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Admissions Directors: Panel Discussion K-6 Schools

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Determined To Succeed Presents:

K-6 SCHOOLS

Tuesday, MAY 25th, 7:30-9 p.m. at the Luxe Hotel, Brentwood. For more information, visit, www.dtsla.org

 

FEATURED PANELISTS:
Kim Feldman (Moderator) – The Willows Community School
Mary Beth Barry – Director of Admissions, Brentwood School, West Campus
Deedie Hudnut – Director of Admissions, The Center for Early Education
Laurie Wolke – Associate Head of School, Laurence School
Glenda Saul – Director of Admissions & Supplemental Programs, Temple Israel of Hollywood
Carinne Barker – Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, The Buckley School

Each year we offer a new panel of independent school Admissions Directors that provide different perspectives and information from previous years about the dos and don’ts of the process, including how to prepare your child, find the right school for you, and handle the testing and interview process, so you can feel confident and calm throughout it.

For more information, visit Determined To Succeed at www.dtsla.org

 

Private Schools Event Today at BHCC

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Left to Right, Anne Simon, Christina Simon, Kim Hamer at the Beverly Hills Country Club
 
Thank you to all the parents who turned out for the event today! We had a great time and it was wonderful to answer your questions and hear your comments and feedback. We wish you all the best with your application process.
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Inventive New Private School Hits Old Hurdles: NY Times

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From the NY Times, April 1, 2010:

The founders of the Blue School aspired to create something different: a private school not fixated on the Ivy League prospects of preschoolers and devoid of admissions hysteria. An education that, as they put it, “you don’t have to recover from.”


To read the rest of the article, click on the link below:

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/education/01blueschool.html?hpw


Good News! How to Choose?

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If you’re lucky enough that your child has been accepted at several schools, you may be having trouble deciding which school to choose. This is especially true if the schools are very different. Or, if there are two schools that seem very much alike, it might be hard equally difficult to make a decision about which one would be best for your child. A few things to keep in mind:

  • We’ve said this before and it’s worth saying again. Location matters. If the school is too far from where you live/work, you’ll have a very difficult time and begin to resent the drive time. You may also live very far away from the other families at the school. I declined one school because we would have been the ONLY family on our side of town at the school. Parents leave schools because a commute of more than an hour each way takes its toll on the whole family.
  • The type of school and it’s culture should fit your family’s attitudes about education and parenting and even life in general. If you’re a left of center, progressive parent who endorsed attachment parenting with your infant, do you really think you’ll be happy with your child at a school where the parents prepare their daughters to become debutantes and the annual fundraiser is a golf extravaganga with a tradition that dates back 75 years? If the parents at the school seem more like “Real Housewives” and that’s not who you are, take note.
  • Talk to parents at the school to find out what the culture of the school is really like. I have a friend who enrolled her son in a parochial school in the Valley that she found to be way too conservative for her family. She wears skinny jeans, hip jewelry and high heeled boots and the other moms stared at her every morning at drop off like was from another planet. After changing the way she dressed for morning drop off, she realized it wasn’t working. She didn’t fit in. The other families were much more traditional. Her family is leaving the school for a less traditional parochial school in the heart of LA.
  • Can you afford the tuition for the entire time your child will be at the school? There can be significant differences in the tuition among some private schools and you need to be realistic about ALL the expenses of private school; tuition is just the largest expense, but there are other costs (annual giving, hot lunch, summer camp, enrichment activities and more). That $5,000 differential between schools could be put towards non-tuition education costs.
  • Is the school diverse enough for your family? Whether you’re a minority family or not, you may want to send your child to a school that includes diverse families. Some private elementary schools are diverse, others lack any real diversity.
  • Resist the urge to send your child to the most popular school if you don’t really believe it’s a good fit for him/her. Long after you’ve lost touch with parents at your preschool, your child will be in elementary and/or middle school. It’s your opinion that matters because it’s your child. Tune out the chatter if it’s too opinionated.

Hiring an educational consultant to go from wait-listed to accepted

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We know families who have engaged the services of an educational consultant to help get them moved from “wait-listed” status to “accepted” at their first or second choice school. This doesn’t always work and there are no guarantees. However, there are educational consultants who know the admissions directors at top schools extremely well and who will probably know which schools will be admitting students from their wait-lists and which schools will not. If you are really unsure how to deal with your child being wait-listed or declined admission, it may be worth a consultation with an educational consultant. These private school experts can also help you understand how to move forward with the admissions process from where you are now. In our opinion, anything that will help you get your child the education you want for him/her is worth considering. 

 

We have a great list of educational consultants on this blog.