Moving to NYC during "non-entry" year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is super helpful but one note based on my experience is that Trevor has been getting much more popular. Still not near TT but harder to get into than the others you listed.

Though note my frame of reference is 9th grade admit and they are bigger in the lower school (on the UWS) then don’t add a lot at 9th grade. (UES).

Interesting - we actually didn't get in there and were a bit perplexed because we got into what we thought were a couple of better schools.

Anonymous wrote:All that being said, I wouldn’t just spend $70k a year to go to a meh private school just because they have an off year spot. Park your kid at a really good public and apply on cycle to privates later. I do know kids who apply out of lower tier schools to other ones but it is not easy.

I don't necessarily disagree - though a lot would depend on the kid and the available schools - but I got the impression OP had already settled on private.

Anonymous wrote:Name names! It’s all anonymous.

I’ll start- Hewitt. Never met a family that didn’t get an accept there.

I was actually going to say Nightingale here - I similarly don't know of any people who haven't gotten in - but I should clarify that I actually think it's a pretty good school; Nightingale suffers from the problem that while the gap between it and Chapin academically is not actually all that large, there are a *ton* of good coed schools in that range, and most people who don't get into one of B/S/C and aren't hell-bent on SS end up at once of them instead. (and if they are hell-bent on SS they're just as likely to prefer Catholic)

[Anonymous]

(I should add here that most of the schools I listed are perfectly nice, which is why we applied to them - I've heard all sorts of lovely things about Calhoun from faculty at other private schools, Speyer has some really cool ideas like a rigorous elementary chess curriculum, LREI in addition to the amazing location has a really fantastic arts concentration program in middle school...)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Name names! It’s all anonymous.

I’ll start- Hewitt. Never met a family that didn’t get an accept there.

I was actually going to say Nightingale here - I similarly don't know of any people who haven't gotten in - but I should clarify that I actually think it's a pretty good school; Nightingale suffers from the problem that while the gap between it and Chapin academically is not actually all that large, there are a *ton* of good coed schools in that range, and most people who don't get into one of B/S/C and aren't hell-bent on SS end up at once of them instead. (and if they are hell-bent on SS they're just as likely to prefer Catholic)

Makes sense. Anecdotally I know many off cycle accepts there, though several were legacy.

Out of curiosity, which co-eds would you put in that range you mentioned above?

[Anonymous]

Copied from above so it doesn’t get lost in my bad formatting!

Makes sense. Anecdotally I know many off cycle accepts there, though several were legacy.

Out of curiosity, which co-eds would you put in that range you mentioned above?

[Anonymous]

Top of my head, Avenues, Friends Seminary, Columbia Grammar, I guess now Trevor Day?, and digging into my limited Brooklyn knowledge, Berkeley-Caroll and Poly Prep and Packer. (also I suppose Hackley and Rye Country Day if you're in the Bronx or Westchester and not hell bent on NYC proper)

Also a few others from my earlier lists - LREI, Basis, and Speyer all seem to reject people more often than Nightingale does, at least in my limited experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:(I should add here that most of the schools I listed are perfectly nice, which is why we applied to them - I've heard all sorts of lovely things about Calhoun from faculty at other private schools, Speyer has some really cool ideas like a rigorous elementary chess curriculum, LREI in addition to the amazing location has a really fantastic arts concentration program in middle school...)

I’m less sensitive about this than many others but LREI really has been awful about Israel stuff. It is a decent school but I wouldn’t send a highly academic kid there.

[Anonymous]

We aren't at LREI, but my impression is that at private schools in general everybody is calming down and retrenching a bit, both on "wokeness" and on Israel - the version of that in the Trump II area is grimmer and less performative, emotions are cooling and we can discuss things a bit more rationally.

But at any rate, all of this stuff is pretty fast-moving, and I wouldn't use it as a reason to pick one school over another except inasmuch as it's a demonstration of the administration's ability (or inability) to resolve conflicts.

[Anonymous]

Consider Hackley (in Westchester but they have a bus for nyc)... 2nd grade is an entry year. You could go there until DS is old enough for entry years in the NYC privates.

[Anonymous]

I see people recommending public. Our experience has been very mixed and teacher dependent. If you get a good old school teacher it can be fine. Some districts are more academic focused than others. The standards are very low and without a real GT program (thanks DiBlasio) our kid is often bored and reading books while waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. Lots of focus on equity and not academics. I expect that to get worse when Mamdani wins.

[Anonymous]

“Equity and not academics” this does match our experience, or that of anyone else we know at a public elementary; maybe a handful of schools are doing that but they should be pretty easy to avoid.

Also if you want to turn this discussion into an attack on Mamdani there’s a whole other thread for that.

[Anonymous]

Does *not* match