\u201cWaitlisted for 3 schools and rejected from 3. So much hard work and time put in for a disappointing outcome,\u201d lamented one anonymous mummy on the 37,000-member group. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe got waitlisted for 4 privates,\u201d wrote another. \u201cI am a little bitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
A confluence of factors have made admissions this year especially competitive. The main reason, Whitney Shashou, Founder and CEO of Admit NY, an admissions consultancy, is that the products of the pandemic baby boom are just reaching school age, so \u201cThe cohort is much larger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Politics are also at play. <\/p>\n
Many parents in wealthy neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, Tribeca, and Battery Park City who would send their kids to excellent public schools have applied to private schools this year as backups.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Adams said families are anxious their kids won\u2019t get into the public schools they are zoned for because of Governor Hochul\u2019s 2022 Class Size Law, which limits kindergarten to third grade classes to 20 students.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m definitely seeing waitlists at schools that in the past a family would be a shoe-in,\u201d school consultant Alina Adams told The Post. Coutesy of Alyson Krueger<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cIt used to be as a rule that if you are zoned for a school you were 99% likely to get a seat,\u201d she said. \u201cNow parents are worried that they are going to be zoned out of their own public schools.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some are also spooked by statements Mayor Mamdani has made about phasing out the gifted and talented program in New York City public elementary schools. \u201cEvery time an administration changes the rules, families get nervous,\u201d Decker noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One Manhattan mom of a five-year-old boy said they applied to 12 schools, got seven outright rejections and were placed on four waitlists. The only acceptance they received was from their \u201clast pick,\u201d which they almost didn\u2019t bother applying to. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just didn\u2019t know what I was getting myself into this year,\u201d she told The Post.\u00a0 Given how well her child did with preschool admissions, she was expecting better results. She also suspects that some schools, such as Riverdale, tell parents they\u2019re on a waitlist to soften what is essentially an outright rejection. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am looking back now wondering what would have happened if I did things differently,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Moms are \u201closing their minds,\u201d right now, education consultant Sharon Decker told The Post. Courtesy of Sharon Decker<\/p>\n
Still, she\u2019s grateful the director of her preschool pushed for them to apply to the one school they did get into. They\u2019ve put down a deposit and will send there child to there next year but potentially try to transfer for first grade if it doesn\u2019t work out. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s this\u00a0whole thing of keeping up with the Jones,\u201d she said. \u201cYou want to go into these fancier tier-one schools.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Adams said she has clients putting down deposits \u2014 typically $5,000 to $15,000 \u2014 on their bottom-choice schools but planning to forfeit the cash if they get in somewhere. <\/p>\n
The pandemic era baby boom is partly to blame for the limited number of spots in private schools. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n
\u201cThe waitlist will move,\u201d she said. It\u2019s just a matter of when.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others are planning to hold their kids back a year and re-apply for kindergarten next year. After all this, Adams thinks clients will be more cautious about how they approach admissions moving forward. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome parents only applied to the equivalent of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and if they did, it is entirely possible they aren\u2019t in a school right now,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cThis year has really scared people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Yorkers who are used to getting what they want are languishing on private school waitlists or having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[67,426,232,9,56,63,65,64,18508,67231,466,82],"class_list":["post-162880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-education","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-private-schools","tag-trinity-school","tag-upper-east-side","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}