In at Preschool a.k.a. Welcome to the Rat Race

New York is famous for being competitive. Everything is a race - your career, your apartment, your dating life, it's all fair game. During my five years in the City, I've grown accustomed to it. What's crazy is that for those who are un(fortunate) enough to be born here, you get to spend your first year and a half chillin' out, and then, bam!, time to start working.

The pre-school admissions process is insane. Remember applying to college or graduate school and how painful that process was? Now remember that the typical preschool applicant (your child) is still unable to talk, has just learned to walk and on a good day, remembers to wipe his / her mouth when he / she drools (although, mine often doesn't). It's as much fun as it sounds.

The craziness starts the day after Labor Day. Basically, you start calling your preferred pre-schools and hope someone picks up and takes your information down so you can get an application. Since we were in LA that weekend, we ended up waking up at 5AM to start calling. For one school, Frances and I ended up hitting repeat dial for 45 minutes before we got through.  Another school neglected to tell people that you could get an application online, probably because they like to see their switchboard light up.

A couple days later, we got our first rejection. One of the schools deemed Ryan unworthy of even an application. Sure, we got a nice letter with the typical "Every year, we have more applicants than spots in our school...", except this one basically ended with "...so we're just going to cut through the bulls--t and not even bother letting you apply."

In the end, we managed to send out applications for five schools. Did I mention you have to write essays for these applications? Lots of them, addressing Ryan's temperment, our dreams and aspirations, his strengths and weaknesses, and his career goals. Ok, so I'm kidding about the last one.

Then, the fun really started:

1) Parent interviews (so they could determine whether we were wearing expensive enough clothes to become a benefactor)

2) Child playdates (so they could see whether Ryan would bite the other kids in class)

3) Thank you letters after every interaction (so they could see how desperately we wanted to get in their school

4) Open Houses (so we could hear about how awesome all the kids who have gone to each school are)

And then, finally, Admissions Day, when all the schools email / mail / call with their decisions. All the parents sit around waiting nervously all day and the NY PD / FD are on high alert for those who don't get into their first or second choice. The good news is, we got one of those fat envelopes. The bad news is, that envelope is going to cost me 5 figures a year. All you finance types, why don't you send me the NPV on that, so I can pull that out if Ryan ever says he wants to study the arts...  The good news is, that Ryan is now set for life and is guaranteed to get into an Ivy League college, or at least that's what they told us.

For any of you who enjoyed reading this and want to see it in real-life or simply don't believe me, definitely rent "Nursery University." I kid you not, this is very real, very scary and only happens in New York. That is, unless you count the IIT admissions process, which I heard is pretty pressure packed also.

And we didn't even apply to the truly elite top-tier preschools, where the power players in law, finance and the arts send their kids. But, if you want to hear about that part of the world, I hear Jack Grubman has some real insight.