Trend: LEGACIES losing favor..........with NYC Kindergartens (NY Sun)

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Legacy</a> Is Losing Out in Kindergartens - December 11, 2007 - The New York Sun</p>

<p>So, will this trend work its way up the food chain? Guess it has to some degree.</p>

<p>Excerpt

[quote]
By ELIZABETH GREEN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 11, 2007</p>

<p>Manhattan private schools used to be like hand-me-downs or fancy china: At the key moment, parents would pass the school down to their sons and daughters; later, younger siblings would get their turn.</p>

<p>But this year, as ever-larger families flood Manhattan, sending ever-greater numbers of applications to a basically stagnant number of private schools, the family way is eroding. Many schools give no leg up to so-called legacy applicants, the children of alumni. Siblings, though they often do get a boost, are increasingly being encouraged not to count on their brothers' and sisters' schools.</p>

<p>"It's not a joke anymore," the founder of Manhattan Private School Advisors, Amanda Uhry, said. "If you have a sibling, you'd be crazy not to apply to a number of schools. You'd be nuts not to do that."</p>

<p>At the Calhoun School on the Upper West Side, several classes have recently received more applicants with brothers or sisters already at the school than there are spots, forcing at least a few siblings to be pushed out, the school's head, Steven Nelson, said.</p>

<p>Columbia Grammar, also on the West Side, has eliminated preferences for the children of alumni, its admissions director, Simone Hristidis, said.</p>

<p>And the Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx has eliminated both kinds of preferences: for siblings and for legacy children, several sources said.

[/quote]
</p>

2

<p>My daughter likes small children; I think she should try for a career working in one of these places that prepare two year olds for their entrance exam to selective preschools in Manhattan…Is there a forum for the preschool (or prenatal, even) crowd on CC?</p>

3

<p>You really need to start thinking about this preconception these days.</p>

1 Like
4

<p>Yes, let’s start fitting 4-year olds for a Yale sweater or Harvard beanie.</p>

5

<p>Well, when there are more applicants that are legacies/siblings than there are spots, of course there are going to be some that are denied. Especially since these schools like to throw in some non legacy celebrity kids and some truly unusually talented kids .</p>

6

<p>Still, better to be a legacy than a random unhooked kindergarten applicant. This is probably only funny to me because I live on the West Coast…my friends in Manhattan go on for hours about the nuances of preschool and kindergarten admission.
I don’t think there is a space on CC for it now, but their angst could fill many threads.</p>

7

<p>Parents may have erroneously assumed that legacies were gauranteed admission, but that was never the case - - especailly at top schools where, despite getting “boost,” in every grade there are legacy prospects that didn’t make the cut.</p>

8

<p>That’s why the colleges/universities are already selling infant/toddler size clothing in their student stores.</p>

9

<p>Where I’m from we didn’t even have private highschools in the area. There was one catholic school you could go to but it was like 45 minutes away, and they recruited mostly athletes and not much else so they could stay in the lowest sports division. Private kindergartens? Really?</p>

10

<p>If anyone needs a good laugh the novel Admissions by Nancy Lieberman is a wonderful peek at the world of private schools. It’s partly about kindergarten admissions and partly about high school admissions (where it gets really ugly.)</p>

11

<p>[Parents</a> face cut-throat competition – for kindergarten – chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-school-competition_26feb26,0,3074677.story]Parents”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-school-competition_26feb26,0,3074677.story)</p>

<p>INTRO

</p>

12

<p>Well, its not uncommon to see those family with toddlers, when you go college toure at those tip top schools. IMO, its really crazy, at this stage you don’t even know if your kid is a natural talent.</p>

13

<p>As a parent I found it reassuring that our quaint village had quite good public schools. Even so, a few parents choose to send their children to the handfull of private/parochial schools scattered throughout the county.</p>

<p>And having a few friend in real estate, the quality of the public schools is the number one issue for almost all families with children. Having never been a city dweller, I suppose this is much more difficult a task in large cities like where highly regarded public schools are located in areas of incredibly high housing prices. We were very happy to travel about an hour to our symphony, opera and museums.</p>

<p>Like everything else in life, it all comes down to choices for most of us peons.</p>

14

<p>And then there’s the good Mayor of NYC who is spending money on commercials touting Manhattan as a “great place to raise a family”… we have scoffed at the nepotism among the elite at the private schools and there is no room in the neighborhood public schools due to lack of foresight and planning (close 'em down to save money and then not add up the numbers and plan to reopen buildings…). Home schoolers are looked at as being sort of “odd” ,especially in big cities, and many families have to require both parents to work in order to pay the rent. Where are these little ones supposed to go?</p>

15

<p>There is legacy and there is legacy with development. Very different categories. Legacy with development has a lot of clout. Plain ol’ legacy does not.</p>

16

<p>Really??? How much is sending your tyke to one of these schools for the benefit of your child, and how much is for the ego stroking and bragging rights of the parents?</p>

17

<p>Anyone here ever see the movie The Nanny Diaries? (or the book that it was based on)</p>

18

<p>I have a problem with this - with the Wicker Park mom, for example, researching which public school her darling should attend, based on test scores. </p>

<p>What about diversity? What about making a neighborhood school reflect at least the diversity of the neighborhood in which it’s located? I realize that having your child be one of a small minority of kids in a school who comes from a stable, structured, academically oriented family is probably too much of a burden. But if you choose to live in a vibrant urban environment there will probably be schools in a gray area - they may include kids from families nothing like your own, kids who will score not so well on standardized tests, for example. If you can’t abide your kindergartener being in at least a somewhat mixed environment, you should probably think pretty hard about moving to a suburb or finding the bucks for private school.</p>

19

<p>When we lived in Manhattan it made DW & I want to barf. There were people who were utterly convinced that if little junior didn’t get into the right preschool he’d never have a chance to get into the right kindergarten, and then on up the line, which meant his chances of getting into Harvard were pretty much being determined at the age of 3—the age that decided which preschool he’d go to at 4. So people were hiring educational consultants to train their kids to game the preschool IQ tests to increase junior’s odds of admission to the top feeder preschools for the top kindergartens. We didn’t want our little 3-year-old to get caught up in that rat race, so we elected an alternative route. I guess we’re now re-encountering a certain number of those folks on CC, the kids who are obsessed with the US News rankings of the schools they’re aiming for.</p>

20

<p>Years ago, living in an Ivy school town, I received a panicked call from a faculty spouse pleading me to tutor her 5 year old. He had just flunked his pre-kindergarten test because he could not draw a decent stick-figure!</p>

<p>Even though he could read two grade levels ahead, his stick-figure lacked enough detail to pass the drawing section. In an hour, he learned to include eyebrows, eyelashes, toes and fingers for his second testing. </p>

<p>Glad to report- he was admitted to both his kindergarten of choice, and later, Princeton.</p>