<p>Hunter elementary is open to all Manhattan residents, not just the wealthy. As we know, Manhattan is not just UEW or UWS. There is no insider info on how to get into Hunter. You take their test, and if you do not pass the test you don’t advance to round 2. Most people know of Hunter’s requirements and aware it is harder to get admitted to Hunter than to Harvard. </p>
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<p>Another road–attend said public school, just be yourself. If you get in, great if that’s what you want. If you don’t, fine, go somewhere else. Either way, have more money left to actually pay for it.</p>
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<p>Most higher SES parents who start preparing their kids from the time they’re still in dipers and those who hang out with them professionally/personally, yes. That bubble doesn’t constitute MOST of NYC or even Manhattan residents. </p>
<p>Most outside that group may not know Hunter College Elementary School that one must test in before kindergarten for entry or one’s shut out or worse…that it even exists. </p>
<p>Heck, there’s still plenty of NYC area parents outside the higher/middle SES and/or immigrant strivers who don’t know about HCHS or the NYC SHS like BxScience, Stuy, Btech, etc. And that’s coming from Stuy and other SHS alums who are currently doing outreach efforts, especially in heavily disadvantaged/underserved parts of NYC. </p>
<p>True, cobrat, but it’s much more fun reading about, speculating about, and OMG-ing about the one percent.</p>
<p>cobrat - they only take in a handful of students, even if people knew about it, the chance of getting is so minuscule it has very little impact on general population. My kids didn’t even bother to try because I knew they weren’t of that calibre and it wasn’t the kind of environment I wanted my kids to be in. This is not another class divide issue. </p>
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<p>Sure, but the context here was about strategies to maximize your chances at the Ivies. Just be yourself works for me, as long as that yourself is also the best you can be. </p>
<p>I am not endorsing the creation of frankenstudents. Be it in the offices of Manhattan Prep, Ivywise, or next door to a donut shop in Chinatown. </p>
<p>Interesting, according to <a href=“http://insideschools.org/component/schools/school/1473”>http://insideschools.org/component/schools/school/1473</a> only 1% of HES students get free lunch. It costs like $500 to apply, that might deter many. 2% accept rate.</p>
<p>For the elementary school, there’s a procedure to get a fee waiver. $35 instead of $70 for the administrative fee and free testing instead of $350. The test, a modified Stanford-Binet IQ test, is administered individually.
<a href=“http://www.hunterschools.org/es/procedures”>http://www.hunterschools.org/es/procedures</a></p>
<p>Same reduced price of $35 instead of $70 for the high school, but apparently no fee to take the test which is given on a single day at three locations in Manhattan:
<a href=“http://www.hunterschools.org/hs/admissions-procedures”>http://www.hunterschools.org/hs/admissions-procedures</a></p>
<p>“A reduced administrative fee of $35.00 and waived testing fees are granted to families who can demonstrate financial need, according to guidelines available on the application. There is a limited amount of financial assistance available for families just above these guidelines.”
<a href=“http://www.hunterschools.org/es/procedures”>http://www.hunterschools.org/es/procedures</a></p>
<p>cross posted with oldmom</p>
<p>There is another obvious road which I don’t hear mentioned as often - go to private school with good values, parent involvement, supervision for [only] the ‘most critical’ years (for a boy probably 7th-10th grade, for a girl perhaps 6th-9th grade but obviously maturity/puberty/problem-years varies by kid).</p>
<p>Even for Bill Clinton, who was not Catholic, they followed a similar strategy in those key years right before High School, sending him to a Catholic middle school rather than a larger public school and then going to the big public High School afterwards.</p>
<p>If you walk the corridors of the public middle school and don’t like what you see - it may be safer for those most critical years to use a well supervised private school, where communication with parents is good. Obviously parents send children to private schools for various reasons - it is not always for the best challenge in academics (although it can be), it may be better extra-curricular activities or character formation - but middle school is a very high risk period especially for those in large public schools.</p>
<p>You don’t have to spend all 14 years of PK-12 in a Catholic school to get the benefit of the character formation or close supervision that some private schools do well at.</p>
<p>And Bill Clinton sent Chelsea to a Quaker school for perhaps some of those reasons…</p>
<p>“Road to” what again? I thought the expensive HM nursery school could be a way to retain a spot in the highly selective upper division of the same school. It’s not necessarily the road to an ivy though. One just needs to check out the HM’s historical college matriculation data to know that. Some may even think going to a competitive school like HM could be harmful to that goal. Why can’t it be parents who have the resources trying to get the best school options they can reach for their kids?</p>
<p>Ah…the topic of property taxes is a subject near & dear to the heart of any resident of the Great Garden State. </p>
<p>My mom, who lives in an Abbott District ( look it up), pays $8,000/ year in real estate taxes on a home assessed @ $250,000.</p>
<p>Our home is assessed at a higher amount (( incremental , not logarithmic) & Mrs. three & I pay close to $10,000 annually…we also have state income tax.</p>
<p>In NJ the vast portion of your tax bill goes to support the local school district, so you can “get what you pay for” all-be-it an adjustment if you live in an Abbott District and a deduct if you live in Short Hiils/Millburm/Mendham where some of your money gets sent to the Abbott districts thru a very complicated formula.</p>
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<p>Yes, but those admitted to HES from kindergarten onward used to have a substantial advantage in being able to lock-in admission to HCHS as a substantial portion of 7th grade seats used to be reserved for HCHS students. Heard they don’t do that anymore…probably due to the grousing and pressure from parents/local constituents…especially outer borough residents. </p>
<p>That old arrangement was similar to what I heard from several BC High School alums about how attending their HS used to guarantee a student a place at BC if desired. They ended up doing away with that sometime before the late '80s. Granted, unlike HCHS, one does have to pay tuition to attend BC High as it is a parochial college prep HS. </p>
<p>Students are admitted to K based on their IQ and they have to be closed to genius level to be admitted because that’s what Hunter looks for, not how much your family makes or donates. If they were to get auto admit to high school, so what. I really don’t understand your point, cobrat.</p>
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<li><p>That placed applicants from the 4 boroughs outside Manhattan at a substantial disadvantage when applying for HCHS considering they couldn’t attend HES and they’re taking an exam to compete for the remaining 7th grade spots when this admission lock-in arrangement was still in effect.</p></li>
<li><p>Some studies have shown one’s IQ, especially taken in early childhood isn’t immutable and could change substantially as one develops into an older child, adolescent, teen, young adult, etc. This calls the validity of IQ scores taken at pre-K into question when determining whether it’s still applicable when one’s applying for a place in HCHS. Incidentally, this very issue is one reason why the DOE’s reported policy of determining placement into public G & T programs and locking kids in from early elementary school has generated such controversy from many educators, psychologists, and parents. </p></li>
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<p>I have a friend whose son (now at Yale) went to HCHS. He said that as a group, the kids admitted in 7th grade were stronger students than those who started in elementary school. Of course I wouldn’t expect him to say otherwise!</p>
<p>cobrat - Hunter takes 225+ 7th grade students, 50 of those 225 come from the elementary school, so I wouldn’t say majority of slots are taken up by students from their lower school and students from outer borough are not substantially disadvantaged. Students from the elementary school need satisfactory progress, they don’t need to take the placement test. </p>
<p>I went to preschool in Latin America for the dollar equivalent of about $700/year. I went to the same school (it was a preK-12 school) until 8th grade, never paying more than about $1200/year. American private education prices are off the charts lol</p>
<p>In order to take the Hunter College high school admission test, students have to score above a certain number on the NYS standardized tests in 6th grade if they go to public school or above the 90th percentile on tests given to students at independent schools. No such requirement for HC elementary school students, just “satisfactory progress.”</p>