Admissions Season Arrives.
Gentry's Christine VanDeVelde discusses the frenzy surrounding the school admissions process.

Every year at this time, here on the Peninsula, some families experience a form of March Madness that has nothing to do with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  It has to do with the outcome of a contest of a different sort – the culmination of private school admissions season. The prize is the lifetime pass, the punched ticket, the seat on the gravy train headed for the feeder school for Harvard… or at least that is how it’s perceived by many.

Of course, most parents never even consider private school for their children. But for those who do, it can be a high-pressure process with plenty of opportunity for lapses in good judgment.  “Over and over, I’ve seen parents use their children’s lives as an arena to enhance their own popularity, prestige, sense of self-esteem and entitlement – to their children’s detriment,” says Queen Bees & Wannabes author Rosalind Wiseman. In her new book, Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads: Coping with the Parents, Teachers, Coaches and Counselors Who Can Rule – or Ruin – Your Child’s Life, Wiseman warns against taking up residence in “Perfect Parent World”, where the application process becomes a sport in which “everybody who can brags about their child’s test scores while simultaneously expending tremendous amounts of energy to look like they aren’t.” And you can’t get away from it! Everywhere parents gather there is “school” talk, which only serves to heighten the feeling that your child is involved in a cutthroat competition. When our own daughter was applying to private schools, the subject dominated every conversation from dinner parties to the aisles in Draeger's for eighteen solid months.

Why does such high anxiety accompany this process? Partly, it’s a function of supply and demand. There are not enough seats in private schools for all the students who want one. Why not? Because California lacks the tradition of private schooling found in the East. There are fewer private schools to begin with because historically California public schools provided a terrific and lavishly funded education for their students. As funding problems have plagued the public schools, families have fled into the private system. At the same time, the private schools in the area, many of which are located in exclusive residential areas, can’t expand because they’re hamstrung by local communities who put tremendous pressure on them to keep their school populations down.

Such market conditions ramp up an already difficult and stressful situation. As one pundit described it so perfectly, the process “asks parents to play fair but also rush the net.” Even for the best of us, when our children are involved, it ups the emotional ante -- and I know very few people who don’t regard the private school admissions dance as a test of their own social skills and accomplishments.

If you’re not a descendant of one of the Big Four, a zillionaire venture capitalist or a San Francisco 49er, does your child stand a chance? In a word, yes. If you are, does that make you a shoo-in? No. Status, money or celebrity alone is usually not enough. But the fact is that these schools have a vested interest in vetting both you and your child. They want to admit children who are a good fit with their school’s culture and mission and children who can do the work – most private schools are academically rigorous. They are also small communities and therefore want to be sure parents buy into the school’s vision, as well. So if you don’t want your child to attend chapel three times a week, don’t fill out the application for an Episcopal school.

My own family’s middle school admissions are far behind us, but I’ve never forgotten how difficult it was. In looking back, I think what I most wanted to feel throughout the process was that we were being dealt with fairly. And in retrospect, I think we were. In the years since, I’ve interviewed the admissions directors at many of the Peninsula’s private schools and found them without fail to be caring and empathetic professionals who give thoughtful, careful, and subtle consideration to all applicants.  I truly believe they bend over backwards to be fair.

It has also been my observation among our friends that, in the long run, it hasn’t really mattered whether or not a child was admitted to private school. They are all turning out great – whether in public or private school. Probably because they had good parents who believed in what Wiseman calls our most important role, “to raise responsible, ethical kids who are well equipped to deal with failures and disappointments.” That is the ultimate prize, if you ask me.

Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 Christine VanDeVelde. All rights reserved.