Jill Rachlin Marbaix
05/03/2004
As if the tribulations of deciding what values and skills will prove most crucial to our children in preparing them for life were not enough, we as parents must confront the equal challenge of finding the ideal school to prepare our children to achieve these goals—and then do everything we can to ensure their acceptance. Many of us begin early, prepping our children (and ourselves) to improve their odds of access to the elite nursery schools that we believe will feed into the right elementary, middle and high schools, and ultimately, into an elite college. We may look to a school’s reputation—or perhaps to our family’s legacy associations with it—as an assurance that our hopes and goals for our children will be achieved. But our confidence here may be misguided. Our choice of a school must take into account not only our own goals and an institution’s standing, but also our child’s specific needs and idiosyncrasies.
Even the best schools do not suit all children; a mismatch leads to unhappy students, and an unhappy childhood is by no means conducive to inculcating family values and, therefore, to fulfilling the twin goals of building our family’s human and intellectual capital. Many of us spend endless hours in the search, often enlisting the expertise of specialists and drawing on the logistical support of our family offices. “The level of scrutiny that schools are put through—I subjected my spouse to less when I married him!” says Jody Cukier Siegler, a remodeling contractor whose daughter is in second grade at the Carlthrop School in Los Angeles.
Educational consultants, who specialize in helping families emerge unscathed from this thicket, offer their services in communities across the country. The best of them steer families through the process from start to finish. And if we encounter difficulty in choosing an educational consultant, firms such as Aston Pearl in New York City, or the Independent Education Consultants Association, can assist us.
Considerations and Criteria
Advice from school counselors, consultants and
parents often diverges, but all agree on some points:
Values define
individual schools; our choice of institutions, from kindergarten to middle
school, defines us, as much as the neighborhoods in which we choose to live.
“It’s a whole community, not just where you drop your kid off for the day,”
Steigler notes. She chose Carlthrop over others with more advanced technology
and grander facilities, because she liked the academic excellence and
traditional environment. “That keeps it more pure and innocent,” she says.
“There’s only so much I want my daughter to have at eight years old.”
| “The level of scrutiny that schools are put through— I subjected my spouse to less when I married him!” Jody Cukier Siegler |
Also, when confronted with the choice between an excellent K-12 school and an equally good K-8, we might well opt for the former. Amy Berger, of Washington, D.C. chose a K-8 school for her younger daughter; she now considers that decision a “huge mistake,” despite the fact that her daughter enjoys the school, since her child must now undertake the incredibly competitive quest for a spot at one of the area’s competitive private high schools.
The extent to which the idea of living away from home appeals to a child should be the deciding factor in determining whether that child should attend a day or a boarding school. If the thought of the latter causes separation anxiety for either our child or ourselves, we should opt for a day school. Our son or daughter will have plenty of time to revel in the joys of living elsewhere once he or she graduates from high school.
| TOP VIEW Few factors affect the future happiness and well being of our children as does the school in which they absorb knowledge, values and social mores. Finding the school that can cultivate the type of person we want our child to become, and gaining their admission to it, is among our most crucial goals as parents. To ascertain whether the match is the right one, we must first understand our child’s individual needs. |
Admitting Challenges
With our list of top choices in hand, our next
challenge is to navigate the admissions process. Phyllis Myers, an education
consultant in Winnetka, Ill., suggests using the “two, two, and two” approach
that many families employ for college applications. She recommends we apply to
two schools we believe will accept our child, two that we are fairly sure he or
she will get into, and two that are on our wish list. Once we have received
acceptance letters, we should re-examine the list and our criteria, and then
choose our favorite.
What exactly are admissions officers looking for? “Our
admissions process is both science and art,” says Kent Jones, director of public
relations for Emma Willard in Troy, New York, a girls’ boarding school whose
curriculum emphasizes academic rigor. “It is a science in that we need to see
certain things in an application to assure us of a student’s ability to meet
academic challenges here.” Emma Willard looks for what Jones calls “the 4 P’s”:
Program, taking a demanding course load or being on an accelerated track;
Performance, demonstrated by high grades; Potential, a sense that the girl has
some real excitement about learning; and Person, evidence that the girl has
enough maturity to be a good roommate and hall mate, as well as a good student.
“We need all the pieces to decide,” Jones says. “And that is where the art of it
seems to come in.”
Viable candidates will have teacher recommendations, and
many schools require some form of standardized testing for grades 5 through 12,
usually the Secondary School Admission Test (SSAT) or the Independent School
Entrance Examination (ISEE). Not only do both employ multiple-choice questions
to measure verbal and quantitative skills, but they also require the students to
write essays. Because these scores play such a key role in admissions (to
qualify for a top boarding school, a child’s scores must reach at least the 90th
percentile on the SSATs), parents often hire tutors or enroll their children in
preparatory courses to boost them.
Interviews are also crucial. ”[Faculties]
want to admit students that are sending a clear message that this is the right
school for them,” says Jane Schoenfeld, an educational consultant with
Independent School Placement Service of St. Louis, Inc. Our children should
avoid making the kind of obvious inquiries that the school’s brochure or Web
site could answer. Instead, they should pose more insightful questions like:
What do students do on weekends? How difficult is it to play varsity or junior
varsity sports? If I am having difficulty with a class, how do I get help? How
do you help students adjust to life in the dorm? Good manners also factor into a
successful interview. A thank-you note as a follow-up to the interview should be
sent promptly in order to demonstrate that the student is already versed in the
manners that elite schools consider a matter of course.
Interviews are
important, even for our youngest. Pre-school admissions in New York City, for
example, are determined largely by the interview and the family’s background,
says Emily Glickman, founder of Abacus Guide Consulting, a firm that assists
families in selecting private schools and facilitating admissions. Schools are
interested in what family members do for a living—and how they fit into the
culture of the school. Parents who are investment bankers might receive
preferential treatment if the children of lawyers already populate the class in
question—or vice versa. It is a matter of luck as to how our family may or may
not fit into a given year’s demographic mix. However, we can increase the odds
of success if we schedule interviews at a time of day when our child will be
most rested and lively.
| “[Parents] should understand what is special about their child and what is
special about the school and why it is a good fit.” Emily Glickman |
Family ties, though never a guarantee, do not hurt. “The legacy connection is very important for a private school and for colleges,” says Schoenfeld. “Legacies bring a sense of spirit and community—and donations down the road.” A child who is a direct descendant of alumni has a distinct advantage, while having an older child already at the school also helps, as do recommendations from alumni, benefactors, board members, or parents of children currently enrolled.
Schools appreciate donations—but not those that smack of bribery. Never mention money during an interview, Glickman advises. The correct protocol in these situations is to be indirect; we should let the school know that we have supported other educational institutions before, and that we intend to back strongly any school our child attends.
Resources
• A good starting point for those considering hiring an
educational consultant is the Independent Educational Consultants Association
The Web site includes articles on what to expect from an educational consultant,
as well as a search function to locate one in our area (www.educationalconsulting.org).
• The National Association of Independent Schools allows us to search for schools by crucial factors such as area and size (www.nais.org).
• The National Coalition of Girls' Schools summarizes research on girls’ schools and has a directory (www.ncgs.org).
• The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) provides background about boarding schools in general as well as information about specific schools, sorted by criteria such as single-sex, coed, junior boarding and senior boarding (www.Schools.com).
• BoardingSchoolReview.com features a directory of schools as well as
several Top 20 lists that examine schools by student/
teacher ratio, class
size, percentage of boarders and other factors. It includes reviews of schools
by recent graduates (www.boardingschoolreview.com).
• Information on the two main admission tests is available at: Independent School Entrance Exam (www.erbtest.org) and Secondary School Admission Test Board (www.ssat.org)
Additional Information
Scrutinizing the Schools
Chasing the Ivy League