Oh, ignore this! I'm the OP, but I just scrolled down a bit on this forum and I see that someone else asked a very similar question. I'll just follow the advice given there!

We're waiting to hear from a preschool that warned us ahead of time that the admissions process was rolling and complicated (It's affiliated with a university and children of faculty members -- of which we are not -- get first preference). The admissions coordinator specifically gave "late April" as the benchmark for how long it might take for non-university employees to hear something. Is it bad form to follow up before then? Our daughter is currently in a different daycare/preschool that we've grown progressively less happy with. If we know she's going to get in this new preschool, we'll stick it out where we are until September. But if our chances are looking bad, I'd rather look to move daughter sooner rather than later.