The $500,000 Question

The Kindergarten Wars: The Battle to Get into America's Best Private Schools
by Alan Eisenstock

Honest, funny, suspenseful, and emotional, this is the first nonfiction book ever to take you inside all aspects of the private-school application process. Alan Eisenstock followed several families across the country from their first school tours until the moment they opened their admissions letters. He interviewed admissions directors, school heads, teachers, educational consultants, and kindergarten tutors who coach both parents and kids.

He asked the hard questions, starting with: How do private school admissions directors decide who gets in? Does the child of a single woman of ethnic diversity on financial aid have a better chance than the child of a middle-class white couple? Are we in the midst of creating a society where only the very rich will be able to become the best educated? And Eisenstock asked Ivy League students, their parents, and their admissions counselors the $500,000 question: Does where you go to kindergarten ultimately help you get into the most prestigious colleges?

But at its core, The Kindergarten Wars is a human drama. It's the story of a quest and the people vying for the prize-a space in private school kindergarten-at any cost.

Chapter 1

The Three C's

From the moment the idea for this book inflicted itself on me, before I began meeting with admissions directors and following families around the country, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who were frantically applying to private school kindergarten began bombarding me with questions: Is private school that much better than public school? Will getting into an elite kindergarten get my kid into an elite college? Do people of diversity have an edge? What should I write on the application to make me stand out? What are admissions directors looking for in the interview? Are there really such things as feeder nursery schools? Do first-choice letters matter? Do siblings automatically get in? Do people buy their way in? Is a private school education worth $500,000 per child from kindergarten through twelfth grade?

This book attempts to answer those questions.

But the first question everyone wanted answered, the one that encompasses most of the others and stands above them all, remains:

How do you get in?

After two years of talking to dozens of admissions directors, school heads, college counselors, educational consultants, teachers, and preschool directors, I can honestly say ... I don't know. When I posed the question to admissions directors and school heads, I was greeted by bewildered looks, vacant stares, uncomfortable shrugs, and one actual scratch of the head.

"I go by instinct," an admissions director told me.

"The process is not an art," another director of admissions said, "and it's certainly not a science. It's a feeling. At the end of the day, both the school and the parents are taking a leap of faith."

"The decision-making is intuitive," a school head said. "We can reduce it to numbers if you want to. I'm sure that works for a lot of people. I've been doing this for so long that the system I've created over time has become a sort of nonsystem. But it works."

Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't know the answer; the people who actually make the decisions don't know either.

Except I don't believe them.

I believe that the admissions directors and school heads of top-tier private schools know exactly what they're doing because they have certain needs and obligations they have to fulfill. They know which siblings, legacies, and children of faculty, diversity, and prominence they're letting in. The "no-brainers," one admissions director called them. I believe that their instincts, intuition, and leaps of faith are reserved for what another director of admissions called the "leftovers," the "regular people," when and if they have openings.

"Every school wants normal folks," an educational consultant told me. "They all want people who are going to bust their butts, work hard, and be present. Otherwise, God forbid, they might be seen as elitist."

* * *

People apply to private school for one or more of three reasons. I call them the Three C's: children, college, and country club.

All of the parents I followed applied to private school kindergarten primarily because they felt it was in the best interest of their children, the first C. Shea Cohen, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said, "For us, it really is about the education. We want the best for our kids. We are not a family with unlimited resources. We will take a serious financial hit paying for private school. But we're willing to do that because education is our number one priority."

Beyond that, Shea said that sending her children to her public school was out of the question. "We want to raise our kids in the city. We're not going to move. The public school that our children would have to go to looks like a prison. And we live in a really nice neighborhood. So we're stuck. Out of options."

Shea was not speaking from an elitist perspective. MK, director of admissions at Longbourne, a prestigious private school in Manhattan, echoed Shea's feelings. "Public schools are not an option. That is not just a perception. There are maybe half a dozen on the grammar school level that I think are decent. That is the sad part of the story. Used to be public schools were better. Not anymore. I hate that that's happening but you cannot deny it. You cannot put your head in the sand."

Ruth, an educational consultant, echoed MK's feelings. "It used to be that everybody just went to their local school. There were smarties, dummies, fatties, skinnies, rich kids, poor kids, and everything was fine and you learned how to live in the world. That's just the way it was."

In another city, Katie Miller, one of the moms I followed, toured her local public school twice. The first time she was disappointed. She went back a second time to be sure.

"I wanted to like it," she said. "Believe me, I tried."

Her neighborhood school was spread out into three long diagonal sections resembling a giant M. The walls were industrial gray and in need of new paint. The library, where she met for a kindergarten "roundup," was a long rectangular room with worn carpeting and dull brown walls. A cluster of iMac computers huddled near the door. They were blue and enormous and eight years out-of-date. The teachers who spoke to the prospective parents were all over forty and well-meaning, but their presentations were uninspired.

"They seemed lovely but they were exhausted, burned to a crisp," Katie said, and paused. "And I have to be honest. Spanish is the first language for over fifty percent of those kids. That's huge. These kids are just learning English and my daughter is reading. That concerns me. Will she be pushed aside?"

Lauren Pernice, the third mom I followed, lives in an exclusive neighborhood that, by reputation, is home to one of the top public elementary schools in her city.

"I checked it out," she said. "My first impression was confusion. Lots of traffic. Parking hassles. Cars negotiating with each other. It struck me as very disorganized. I watched for a while, then came home and called a friend who's an educator. She said, look, it really is a good public school. She called it enriching. But she was afraid that it might not be flexible enough for my son. It might not teach to his level."

Lauren decided to visit a kindergarten class. What she saw made her feel slightly better. The teachers seemed skilled, the children engaged, the facilities decent. It was fine. But Lauren wanted more than fine for her child.

"I want a school that offers the academics that Killian needs and is nurturing enough to give him individual attention. Academically, he's quite advanced, but socially I think he could use a little help. He's not going to get that in our public school. There are just too many kids."

Finally, I followed Trina D'Angelo, a single mom, who for safety reasons refused to consider her local school.

"Send my son there? I wouldn't drive by there," she said.

* * *

Copyright © 2006 by Duck Island Productions, Inc.

About the Author

Alan Eisenstock is the author of Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men, Sports Talk: A Journey Inside the World of Sports Talk Radio, and Inside the Meat Grinder. In a career spanning twenty-five years, he has written movies, plays, magazine articles, and television shows. He lives in California.