Private Schools: Cradle-to-College Struggle

Classes may be out for most of the nation's youngsters, but for many parents the plotting and pushing to wedge their children into the right schools is a year-round ordeal. As urban public schools become increasingly flawed by overcrowded classes, poorly prepared teachers and racial imbalance, many young couples are undergoing an ordeal even tougher than the college-admissions scramble; it is the cradle-to-college struggle to get their kids into a big-city private school.

Nowhere is the competition as keen as in New York City, which boasts more (111), and more diverse, private schools than any other city in the country. The rigidly classical Lycée Francais has a curriculum similar to the one used in French schools, while the offbeat Rudolf Steiner School is based on anthroposophical principles. Progressive Dalton gives no marks, teaches anthropology and playwriting to upperclassmen, while prim, socially prominent Hewitt rules that students cannot attend "parties, moving pictures or the theater" on school nights.

Infant Application. The only easy way to gain entrance to most of these schools is by birth, although even admission by legacy is no longer automatic. Buckley, perhaps the most society-conscious of the city's schools for boys, encourages parents to apply when their children are born, and most of the top schools book their classes far in advance on a first-come, first-considered basis. Even acquiring an application form is competitive; Allen-Stevenson, which graduates only a dozen boys a year, does not send a blank unless it gets satisfactory telephoned answers to nine questions. The most important: "Who recommended the school to you?" and "What school is the boy attending now?"

That kind of question, in turn, sets parents off on a preliminary battle to get their children into the best of the city's private nursery schools (cost: $550 a year and up). Chapin, for example, likes graduates of nursery schools run by the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest (irreverent parents dub it "the celestial snooze") and by the Brick Presbyterian Church. Prudent parents apply to at least three nursery schools, since they cannot be sure that they or their child will pass the tough admission interviews. One worried couple hired a tutor to teach their boy how to cope with coloring books.

"Kiss of Death." Even after the proper nursery school, many parents apply to some ten or more private schools, steel themselves again for more interviews. They must step gingerly, since the test of admission is often not so much whether the school is right for the child, but whether the parents are right for the school. The key to acceptance often lies in the references they supply for their child, influential names collected from family friends or at cocktail parties and business lunches. But an admissions director deluged with reference letters may observe the old rule of thumb that "a thick folder indicates a thick boy." An edge is conceded to parents with prominent names or prominent bank accounts; yet any hint that they are trying to buy their way in, explains Henry D. Tiffany Jr., headmaster of Allen-Stevenson, "is practically the kiss of death."