Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"Which of these preschools will get my kid into Stanford?"

Saturday I attended the local parents' club's preschool fair. It's a tradeshow for preschools where they all come and set out brochures and pics of the kids doing cute, fun stuff and even drawings and projects by the kids. Both our kids are in lovely preschools now, but we need to figure out what to do with the older one if he doesn't go to kindergarten in the fall (that's a whole other story). Unfortunately, the one that appealed to me the most is the German school, but it seems counterproductive to put Arthur in an immersion program for one year in a language that almost no one around him speaks fluently.

The other schools fall into one or more of the following categories: not academic enough, poor location, inconvenient schedule, and priced for the Steve Jobs set. We're talking $15-20k for preschool. As I was looking at one booth, I overheard the administrator at the next one say, "We don't look at applications in the order they come in, we evaluate the child and interview the parent and base enrollment decisions on those two factors." Can you imagine your kid's school options being based on how someone else judges you? No thanks. Then there's the fancy-pants "alternative" (read: hippy) school that charges "only" $12k or so, but is already done taking applications for fall 2010. I guess I missed the memo that in this fancy region of the Peninsula you need to register your kid for preschool before they start walking.

2 comments:

Linda said...

Regarding your last sentence: Um, this is why I've been freaking out about being here in Sydney and not able to get Athena on the wait lists for pre-school back where she will actually be going to school!

Kathy Schrenk said...

Unless there's a very specific preschool you want her in THIS fall (and at this age almost any decent school would get her the socialization she needs), you should be fine.