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Lie, Cheat, Beg or Sue

Academy X
By Andrew Trees
Bloomsbury USA; hardcover

Glamorous Disasters
By Eliot Schrefer
Simon & Schuster; hardcover

Jane Austen in Scarsdale;
or Love, Death and the SAT’s
By Paula Marantz Cohen
St. Martin’s Press; hardcover

THE most unpopular teacher in New York City this summer is probably Andrew Trees, a 37-year-old who teaches history at Horace Mann School. Mr. Trees is the author of “Academy X,” a satiric novel about a private school so deeply in the throes of college-admissions hysteria that roughly a third of the students are pretending to have learning disabilities so they can get more time on the SAT’s.

As a publicity stunt, the author adopted the pseudonym so beloved by 19th-century pornographers, “Anonymous,” and he outed himself only shortly before publication, in June, whereupon many with close ties to private schools accused him of being a turncoat. “I think this is the biggest self-righteous, arrogant traitor walking the face of the earth,” Victoria Goldman, a board member of the nearby Riverdale Country School, told The New York Sun. Riverdale is one of several schools now looking into nondisclosure clauses in employee contracts.

In truth, Academy X doesn’t particularly resemble Horace Mann or any other school. All we learn about it is that it has the city’s only indoor croquet court, and that if you have to ask what kind of place it is, then your child would never get in to begin with. And the novel is less a pedagogical exposé, in the tradition of, say, Dickens’s “Hard Times,” than it is the latest example of admissions lit — a new genre about the great rat race of getting your children into the right schools.

Another recent example is “Glamorous Disasters,” about an SAT tutor in New York City who is paid $395 an hour to raise the scores of the spoiled and overprivileged. In this case the author, a Harvard graduate who used to work for a tutoring outfit called Advantage Testing, goes by his own name, Eliot Schrefer, and if he hasn’t yet been vilified as much as Mr. Trees, it’s doubtless because his former clients would just as soon not call attention to themselves.

The parents in this novel, haughty, neglectful, ambitious, are even more vicious and corrupt than those in “Academy X.” One of them even offers the protagonist $80,000 to take the SAT in his son’s place.

In one way or another, in fact, parents behaving badly is the real subject of admissions lit. The children, no matter how lazy, druggy or just plain dumb, turn out to be the hapless victims of rich, predatory parents who treat the education of their offspring as a sort of social blood sport and will do anything — lie, cheat, grovel, sue — to get an advantage. Staggering amounts of money get tossed around as bribe bait, as well as Knicks tickets and promises of sex.

Nor is the struggle confined to getting into college. The most intense competition, to judge from some other novels, takes place over kindergarten slots. For example, in “The Ivy Chronicles” (Viking; 2005), one family toasts their underperforming 5-year-old in a tanning salon and changes her name to WaShaunté in hopes of gaining some diversity points. (The author, Karen Quinn, ran a pre-school admissions-advice service until she burned out from stress.)

Nancy Lieberman’s “Admissions” (Warner Books; 2004), in many ways the best of these novels, benefits from being about a K-8 school, which means that there are two admissions cycles taking place simultaneously, one to cull precocious, well-connected kindergartners and one to move the graduating eighth graders on to Dalton, Brearly or wherever. The key to both processes is the demented, dictatorial headmistress, Ms. Rothchild, and smart parents know that the best way to appease Ms. Rothchild is to subsidize her friend’s cooking school in Provence.

Another recurring motif in admissions lit is, oddly, Jane Austen. She turns up explicitly in Paula Marantz Cohen’s “Jane Austen in Scarsdale; or Love, Death and the SAT’s,” a novel that takes a fairly benign view of the admissions process and is thus the blandest and wimpiest of these books, though it does have a keen ear for what makes a truly bad personal essay: “When I was a baby at my mother’s knee, I did not have goals, aspirations or dreams. Like a puppy, I rolled and tumbled, knowing no reason or purpose for my actions. However, as I grew, I began to aspire more. I began to study and question. In time a dream began to take shape. That dream was to go to Bowdoin (Antioch, Bard, Middlebury, etc.).”

But Austen is also a touchstone in “Academy X,” where the students slog through “Emma” and keep confusing the characters with the actors who played them in the movie, and all the books are propelled by an Austenian subplot, in which the protagonist — the teacher, tutor, guidance counselor, adviser — is lonely and broke and looking for both a mate and a decent income, if not a fortune. You wouldn’t be in the admissions racket, the message seems to be, if you really had a life.

These lovelorn commoners are also stand-ins for the reader, and it’s through their sometimes envious eyes that we get to take part in that always fashionable literary enterprise, marveling at the excesses and abandon of the rich. In a couple of these books there is as much apartment porn (breathless descriptions of Fifth Avenue penthouses and “classic sevens” on Park) as there is porn of the other variety.

We also get to disapprove and to feel superior, of course, secure in the knowledge that even if we could afford to, we would never stoop to brainwashing our pre-schoolers for an assessment test or donating a sum equivalent to the budget of a third-world country just to get our daughters into what “Admissions” calls The Very Brainy Girls’ School.

Readers of these books who don’t happen to live in Manhattan or in Westchester County (which in Ms. Marantz Cohen’s version is only slightly less of an educational hothouse) can take additional pleasure in knowing that they don’t have to put themselves through this particular wringer.

For readers closer to home, fretting over the odds at Spence, say, compared with those at Chapin or Nightingale, the novels work a little like horror stories; by giving vent to our worst nightmares they both excite and reassure us.

At the end of these books, everyone gets in somewhere, even if the parents divorce each other in the process.

—Charles McGrath, New York Times
7/30/2006

Whither Devil Wears Prada? Writers Weigh In

What with The Devil Wears Prada opening last Friday, we put a call out to some of our writer friends to see if they were going to catch the adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's novel over the long weekend. "It's much like the book in that it's a light and fun piece," says Karen Quinn, author of The Ivy Chronicles. "I thought Meryl Streep did a better job of making Miranda a more nuanced and sympathetic character than she was in the book." Rachel Pine (right), who jokes that The Twins of Tribeca sold "about one million fewer copies" than Prada, agrees: "The movie successfully addressed an area that was missing from the novel. Quite simply, you don't get to be an Anna Wintour or a Miranda Priestley or a Harvey Weinstein without being really damn good at what you do. The novel never gave Anna/Miranda credit for being anything other than a nasty, demanding boss. The film portrays her as a woman who understands her industry the way any other business leader understands theirs."

Joshilyn Jackson (left), who's gearing up for the release of her second novel (Between, Georgia), wasn't entirely comfortable with the roman a clef aspects of Weisberger's novel ("the whole idea makes me uncomfortable; it's a get-out-of-slander free card"), but "I would watch a movie called Meryl Streep Makes Soup, so I went with a bunch of girls and we ate a despicable amount of popcorn. Meryl Streep was note perfect—alert the presses—and I am liking that Anne Hathaway more and more. I paid eight bucks hoping to be entertained for an hour and forty six minutes, and I got every penny's worth."

Andi Buchanan (right), who took a break from the tail end of her tour for It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters to watch the movie, wasn't as impressed. "It was bad, bad, bad," she reports. "I was thinking it was a bad book that might make a good movie...and I was thinking that even if the movie wasn't great, it might be the kind of thing that could be so bad it's good....but, sadly, all of those thoughts were wrong. As my friend Becca said, 'Given how bad the book was, I didn't think it possible to say the movie didn't live up to the book, but it didn't. Though the one thing the movie did match the book in was tedium.'"

Weisberger's college buddy Deborah Schoeneman (left) (4% Famous) dubs the film "a surefire summer hit." She elaborates, "While other bestselling books about Manhattan—Bright Lights, Big City, American Psycho, and Slaves of New York—fell relatively flat as movies, Devil works better on the big screen. The fashion world setting made the story cinematic, even though Patricia Field created some puzzling outfits. Why would Miranda and her assistants all wear all black to the big gala? Not when they have every designer vying to dress them. Newsboy caps? Not at Condé Nast."

"Despite the fact that both the book and the movie are about clothes and clothes are for the most part dumb, Patricia Field is a brilliant stylist," says Stephanie Lessing (right), who took a break from going over the final proofs for her new novel, Miss Understanding, to check out the film. "So brilliant I would, if forced, allow her to dress me, too. And therein lies the greater appeal of the movie as opposed to the book: The book doesn't come close to showcasing the impressive collection of clothes and accessories that appear on screen. Not to mention the most amazing make-up applications on the entire planet." Some of Stephanie's favorite highlights follow...

• "The green eye shadow preferred by the first assistant was a real show stopper. So much so that I hardly even remember who played the first assistant. I would have never thought to do such a thing in an office setting, but such is life at Vogue, I mean Runway. Killer, seriously."
• "The round Chanel handbag with the big number on it. That was a cool bag by any standards; coupled with Andy's head-to-toe Chanel ensemble, it was actually too distracting in its outfitty-ness. Her clothes were wearing her in that scene: Big no no. I'm surprised Patricia Fields didn't have the sense to rip Anne Hathaway's stockings or something to give Andy a bit of an edge. Still, the pocketbook was to die for. It could have been its own movie."
• "The green coat with the black button that Andy wears when she first starts dressing like a fashion assistant. I might want that one day. All I remember about that scene was something about a subway."
• "The black power suit that Andy wears when Nigel tells her he landed a new job; the detail on that jacket was impeccable, so impeccable that I doubt anyone cared or not if Nigel got the job. I liked the slightly puffed sleeve and the deep, scooped neck with the plunging portrait collar. And because Nigel liked it too, it was the one time I really felt as though Nigel and I had the potential to become friends. Otherwise I thought he was a total bitch. But that jacket—Oh. My. God."
• "That black dress Andy wore when they were hanging out in Paris. The one with the full skirt that wasn't too full because it had that top layer of raised embroidery that kept it in place. That dress floored me. I would so buy it. I mean if I cared."

As for the more traditionally significant aspects of a motion picture, like plot and characters, Stephanie shrugs, "The book wasn't funny either, but at least the book wasn't trying to be funny. Right?"

—Mediabistro.com
7/5/2006

Skinny Jeans

A few weeks ago my best friend, on her way back to Los Angeles from London, via New York, came into town with a mission: to buy skinny jeans. "Everyone in London is wearing them," she hissed over her plate of ravioli at Fred's, the ninth floor restaurant in Barneys. "I felt so stupid in my boot cuts."

So after lunch we took the elevator down one floor and made a beeline for the denim display. My friend plucked half a dozen pairs off the tables and shelves and charged into one of the dressing rooms. A couple of minutes later she emerged and took a long look in the full-length mirror near the entrance of the changing rooms.

"These are horrible," she whispered, pressing in the sides of her child-bearing hips (she gave birth seven months ago and is still working off the baby weight) and biting back tears.

They may be the hottest thing in designer denim, adopted by the cutting edge a year ago and now filtering down to the rest of the world, but the skinny jean is a complicated real-life proposition.

Unlike the flare and the boot cut, which balance a thicker thigh or wider hip with extra volume at the lower leg, the tapered ankle of the skinny jean only highlights those figure flaws. Even ultra-slim novelist Plum Sykes urges caution. The jeans, she says, "can only be worn by extraordinary British fashion icons with a rock-and-roll attitude. (They) look dreadful on all other women".

Still, premium denim designers insist the trend is selling big and is here to stay.

Last autumn, Ernest Sewn introduced its skinny tapered-leg jean, called Harlan, and is offering the silhouette in three additional washes. It's been so successful that for next autumn, Scott Morrison, Earnest Sewn's president and designer says, the company has two more styles featuring an ankle zip and an even slimmer-leg jean with a higher rise.

Meanwhile, Seven for All Mankind is expanding their selection of tapered jeans with new washes and ankle zips, and Paris-based Notify has developed a two-wayor "bi-stretch" for addedcomfort.

Buyers are bullish on the skinny, too. Jacques Keledjian, chief executive and owner of Intermix, a chain of fashion-forward boutiques in the US, says the 10-inch-rise skinny black jean from J Brand has been "flying off the racks".

And Barneys women's denim buyer Grace Kang says the store has sold over 10,000 pairs of skinny jeans since last autumn.

Of course, it makes sense that after years of pushing low-rise and boot-cut, denim manufacturers and retailers would advocate a completely new silhouette to keep people interested - and buying. As Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst for NPD Group, a US-based market research firm, says: "Designers are offering skinny leg jeans this season for change. Without style change, the consumer has little to motivate them to purchase new." Cohen also estimates that the skinny jean, because it appeals mainly to "the young and young at heart, with a figure to wear them," will reach only 16 per cent of customers.

James Shaffer, the designer behind the LA-based Blue Tattoo fashion line, says skinny jeans account for only 20 per cent of his denim production."I can say from doing trade shows and discussing with stores, there's an apprehension because it's a hard fit on a lot of women. You basically have to be long and lean," says Shaffer.

As Notify's owner and designer Maurice Ohayon points out: "In the 1950s the slim fits were glamorous and sexy, emphasising the woman's body. In the 1980s, the skinny fits were linked to the punk attitude. Today, the slim silhouette creates a perfect androgynous look and is linked to a masculine attitude rather than a sexy one."

According to London-based Jennifer Kersis, the former managing director of fashion line Jasmine di Milo and head of NetJets's UK arm, she's spent the last nine months practicallyliving in her drainpipe jeans from H&M, but a few weeks ago decided the silhouette "wasn't a novelty" and invested in tapered leg pairs from Paige Premium Denim and Imitation of Christ.

Her favourite thing about them? They show off her Alaia ankle boots. "A boot cut hangs over and hides a beautiful shoe, which is a bit of a shame," observes Kersis.

In fact, choosing the right shoe seems to be the key to wearing the skinny jean well. Boy-shaped types can pull them off with flats, but everyone else is better off pairing them with heels or even more flattering, tucking them into tall boots.

"A curvy girl should wear them with slouchy boots and a long tunic," says Kang.

Or she could go for a pair of Radcliffe Denim's skinny stretch jeans in black. UK-based designer Suzy Radcliffe cuts her skinnys straight from the knee so they're narrow over the calf but not tight around the ankle, avoiding the hip-widening effect.

Plus, says Radcliffe, "with skinny jeans, darker colours are more flattering because they make the leg look much slimmer."

Variations on the trend aside, Karen Quinn, the author of bestseller The Ivy Chronicles and the soon-to-be-released Wife in the Fast Lane, has her own reason for embracing the skinny jean. "Getting them on and off is a workout in itself."

—Financial Times
6/17/2006

Avoiding 'Super Sweets'
In the MTV-era, the old proverb needs to read:
Spare the bling or spoil the child

After Karen Quinn's 14-year-old daughter, Schuyler, watched "My Super Sweet 16," MTV's reality show about overindulged adolescents and their hugely expensive birthday extravaganzas, she asked her mother if she could have such a party when she turned 16.

When Karen explained that even if she and her husband could afford such an affair, they would not indulge her, Schuyler begged them to at least cater a party for her at a hotel.

"You don't even have to give me a car," she told her mom.

Though, in Schuyler's case, the issue was resolved with an at-home dance party with pizza and deli platters; for many other kids, shows like this one reinforce a troubling sense of entitlement and contribute to their being, well, spoiled.

"As a working and often exhausted parent, I know that it is easier to say 'yes' to our kids than 'no,'" says Quinn, a Tribeca resident and the author of the novel "The Ivy Chronicles." "But we aren't doing our children any favors by just buying them everything they want."

Yet many of us buy our precious darlings way more than we ever had - and then feel annoyed with them when they want more. Are kids today more spoiled than we were?

"There is more to be had out there today, and it is more expensive than it used to be," says Dr. Kevin Kalikow, a child psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Westchester Medical Center.

Things like iPods, Razr cell phones and Abercrombie jeans cost a lot more than most kids' allowances for a month, so moms and dads wind up footing the bill. And parents - guilty about not spending more time with their kids - are often all too happy to do so.

"We have dual income households and parents who are less available than they might have been 15 years ago," says Jennifer Hartstein, child and adolescent psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. "Parents make up for the lack of face-to-face time with their kids by giving them things."

While it's best to start setting firm limits on behavior and possessions when your child is very young, it's never too late to "unspoil" your child. Here are some tips to keep your child from acting like one of the "sweet" kids on "My Super Sweet 16."

• Insist that your child earns what he gets. Even if he can't pay for the whole thing, make him pay a portion. "Kids have to demonstrate responsibility and show that they have the right to own something," Hartstein says. If your child doesn't make any money baby-sitting or dog walking, pay him for doing household chores.
• Set limits and boundaries for your child, says Joel Haber, a White Plains psychologist. "This is healthy for children because it teaches them the guidelines and expectations we have for them, and it helps them to become more empathetic with others and to see that they can't have everything they want."
• Don't be afraid to say no. Yes, your child will scream that she hates you, and she probably does, right at that moment. But instead of engaging in a screaming match, validate her feelings, Hartstein says. "Tell her, 'I see you are angry right now and I understand why you are angry. I'm sorry that I can't give you what you want right now, and I am going to give you some time to be mad. Above all, I want you to know that I still love you.'"
• Develop predictable rituals with your family, such as eating dinner together. "Show your love with consistency and predictability," Haber says, "and not by giving things. Things are really important for about five minutes and then they're not important anymore."
• Don't think that your child is going to be a self-centered little brat for the rest of his life. "Our parents said the same thing about us and yet most of us are responsible, self-sustaining adults," Kalikow says. "Many of the kids we see as spoiled will outgrow this as they mature and get older."

—Rosemary Black, The Daily News
6/3/2006

Is This the 'Biggest Self-Righteous Arrogant Traitor' Ever in School?

Students aren't the only ones working on research projects at some of the city's elite private schools.

A history teacher at Horace Mann School in Riverdale has used his intimate view of the city's movers and shakers to pen a novel about a leafy campus in New York City where 17-year olds drive Mercedes cars, take prescription drugs to boost their academic performance, and turn to seduction and plagiarism to guarantee a slot in the Ivy League.

"Academy X" is hitting bookstores this week and some parents are calling its author, Andrew Trees, a regular Benedict Arnold.

"I think this is the biggest self-righteous, arrogant traitor walking the face of the earth," a member of the board of trustees at the nearby Riverdale Country School, Victoria Goldman, said. "He's sending up the entire community that he works with, and that takes nerve."

The city's private schools - where influential parents battle for everything from better grades for their children to asking federal judges to intervene in disputes - are known to be tight-lipped when it comes to what happens within their halls. The head of school at Horace Mann and several other administrators did not return numerous calls seeking comment yesterday, and some teachers also refused to talk about the book.

On its copyright page, "Academy X" is listed as being in the "Rich People - Fiction" category. Tuition at the school is almost $30,000 a year. Celebrity parents at the school include the state attorney general, Elliot Spitzer, and an entertainment mogul, Sean "Diddy" Combs.

To build some buzz, the author was listed as anonymous on early copies of the book. Mr. Trees's name was added when Bloomsbury officially released it.

In a pre-emptive strike, Mr. Trees published a letter to the Horace Mann community in the student newspaper last week, alerting it to the imminent release of his novel.

"My goal in writing Academy X is simply to satirize the follies that occur at virtually every elite private - and many public - high schools these days, particularly the insanity that accompanies the college admission process," he wrote. The protagonist of the novel, John Spencer, is an English teacher who struggles to teach Jane Austen, but is often distracted by the students' "exposed thongs and butt-skimming skirts." A high-maintenance parent tries to bully him to boost a grade to A-minus from B-plus, while another sets him up in a rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper West Side.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Trees, 37, said that in his five years as a history teacher at Horace Mann he noticed a lot of "entertaining things that would make a good story."

"The book is a novel. It's not meant to be Horace Mann, but it definitely draws on my experiences here," he said.

As a graduate of the Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, Mr. Trees is no stranger to the world of the wealthy. He also received a degree from Princeton and a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia. The onslaught of tell-all books about the children who reside in the city's wealthiest zip codes and the people who educate them has some schools now talking about asking teachers to sign nondisclosure forms.

"The Nanny Diaries," which centers on nannies dealing with the city's wealthy 4-year-olds, kicked off the slew of books. The most recent additions include "Glamorous Disasters," a novel by a 27-year-old Harvard graduate, Eliot Schrefer, about an Upper East Side SAT tutor who rakes in $395 apiece to boost the scores of 16-year-olds. In "The Ivy Chronicles," author Karen Quinn takes readers inside the insane world of what parents will do to get their tots into kindergarten.

Mr. Trees called himself an "equal opportunity satirist" who makes fun of parents, teachers, and students. So far, he says that the head of school is laughing along with him. "His reaction has been supportive. I know that he's concerned about what people will say about it, but he told me that he thought the book was funny," Mr. Trees said.

If the book generates problems for Horace Mann, Mr. Trees said he might be out of a job. Other private school principals said they couldn't believe that he would be invited back.

"As far as I know, I'm still coming back to teach," Mr. Trees said. "To be honest about it, clearly not everybody at school is happy about the book. I'm hopeful that once the book comes out and people read it, it will be fine."

In the meantime he has at least a few supporters. "Some parents are fulfilling a fantasy life through their children," a parent at Horace Mann who asked not to be identified said about the book release. "Some parents are embarrassingly over-involved and become stereotypes of themselves. So many of them are drooping with money and want everybody to know it."

—Deborah Kolben, The New York Sun
5/19/2006

When Something’s Not Quite Right

Some meaningful questions include: “Is my kid comfortable in class?” “Can they stand still or wait in line?” “Do you see growth?” “Are there separation issues?”

Just because your child experiences a blip in development doesn’t necessarily mean he or she needs special education. “Take baby steps,” one early childhood teacher advised. “But, trust your instincts. If there’s consistent trouble, talk to your teacher.”

According to this teacher, starting at square one is a big thing and asking teachers good questions is the right way to begin. Some meaningful questions include: “Is my kid comfortable in class?” “Can they stand still or wait in line?” “Do you see growth?” “Are there separation issues?”

The extent of trouble depends — and there’s a wide spectrum. Among the problems: behavioral, neurological, academic, developmental, and more. With the help of experts, Junior Ivy League offers some guidance for parents who suspect that their child may be in need of services for special education.

The good news is that most children can be helped; the bad is the heartbreak that parents keenly feel, and that often remediation takes tons of time, work, and a toll on the family.

Karen Quinn, author of “The Ivy Chronicles,” a hysterical, yet charming take on the city’s private school admissions scene, found her son’s speech delays at three-and-a-half were the result of reoccurring ear infections and the subsequent fluid that built up. He couldn’t hear, so speech delays naturally ensued. Quinn found the solution by having tubes inserted into her son’s ears. But, by that time Sam had bombed his ERB, and was in need of special ed services.

Luckily, Quinn a savvy parent knew to take Sam’s evaluations to the city, “We received funding for a SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher), who followed him around his preschool several days a week.” She also received money for speech therapy and occupational therapy.

“Beyond that,” recalled Quinn. “I worked with Sam every night for about half an hour…I made it my business to find out what we could do together that would help him grow developmentally.”

She said, “To him, it was playing, but I knew we were augmenting all the special support he was already getting through his preschool and city services.”

A year later, Sam took the ERB again and scored the highest in his preschool class. His delays were gone, even his teachers couldn’t tell.

But, results vary. Not every child is as lucky as Sam.

Some parents just can’t work with their children, because either the child is resistant or the parent isn’t up to the job. Nanci Brody, a special educator for 18 years and parent of a son who required additional services. He’s now a graduating high school senior. Brody spearheads advocacy groups, like SPIN (Students & Parents Information Network Support), and the first Annual Spring Resource Fair. The fair will be from 3:30 to 7 p.m. at the JCC of Manhattan (the email is: spinsinfo@aol.com).

There was no way Brody was going to tackle the task of working with her son, Matt, so she hired tutors for reasonable fees to do the job. “When children are tutored by their parents,” she said, “it can be an emotionally charged experience.” Brody points out that too often children will worry too much about disappointing mom and dad, and miss out on what’s being taught.

In their new book, “A Parent’s Guide to Special Education in New York City and the Metropolitan Area,”(Teachers College Press, June 2006), co-authors, Laurie DuBos and Jana Fromer offer help to parents, who are often too overwhelmed by emotion and bureaucracy to be effective advocates for their children in need. DuBos is a 30-year veteran in the field special education and an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School at The College of New Rochelle, and co-founder of the Gillen Brewer School. Fromer is the mother of an 11-year-old son, currently enrolled at the Mary McDowell Center for Learning.

Early signs are often the most telling, “My first clue was his speech delay and three-and a half,” recounted Fromer.

“Basically,” she said, “he appeared to be in his own world. He was a sunny, little blond bundle of happiness. But when you looked further, you expected to hear speech developing and it wasn’t. He maybe used 100 words.” It took her a little while before she could figure it all out. Now when she walks onto a playground. she can tell who may have issues just by who will allow their space to be invaded by another child and who won’t.

Fromer rolled up her sleeves, spending hours upon hours of testing —first for speech, then onto occupational therapy for motor skills, and physical adaptiveness. Then, filling out form after form, she talks about her challenges, barely finding enough time to mention her son’s myriad of good qualities.

“A big thing is filling out forms,” Fromer said. “Your social history and an in-depth family history, which you realize you’ll probably be doing for the rest of your life.”

Obviously, each child is different, but with a yeoman’s effort, a child with special needs can be mainstreamed and do exceptionally well, like Sam who is thriving at his top private school. With other children there may be less success, but they can still make it with their self esteem intact with ample effort and support.

DuBos offers two scenarios. The best: “The young child who receives early intervention programs and services who is able to remain in an inclusive setting. Or, for the slightly older child who receives intervention and services as soon as possible so they can learn to compensate for learning difficulties and gain self-confidence in their skills.” And the worst: “No intervention that often leads to failure in school, poor self-esteem, dropping out of school with limited skills for work and life.”

—Victoria Goldman, VictoriaGoldman.net

Baby Shall Enroll: Mommy Knows

When Tracy Geller Doyle gave birth to her son almost three years ago, she made two phone calls, one to her temple to ask that her son's name be put on the nursery school waiting list, and one to Free to Be Under Three, a language-building mommy-and-me class on the Upper East Side.

"I literally called from the hospital bed to put his name on the wait list," Mrs. Doyle recalled. "If you want to get into Free to Be, you have to do it right away."

As if dressing their babies in $90 designer jeans and ensconcing them in $700 strollers wasn't enough, upper-middle-class parents in Manhattan are now making sure their infants and toddlers are enrolled in the right play group.

Of a different breed than classes at the local Y.M.C.A., these programs can cost upward of $500 for a series of lessons, say, in music, swimming or art and are sending parents into competition mode well before the typical preschool scramble.

The increased jockeying for popular programs, some with monthslong waiting lists, is fueled by word of mouth, as one mother tells another how much her son loved learning his ABC's to disco music. Some classes have acquired the reputation among parents—exaggerated, it seems—of being feeder programs to preschools that are feeder programs to private schools.

Parents often feel lucky just to get into some of these playgroups. Earlier this year, Nanne Puritz Allecia, who lives on the Upper East Side, waited by the phone to enroll her son in a class for 6-month-olds at Little Maestros, a popular music program with nine locations around the city. One of the program's most impressive features is a live adult band at every class, complete with five vocalists, a drummer, guitarist, piano player and sometimes a saxophonist.

Ms. Allecia called on enrollment day precisely at 8 a.m. and was shocked to learn her son would be filling one of the last two spots. "This was sight unseen," she said. "I didn't know anything about the class, I just knew about the hype." Enrichment classes have become more competitive at a time when the number of young children in the city is increasing. According to census estimates, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan rose by more than 25 percent between 2000 and 2004, after years of decline.

"It's become a craze in the city to get into a mommy-and-me class," said Catherine Shepard, the mother of a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old. Her boys have taken gym and art classes and have recently learned about music with stuffed animals at the Diller-Quaile School of Music on East 95th Street, where the cost of a yearlong program ranges from $1,290 to $5,745.

"I've been to parties or lunches with people while they're pregnant and they're like, 'Oh my gosh, I have to sign up for this or that,' " Mrs. Shepard said. "When I grew up in Manhattan, you went to the park and on play dates and that was that."

The obsession with playgroups is relatively recent, child experts say.

"Basically, all of a sudden you can't stay at home with the baby," said Dr. Michel Cohen, the founder of TriBeCa Pediatrics. "That's the new trend." Dr. Cohen, who wrote "The New Basics: A-Z Baby & Child Care for the Modern Parent" (HarperCollins, 2004), said enrichment classes don't necessarily make a difference to a child's development. "The child is often oblivious to what's going on," he said. The biggest beneficiaries might be the stay-at-home parents, especially in the winter, when they can feel most isolated.

Parents say they like classes because they provide socializing for both themselves and their youngsters. Some say they sign up because they want to give their child every opportunity to flourish, and they fear that without the classes, their youngster might be at a disadvantage.

"I want my child to have any edge another child has," said Andrew San Marco, whose 3-year-old daughter takes four classes a week at a cost of $6,000 a year. He said the Little Maestros playgroup, has enhanced her vocabulary.

"She's very well rounded," he said.

He also said he believed that her classes had helped her gain admission to the private preschool on the Upper East Side she now attends. But Karen Quinn, a former preschool and kindergarten admissions adviser who wrote the novel "The Ivy Chronicles," said that although schools like to see that a child "hasn't been sitting at home watching 'Barney' all day," they don't care whether the child has been enrolled in a playgroup that has "a degree of cachet" or a class at a place like Gymboree. Some parents choose a particular playgroup because they have their eye on a preschool connected to it. One woman, who spoke anonymously to avoid offending anyone at the school, enrolled her child in a class at a Park Avenue synagogue and said her child was later accepted into the nursery school there.

"I was told by friends that it's the best way to increase your chances," she said. "But when you join up they tell you being in this class is not going to help you get in."

Whatever the parents' motivation, enrollment in many playgroups is swelling. Glenn Pepper, who runs Take Me to the Water, a swim program at 22 private pools across Manhattan, said he adds staff members to handle calls on the first day of enrollment for his $300 spring sessions for babies. "We'll book about 1,000 spots in the first seven or eight hours," Mr. Pepper said.

Marni Konner, who founded Little Maestros four years ago, said enrollment had grown to 115 classes of up to 20 children each, from 7 classes of about 10 children each. Tuition is $360 to $680 a session, depending on length. "We get about 50 calls each day from people we've never heard from wanting to put their kids on the wait list or mailing list," she said. Some parents, she added, pay for a summer session even if they don't plan to attend, so they can retain priority registration in the fall.

Mr. Pepper said irate parents have threatened to picket because they didn't get into the class they wanted. Ms. Konner said she and her staff members regularly console crying parents and have been given baskets of gourmet food or luxury gift certificates by hopeful — or grateful — families.

Joe Robertson, who runs the ever-popular Free to Be Under Three playgroup at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side (tuition: $425 to $575 for 12 classes ), said he gets gift offers from parents trying to move children up the waiting list. "We once had a woman who was sure we needed a grand piano for our program," he said. "I said, 'Well, thank you, but it's first come first served. Even my godson had to wait.' "

Sometimes Mr. Robertson talks mothers out of enrolling a child at all. "We'll call them with a spot that's opened up and they can't do it because every single day they have two or three things. I tell them, 'I don't think you need another class.' "

Still, some parents won't be dissuaded. Mrs. Doyle, who had her son wait-listed from the maternity ward, said she had second thoughts about his being in three classes at just one year old. But she did it anyway.

"My husband thought it was way too much, my mother thought it was way too much," she said. She now spends $5,000 to $10,000 a year on mommy-and-me programs for her son, who is now 2½, she said. "I think it's ridiculous, but at the same time I'd do anything for my kid."

—Tatiana Boncompagni, New York Times
5/11/2006

Tutoring Through The Terrible 2's

TRIBECA-based tutor Karen Quinn began to suspect that her job was far too stressful—for her as well as her clientele—the day that one of her students blew a crucial admissions interview. "He pooped his Pampers," she says. "The parents were beside themselves! They didn't know what to do. They pretended it was the little girl standing next to him." Alas, it didn't work: "These nursery schools want the kids potty trained, and the child did not get in," Quinn says. "He blew it with the poop."

Until she quit in 2003—after just three years—Quinn co-owned and operated a private tutoring service for toddlers whose parents were desperately angling to get them into one of the city's "Baby Ivys," those nursery and pre-Ks that are believed to be pipelines to the best private schools. (She turned her experiences into a bestselling book called "The Ivy Chronicles.")

Quinn—who was formerly a marketer at American Express (her business partner was an educational social worker)—saw 20 to 30 kids a year and charged a $2,500 flat fee. Most of the time, she says, she was just counseling the parents, since "there's nothing you can do with 11/2-year-olds, really."

So Quinn learned how to gingerly handle the most demanding of parents: "I had one father who hired an acting coach to work with his child because he thought he had a 'blah' personality. He was 4. He wanted the kid to sparkle." Another 4-year-old faked a heart attack in the middle of a test: "I think he sucked up all the stress his parents had over it," Quinn says. Still, she maintains that most parents were "nice, normal people" who just lost perspective.

Like one of Quinn's former clients, a native New Yorker who was shocked by how competitive she found herself when it came to her only daughter's preschool education. "What really got me going—we didn't get into our own temple's preschool!" she says, still indignant. "We were friendly with the cantor and the rabbi, and they ran a very prestigious preschool. I thought it was a slam-dunk."

Though her husband "didn't buy into it," she took her daughter to Quinn. "We were working on her math skills, her life skills." Ultimately, it made no difference: her daughter's score on the ERB—the test little private-school aspirants must take—didn't spike.

"These parents are coming from a good place, the 'nothing-but-the-best-for-my-kids' place, but it's a cultural sickness," says the Bridge Coaching Institute's Ellen McGrath. "It's so destructive. What you're teaching your kid is that they're not good enough, that status and power are the most important things. And you're setting up other people to control and manipulate them."

Quinn herself quit after one of her charges threw an "age-appropriate" temper tantrum. "She held up her hands and yelled, 'Stop! Stop! I'm only 4!' And then I thought, 'I don't think this is what I want to keep doing.' "

—Maureen Callahan, New York Post
5/9/2006

Extra Credit

A phalanx of baby carriages sporting some of Manhattan's toniest tots was perambulating into the Whitney Museum's March 1 member preview of the first truly superb Biennial show in decades. The young parents seemed especially eager to give Junior a head start on learning how to play well with others—if not yet on a global scale, then on the Manhattan benefit society circuit. "The earlier they get exposed to this stuff, the better," says New York celebrity biographer, Mark Bego. "You've got to get kids into fundraising before they know how much work it is." Or apparently, before they even know how to talk. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering's annual Bunny Hop charity event in March, 15-month-old carriage cruiser Dylan Rem was one of hundreds of pre-school attendees.

But Sloan's family events are not just about getting parents to pledge. Kids—the older ones, anyway—also pitch in. This year, Society Kids Kick In—a new junior-junior fundraising group ( 8- to 12-year-olds)—raised $1,359 at the Hop for the hospital's pediatrics center. Armed with buckets, the children were set loose at the event to hit up adults for spare change—and then some—in a new program called Every Penny Counts.

Truth be told, kiddie charity benefits are happening all over the city this season. As any Manhattan mom knows all too well by now, the baby boomlet—an eruption of twins and triplets—is inspiring even charities to get more family-friendly this year. Another reason for the ubiquity of the stroller set at charity events this season? Author Karen Quinn says it's 'new-money guilt.' "Parents don't want to raise a brat." Indeed, they want to expose little Johnny to real-life experiences, such as giving toys to those children less fortunate, she says. But the biggest driver of all may be simple practicality. The rivalry among Manhattan parents to win a coveted spot for their child in one of the city's elite private kindergartens is—by all accounts this season—the most grueling in recent memory. Not only must parents write an essay, but they must also endure an admissions interview. Parents can count on being asked, " 'What do you do together as a family?' " says Quinn, author of the 2005 national best-seller, The Ivy Chronicles, a humorous, fictionalized account of the most nerve-wracking proccess in the world. "Sure, you can talk about how you love to sail together on your yacht or ski the French Alps. But you want to balance that message (which says that you can afford life's luxuries so you can also afford to make a nice donation to the school) with talk of how you and your children built a house in Guatemala last summer for Habitat for Humanity (which says something very nice about who you are and the values you want to impart to your children)."

Of course, involving the children in charity early isn't just about keeping up appearances. Harry Haun, a writer for Playbill, says the first time Broadway's Actors' Fund held its annual "Nothing Like a Dame" event—a performance benefit for actress Phyllis Newman's Women's Health lnitiative—"the most memorable sketch involved choreographer-mothers literally throwing their babies around the stage." This year, one of those babies, Catherine Hurlin, now 10, returned to dance-and to fundraise. Which just goes to show that sometimes, what goes around comes around.

Charity truly does begin at home.

—Marcy MacDonald, Contribute New York
April 2006

In Baby Boomlet, Preschool Derby Is the Fiercest Yet

The fierce competition for private preschool in New York City has been propelled to such a frenzy this year by the increased numbers of children vying for scarce slots that it could be mistaken for a kiddie version of "The Apprentice."

Take the case of the Rabbani twins, who live on the Upper West Side. Their father, Usman Rabbani, graduated from Yale 10 years ago, has a master's degree from Harvard and works for a major drug company in Manhattan. Despite his accomplishments, Mr. Rabbani was stumped when he sat down to compose a short essay a couple of months ago.

His assignment? To profile his two toddlers. Of his 18-month-old son Humza he eventually wrote, "He knows that birds like to sit on rooftops when they are not on the ground, that cats and dogs like to be petted, and that the blue racquetballs in the can belong in the racquetball court upstairs."

About Humza's twin, Raza, he wrote, "He is happy to point out all his body parts when asked."

With those words, Mr. Rabbani conquered parental writer's block and entered this year's version of the altered universe of private preschool admissions. After years of decline, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan, where the most competitive programs are located, increased by 26 percent between 2000 and 2004, according to census estimates. Yet the number of slots has not kept apace.

"These are the kids who are 2, 3, 4, and 5 years old now, trying to get into preschool and kindergarten," said Amanda Uhry, the owner of Manhattan Private School Advisors, a consulting firm for parents. "And it's a nightmare."

This is the moment of maximum anxiety for parents, many of whom have applied to so-called safety preschools, just hoping their children will be accepted somewhere. And the hot pursuit of slots has continued despite tuition that can run over $10,000 a year for 3-year-olds. Acceptance letters were sent out last Wednesday for private kindergarten programs, to be followed next week by the telltale thick or thin envelopes from the preschools.

"We're feeling it," said Ellen Bell, an admissions official at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, an elite private institution. "It's a real problem for us to deal with the number of applicants and deal with them properly the way we want to, to be fair with every family. These numbers are just becoming overwhelming."

"I see a greater angst in the parent, and that troubles me, and my heart goes out to them," she added. "We're sending out more news that people don't want to get."

Part of the problem is that the number of twins and triplets born to women in New York City has increased, according to city Health Department statistics.

In 1995, there were 3,707 twin births in all the boroughs; in 2003, there were 4,153; and in 2004, there were 4,655. Triplet births have also risen, from 60 in 1995, to 299 in 2004. Because preschools strive for gender and age balance in generally small classes — and also, some parents suspect, as many potential parental donors as possible — it is harder to get multiple slots in one class.

"I tell families that they may increase, hopefully double or triple, their options, by telling schools they are willing to separate their children," said Emily Glickman, whose firm, Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, helps parents win admission to private schools.

"Unfortunately we are in a very cutthroat climate right now, where the schools have the power," Ms. Glickman added.

New York City has about half the capacity it needs for its youngest students, public and private, said Betty Holcomb, the policy director of Child Care Inc., an agency in Chelsea that provides referral services for early child care.

"Even if you're rich, you're not guaranteed a place in a preschool," Ms. Holcomb said.

So this year, the application essay, which parents might once have dashed off in a few sentences, has become a reason for more hand wringing.

"What do you say about someone who just popped out?" Mr. Rabbani asked. "You're just getting to know them yourself."

In a sign of how overwrought the process has become, production is in progress on a pilot for a cable television reality series, "Manhattan Mom," about the daily travails of a New York woman. A producer said the series would include at least one episode focusing on the mother's struggles to get her 5-year-old into a top private kindergarten.

But none of the 25 or so private schools the producers called will allow the producers to film any part of the process.

"They don't want publicity," said Rachel Tung, one of the producers.

Few schools were interested in talking about the application process to a reporter, either; nearly a dozen did not return calls for comment. But many parents poured out their frustration.

The preschool essays are just part of the problem, they say. Time-consuming interviews, observed play sessions, rising tuition costs and application fees, preferences shown to siblings and families who have connections to the school, and the increasing difficulty of gaining admission for twins and triplets, parents say, are making the process more stressful for the entire family.

"I didn't get a real sense of competition like this until I was doing my college applications, and even that seemed easier," said Mr. Rabbani, who went to high school in a small Canadian town near Buffalo.

Lori Malloy, who lives on the Upper West Side, watched friends try to get their children into preschool last year, and she remembered thinking, "I'm not going to get stressed out like the rest of these ladies." But when Ms. Malloy, a federal prosecutor, applied for her twins, a boy and a girl, she asked her husband to write the application essay.

"I was so nervous," she said, "and I'm someone who took the LSAT, who's written for the federal judiciary and in law review." The family applied to four schools.

"There's not a week that goes by that I don't regret that I didn't apply to three or four more," Ms. Malloy said.

Consultants are reaping benefit from the competition. Victoria Goldman, a consultant and an author of guides to Manhattan private schools, said, "This year, I've gotten more calls for nursery school than kindergarten."

In writing the essay, parents can turn to the seminars that focus on "idea starters for application essays." Some good words to use in describing your child? Enthusiastic, creative, inquisitive, sensitive, consultants say.

Ms. Uhry, the consultant, said it was almost impossible to overstate the importance of the essay.

"The first way of separating the wheat from the chaff is to get rid of those essays in which the parents couldn't be bothered enough to write a decent essay or take this whole process seriously," she said. "It is your calling card. It is your entree."

Still, no one can say for sure how much the essay matters. Some consultants think it is more important to have a strong contact or family friend already in the school of choice.

Mr. Rabbani's advice? "You have to get creative in describing your child."

Hence, his son Humza, in his essay, is "a soft-hearted jock." And Humza's brother Raza is "a thinker and a mischievous lover."

Perhaps Mr. Rabbani knows what he's talking about: Humza and Raza got into their parents' first choice of preschool two weeks ago. They were notified before most other parents because they applied through an early decision program.

—Susan Saulny, New York Times
3/3/2006

A Learning Experience

The anxiety in Manhattan was palpable last week as parents made last-ditch efforts to get their children into the city's top private schools before acceptance letters are sent out in the next few days: strategizing over recommendations, pressuring influential friends to put in a good word, stalking the sidelines as nursery school directors traded their children's future like stock on the Nasdaq.

Of course, it's all worth it in the end, right? Everyone knows that private schools outperform public.

Not so fast. A recent study by the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana has concluded that when you control for demographic differences, fourth graders attending public schools do better in math than those in private school. At eighth grade, the two groups performed comparably.

For middle-class parents like myself who struggle with tuition payments, this is important news. In 1996, when our daughter was ready for kindergarten, my husband and I thought we had two choices — private school or a move to the suburbs. Based on park-bench talk about public schools — lead paint, children spilling out of the classrooms, out-of-control students — we didn't even consider the possibility.

So, with "The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools" as our bible, we toured, we applied, we waited and we were rewarded with acceptance to a fine independent school for my first child and later for my second.

Back then, we had friends who sent their children to P.S. 6 and P.S. 41, schools that I now know are excellent. But secretly, I pitied those children. They weren't getting the low student-teacher ratio, the amazing facilities and daily doses of art, music and physical education that my little darlings enjoyed.

Five years later, and with some personal experience under my belt, I became an adviser for parents seeking places at top schools. When I started out, I toured almost every school in the city. To my surprise, I discovered wonderful public schools. These schools — some of which required that you live in the zone to attend, others that your child test, interview or win a lottery for a place — were run by committed principals and experienced teachers (who are paid more than private school teachers, by the way). The families were involved, and many of the schools offered unique enrichment programs.

By the time our children were ready for middle school, the burden of private school tuition had hit us hard. We earned too much to qualify for scholarships and not enough to write checks for $60,000 a year without taking on a second mortgage. With my newfound knowledge of public schools, I moved my daughter to a highly praised one on the Lower East Side. Although we didn't live in the neighborhood, my daughter was interviewed (as were my husband and I), tested and accepted into the school. The teachers were as committed as any we had known, calling me at home to discuss strategies to deal with academic issues when they arose, working with my daughter after school when necessary. Because of a learning disability, we moved her to a private program for high school, but our experience with public school was stellar.

When I had my business, clients hesitating between public and private would ask my opinion. I would always say if money is no object, choose private — the facilities are better, the classes are smaller, more subjects are offered and the "extras" are unequaled. If money is an object, go public. If you can't get your child into Lower Lab, the Anderson Program, Hunter College Elementary or a gifted and talented program, then move to a neighborhood with a highly rated school, like TriBeCa for P.S. 234 or P.S. 89, Greenwich Village for P.S. 41, the Upper West Side for P.S. 87 or the Upper East Side for P.S. 6, just to name some of the best. Take advantage of these great public schools through fifth grade. You can rethink the decision for middle and high school, but you'll have already saved about $180,000 per child.

With the weight of tuition bearing down on us again, I wish we had taken advantage of the city's best public schools in the early years. For middle-class parents waiting anxiously for this week's admissions letters, it's something to think about. Who knows, your publicly educated child may very well outperform his private-school counterparts.

—Karen Quinn, New York Times
2/19/2006

"Ivy" Author Dishes Dirt on NYC Swells

Get over Narnia. Here comes "The Ivy Chronicles."

This chick-lit book is penned by Denver alum Karen Quinn. She's the daughter of the late Sonny Nedler of Sonny's on Fillmore Jewelry in Cherry Creek. Mom Shari and brother Michael still run the shop. The book is out in paperback and Karen's in town riding the wave.

"Ivy" was a sleeper hit when it hit the shelves a year ago. It's about a NYC woman running a biz called Smart Kids that helps get the little yard monkeys into exclusive kindergartens. Who would have thought it would strike such a chord?

Well, Catherine Zeta-Jones, for one, who immediately bought the rights to play Ivy in a movie, with Jerry Weintraub set to produce. The book went on to became a huge bestseller in England and was picked as a "summer read" for the "Richard and Judy" show, the UK version of "Oprah." It started to sell like a million little Ivies.

Next up from Quinn, a book titled "Wife in the Fast Lane." It's another look at the rich in NYC.

Quinn is back in Denver for a few days for a series of talks. She'll be speaking at 6:30 tonight at a Fashion Group International gathering at the Denver Press Club. Tix are $30, which includes hors d'oeuvres. Call 720-922-9715.

—Bill Husted, Denver Post
2/16/2006

Basic Instinct

Don’t shush that inner voice—it’s trying to tell you something

Ever left a boring job with a great benfits for a stimulating job without, and had no regrets? Or went ahead and did something that you knew was right for you, despite the trepidations of friends and family? What guided you? Call it instinct, intuition or your heart’s desire. But if you’re like most women, you usually ignore it and listen to your head instead. “Women often think that other people know more, or know better, so we tend to follow what others tell us,” says Gail Harris, author of Your Heart Knows the Answer. “But if you listen to your heart instead, you will almost always do what’s right for you.” These four women learned this lesson, and you can, too.

From high-powered to happy

Her grandmother has her own clothing manufacturing company in Manhattan and her mom has a Ph.D. in early childhood education, so it was pretty much a given that Karen Quinn, 50, of New York City, would pursue a high-powered career, and she did. She spent a few years practicing law and 15 years in corporate marketing. Then, when she was laid off in 2001, she and a friend used their entrepreneurial talents to open a school-admissions consulting firm in Manhattan. But after two years, Karen had to face the facts: The business made enough money to supports one person, not two. Karen bowed out, but knew she couldn’t be out of work forever.

From head to heart

“My husband wanted me to get a job,” Karen says, “but for the first time in my life, I wanted to do something I’d thought about since childhood: I wanted to write a book.” She had just finished reading The Nanny Diaries and thought maybe she could write a ficticious book about a school-admissions consultant in Manhatttan who loses her job but finds herself. She asked her husband to give her three months to draft a novel. Every day she went to her computer and worked. “I never let doubt creep in,” she says. “I just believed I could do it.”

The Payoff

As she wrote, Karen told special people in her life, including her kids’ babysitter, about her project. The babysitter remembered that a former client was a literary agent and volunteered to give her a call. To Karen’s delight, the agent loved the manuscript and offered to represent her. The Ivy Chronicles became a bestseller in 2005, and it’s now slated to be made into a movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Heart Wisdom

“When you believe in yourself and let others know, you will automatically attract people who want to support you,” says Karen, whose second book, Wife in the Fast Lane, will be published in the United Kingdom later this year and in the U.S. in 2007.

—Sally Stich, Women’s Day
1/3/2006

Cracking the Kindergarten Code

Demystifying the process of getting your child into a good school, in eleven easy lessons.

In the old days, New York City horror stories tended to involve street crime. Nowadays, many of the most chilling tales have to do with getting children into the right kindergarten. “Next year is going to be even worse,” warns Amanda Uhry, the president of Manhattan Private School Advisors, which charges $6,000 to help families get their kids into desirable private elementary schools. “It’s the post-9/11 baby boom. So many more kids were born in the city, and now they’re applying to kindergarten.” Roxana Reid of Smart City Kids adds, “Several nursery schools had ten or more children shut out from getting into school altogether last year” (and had to, gasp, resort to public schools). But is it really true that getting into a good kindergarten in New York City is as tough as getting into an Ivy League college? There’s no question that there’s a crushing demand-and-supply imbalance at the dozen or so top-tier schools, entrée to which seemingly assures future success for junior and unrivaled cachet right now for Mom and Dad. It’s true enough, too, that at those schools—Dalton, Collegiate, Trinity, Spence, Chapin, Brearley, Horace Mann, et al.—your kid’s application might not even be looked at, much less seriously considered, if you don’t submit it within the first few days after the applications are made available, around Labor Day. And since 1997, the number of kids taking the ERB (an aptitude test used by many kindergartens) to get into kindergarten has grown by almost 40 percent. More families are applying to more schools now, too—five or six was the typical number in 2000; now many families apply to nine or ten.

But in fact, the panic and excitement over kindergarten admissions is analogous to, say, half of New York trying to squeeze into the same hypertrendy restaurant on a Saturday night. Sure, you want to go, and you’d love to brag to your friends about sitting next to Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones—who is, incidentally, planning to star in a movie about getting into an exclusive Manhattan kindergarten—but will you have a bad meal if you don’t? If you take a deep breath and realize that there are roughly 70 private schools in New York—and a growing number of great public schools, too—and that many of these, far from second choices, might even provide a better experience, you’ll discover that you can be much more in control of the process than you’d believed possible. Herewith, the strategies and tactics of getting your child into a Manhattan kindergarten.

1. Who’s the most important person in the application process?
The ultimate gatekeeper is . . . your preschool director. “The schools review everything with the nursery-school director. ‘Is the kid really like that?’ and ‘What about the parents?’ And it’s the nursery-school director’s job to tell them,” says Victoria Goldman, author of The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools.

Not only must directors serve three masters—individual families, the class as a whole, and the school itself—but an awful lot can ride on how well they play the admissions game.

Even a “Baby Ivy” preschool like the 92nd Street Y sometimes places as few as 15 percent of its little graduates at the elite elementary and ongoing schools. So at pre-Ks all over the city, directors are faced with the task of deciding which deserving children are a little more deserving than the rest.

The process is called brokering, which sounds kind of evil, but in a numbers game, where a pre-K’s main objective is to avoid a shutout—a kid getting rejected everywhere—“there’s not much choice,” said one harried head of school as she took a break between parent conferences last week.

Always remember that your preschool director is not fully on your side. “Your pre-K director’s primary loyalty is to getting everyone placed somewhere, versus getting your kid placed in your ideal school,” notes Emily Glickman, an admissions consultant at Abacus. “That often places parents and directors in an adversarial position.”

One father of a boy now in first grade at a good second-tier school is still bitter when he recalls telling his son’s nursery-school director at their first admissions conference that the family had a very good connection at Dalton. She pushed them to make Dalton their first choice, but after they visited, they found that they much preferred Ethical Culture and even Calhoun over Dalton. Come January, they sent a first-choice letter to Ethical. “She didn’t say so directly, but she was clearly not pleased we didn’t make Dalton our first choice,” he says. The result: The boy was admitted to neither. “I should have kept my mouth shut until we knew which school we really wanted,” he says.

No matter how perfect you think Trinity is for your child, your nursery-school director won’t recommend your kid if she has any doubts. Linda Herman, who runs the Weekday School, acknowledges as much. “The schools have to trust me. If I send them a couple of kids who can’t cut the academics when I said they could, maybe they won’t listen so hard the next year when I recommend someone. I have to be honest.”

Well-connected preschool directors can be dictatorial when it comes to selecting schools. “Parents would come to us very upset because their nursery-school director had such strong opinions on which school their child should go to,” says Karen Quinn, a founder of Smart City Kids and the author of The Ivy Chronicles, a novel based on her clients’ and her own experiences of applying to kindergarten. “Christ Church and the Mandell School are among the five or six pre-Ks that stand out for their dictatorial ways,” says a consultant. “But at least those directors tell you to your face.”

Then there are nursery-school directors who just aren’t good at their jobs. One woman whose son applied last year initially found herself shut out in February, despite assurances from her pre-K director that she’d have no problem getting into at least one of the six schools she was wait-listed for. The director also strongly discouraged her from collecting recommendation letters from connected friends “because, she said, after the Grubman thing [an admissions scandal involving telecommunications consultant Jack Grubman and the 92nd Street Y], admissions don’t want any of that,” she says.

The best way to get your pre-K director in your corner is to lay the groundwork long before your applications are due. There’s no guarantee that your director will advocate for you over another family when Riverdale’s admissions director calls and says, “Who do I take?” But you can avoid the opposite. Volunteer, give, participate in school social events, get on a committee, and don’t make trouble.

2. Will bribery work?
In a word, no. “Not only will making a big contribution to the kindergarten of your dreams not help you get in, it will hurt you,” warns Uhry. The schools don’t appreciate being treated like the maître d’ at Per Se.

And the most selective schools, finding themselves flush with both healthy endowments and negative press over preferential treatment for those who can add extra zeros to donation checks, have put out the word that money doesn’t talk like it once did.

Of course, not all schools are so loftily uninterested in money. “Look at the schools in the Bronx,” says one admissions expert. “With all those acres and buildings, they’re the size of a small college. For them, a $20 million endowment is nothing, so you better believe they’re aware of how much you can give.”

Chapin, for example, makes no bones about its expectations. “Annual Giving makes everything at Chapin possible,” it posts on its Website, listing the gap between tuition and cost ($6,900 per student and growing). The schools, however, can’t come right out and ask what you’ll give. So consider giving to your nursery school. Your pre-K director may remember your generosity at a crucial moment. “That’s definitely one of the topics of conversation, and it doesn’t have to be asked explicitly. Your pre-K director will let the school know,” says one consultant.

3. Should you despair of sending Junior to an Ivy if he doesn’t get into a top-tier kindergarten?
Contrary to popular belief, the top-tier schools are not a go–to–Ivy League–school–of–your–choice pass. Only a few of them are able to send as many as a quarter of their graduating seniors to an Ivy or Ivy Equivalent. Not bad but not extraordinary, considering the high number of kids who have an admissions edge at Ivy League schools by virtue of being legacy kids. If you go to one of the top few elementary and ongoing schools, you’re competing against some very well-connected families.

This means that “coming from schools like Spence and Dalton can actually be a disadvantage,” says Michele Hernandez, a former admissions official at Dartmouth who runs a college-admissions consulting service. “The admissions staffs at the Ivies bend over backwards not to take kids from those schools,” Hernandez contends. “Unless your kid is at or near the top at those schools, your chances of getting in from the top of a mid-level school are probably better,” she says.

It’s important to evaluate what getting your child into a top-tier school means to you. “There’s this whole mystique to getting into the ‘right’ kindergarten that goes way beyond putting your child in a school where she’ll thrive and be able to get into a good college,” says Mary Knox, a mother of a second-grader who chose to send her daughter to public school for kindergarten and first grade. “My friends thought I was crazy not to apply to private schools. It speaks to a basic human psychology of ‘Do I measure up?,’ which is magnified by ten in New York.”

4. So what are the alternatives to the top tier?
Many more schools are now worth—relatively speaking—their $25,000-plus tuitions. As it’s become harder to get into the top schools, kids who might have gotten into a Fieldston in years past are going elsewhere and lifting the levels of other schools. “There are so many more schools I’m comfortable recommending to parents as high-quality and academically ambitious than just five years ago,” says Gabriella Rowe, director of the Mandell School.

So go ahead and shoot the moon with a Dalton or Collegiate, but balance that with selections from the city’s many other high-quality schools, preferably ones that fit your kid’s—and your own—style. To find them, look for schools putting their new money to good use via new libraries and gyms, lower student-teacher ratios, and more experienced teachers, often poached from top-tier programs. Allen-Stevenson, Birch Wathen Lenox, Browning, Cathedral, Hewitt, Marymount, St. Hilda’s & St. Hugh’s, Trevor Day, Poly Prep, and Brooklyn Friends get nods as schools on their way up, as do hot schools like Bank Street and Columbia Grammar, which are receiving as many applicants as the top tier.

Fieldston Lower School often gets short shrift because most parents apply to Ethical Culture instead. Claremont Prep is only in its first year but has great facilities, and nursery-school directors say parents are giving it strong recommendations.

5. Is public school a viable option?
Of course, no matter how many private-school obsessives choose not to think so. The answer to this one largely comes down to three words: location, location, location. If that sounds like we’re talking real estate instead of education, well, we are. Save for the handful of non-zone schools, such as Midtown West and NEST, that accept students from the entire district or in some cases the entire city in a process much like private school, and the “test-in” programs, headlined by Hunter College Elementary and the Anderson School, and including the gifted-and-talented programs that often determine eligibility according to scores on the Stanford-Binet IQ test or similar tests, landing your child in a quality public elementary school is a real-estate play.

If you live in the Department of Education’s District 2, encompassing the Upper East Side and much of downtown, you’ve got a heckuva chance to benefit from two decades of a district administration that brought in and actively supports terrific principals who’ve hired gifted teachers from around the country, and active and wealthy parent organizations. Even a high-poverty school like P.S. 126 is considered a model of urban education and attracts middle-class families from outside its zone.

Until now, the 239 schools in the city’s gifted-and-talented programs have been administered according to a mishmash of different standards—some using IQ tests, others relying on interviews or the whim of the principals. Though deficient in many ways—many accused them of racial bias—the programs often kept kids in public school who would have gone the private-school route. But next year, schools chancellor Joel Klein is planning to apply uniform standards for gifted-and-talented students citywide, removing much of the guesswork—and loopholes—from the process.

Beyond these options, public school is a real-estate play. There are a few other schools in the city that, to certain families, might even be worth moving for. Tribeca has three great schools: P.S. 234, P.S. 89, and P.S. 150. In east midtown, the Beekman Hill School (P.S. 59) on East 57th Street rivals P.S. 183 and the schools on the Upper East Side, and is considerably smaller—always a virtue. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, the William Penn School’s (P.S. 321) main fault is that it’s too popular—and therefore somewhat overcrowded.

6. Do private-school connections still count?
One legacy dad at one of the top-tier schools who’s been a steady contributor to his alma mater figured on a sure thing when he sent in his son’s application. “I was shocked when they told us he was too young”—admissions jargon for a kid deemed not ready. “Not ready for what? The rigors of morning meeting and blocks?” His son was accepted when he reapplied the following year, “but you better believe we put a lot of work in the second time.”

Gabriella Rowe at the Mandell School sees a seismic shift in the less-than-meritocratic admissions policies. “It’s not just talk. Several schools issued directives to their boards last year that they wouldn’t accept recommendation letters from directors,” she notes.

Programs like Sacred Heart and Friends look askance at people who trumpet their connections. “The best way to turn off Barbara Root [admissions director at Sacred Heart] is to talk about who you know,” says Smart City Kids’ Quinn.

But the revolution, however, is far from complete. Schools like Trinity, Dalton, and Columbia Prep have well-earned reputations for being places where not having a strong connection can mean not getting in.

7. What are six things you shouldn’t say to the admissions officer?
“My son has a mild learning problem.” Though they don’t always like to admit it, most schools shy away from children who have issues that might affect their ability to learn or behave in the classroom. A few years ago, Riverdale’s then-director of admissions told an adviser who asked about the school’s attitude toward kids who might need extra help, “We’re not set up to deal with kids like that.”

“Let’s hang out together.” You may feel like you’ve established a rapport with the admissions director. Great, but don’t spoil it by going too far. One woman ended an interview feeling so good she hugged the admissions director. “Sometimes parents end up feeling so comfortable in their interview, they reveal problems that could raise flags,” Quinn says.

Don’t ask probing, and possibly sensitive, questions. “The proportion of teachers with advanced degrees is an indicator of a school’s commitment to academic excellence,” Rowe says. “But it’s challenging to ask about it at the interview.”

Avoid bragging of any kind, and don’t make any claims for your child unless you can absolutely, positively back them up. One Upper East Sider exaggerated his son’s viola playing, claiming the boy was a virtuoso on an application essay. The school asked him to bring it to the interview to hear his son play. Words like gifted, fantastic, and terrific can sound great coming from a nursery-school director, but from a parent they sound like the crassest hyperbole. If you think your daughter’s a genius, work it into an anecdote about how she’s been crazy about math since she was 2.

Don’t sound rehearsed. “I get the sense of talking to more parents who’ve been prepped for interviews, and it’s a big turnoff for me,” says Ronnie Jankoff, Allen-Stevenson’s admissions director. “I want to get to know the parents, not have people who are coached.” In other words, “admissions officers have astute bullshit monitors,” says one pre-K director.

“And for God’s sake, don’t mention money,” advises Uhry.

8. What’s the best way to talk to an admissions officer?
Ask questions that relate to what each school cares about. For example, Friends cares a lot about creating a community and about community service. You should refer to that in your conversation. Bank Street, which has mixed-age classes, is very concerned that the kindergartners it enrolls can hold their own with the older first-graders. Be prepared to tell stories illustrating how mature little Todd or Sarah is.

And be genuine. That means not showing up for an interview at Sacred Heart wearing Chanel and talking about how important diversity is to you. If you like going to the ballet more than working at a soup kitchen, say so, but shape it positively. Ask questions that relate to your interests: “Is there a dance group, because our family really enjoys going to ballets on weekends.”

9. Should I prep my kid?
The prevailing wisdom states that not only is it unhelpful and wrong to try to give your precious little one a leg up on his classmates, but it’ll come back to bite you where it hurts. Playgrounds are rife with stories of 4-year-olds blurting out, “I’ve done this before,” at the test. ERB testers, everyone warns, are trained to spot kids who’ve been prepped, and admissions directors are on the lookout for children whose test scores don’t match up with the teachers’ reports.

But the fact is, pre-K intelligence tests are notoriously unreliable measures of intelligence—studies show that who conducts the test and where it takes place can alter performance, scores can swing wildly on retesting, and practicing can result in significant increases in performance. What’s more, lots of people prep for the test. “We interviewed 200 families who just completed the application process, and over half reported doing some level of preparation,” says Quinn.

Child experts, from psychologists to educators, warn against outright coaching but say there’s nothing wrong with helping your daughter work on the skills she’ll need to use on the ERBs. “The abilities tested—pattern recognition, comprehension, vocabulary—are skills parents should be stimulating in their children from the time they open their eyes,” says Dr. Chris Lucas of NYU’s Child Study Center.

In other words, there’s prepping, and there’s Prepping.

The same logic applies for the school interview. “Giving your child advance exposure to the kinds of things he’ll be doing or asked in the interviews is perfectly fine, as long as it’s done gently and with your support and assurance,” Dr. Lucas says.

Though most schools won’t hold it against you if you promise your kid an ice cream afterward for playing nice, they don’t take kindly to advising your kid not to tell anyone about it. “That’s a very negative comment on the parent, and we certainly do take note of it if we find out,” says one admissions officer.

A few preparation options that won’t raise red flags: For the tests, get professional help from educational consultants like Sheila Harris, who suggests games, books, and other materials parents can use to help their children develop learning skills, or Roxana Reid, an educational social worker who runs Smart City Kids, and who identifies areas in which children can improve skills that are used in the test and help with the preparation.

Test in the spring. “Kids are often more focused and comfortable in a test setting after nine months of school than when they’ve been off playing for three months over the summer,” notes Reid. New friends, new teachers, and the fall virus season can all result in lower test scores. Also, in the spring the field is smaller and competition lighter because fewer parents think of doing it six months early.

For the interview, let your child know what he’ll be doing. Is it a one-on-one with a teacher, a playgroup, or a combination? Talk about the interview in a positive light. And practice: Arrange show-and-tells with kids he doesn’t know, and have your child speak to unfamiliar adults, first with you present, then without you.

10. What’s the best way to sway a school?
“We always like to know if a family loves us,” says Allen-Stevenson’s Ronnie Jankoff. And nothing says love better than a first-choice letter, the note most families, after much hand-wringing over which to choose, send to the school to which they’d either most like to gain entry, or think they have the best chances of doing so—many times a combination of or compromise between the two. “Even though many schools don’t ask for a first-choice letter, it’s a show of real enthusiasm for and commitment to a particular school, which makes it easier for me to pitch a child to that school,” says Linda Herman, director of the Weekday School.

Why, you may well ask, if so many schools are deluged with applications, should an admissions director care so much whether you tell them that of the eight, or ten, or fifteen schools you applied to, hers is the one you’d most like to send your child to?

The answer lies in the yield—the percentage of families who actually accept a school’s invitation to join their community. It’s a more important number to the admissions department than how many applications it receives. “Admissions directors have to report to boards of directors, and one of the key figures they’re judged on is their yield,” says author Victoria Goldman. In a time when boasting an acceptance rate lower than an Ivy League college inspires yawns, a yield nudging 100 percent is a cause for celebration. “It’s the ultimate indicator of a school’s appeal and the admissions director’s skill,” says Hernandez.

Most schools in the top tier reap yields in the high eighties or nineties. Take 10 to 20 percent for the next rung. “Spence,” says one admissions expert, “supposedly had a 100 percent yield last year.”

Game your choice wisely, because you’ve got only one in your quiver. Some schools just file the letters away; others outright don’t want them. Admissions advisers mentioned Collegiate and Bank Street among the schools that fit into those categories. On the flip side, Trinity, Friends Seminary, and all the girls’ schools except Brearley are said to value them. Schools such as Hewitt and Packer, both making strong efforts to rise into the upper echelons, are also good candidates.

Finally, you may have to use your own judgment, based on the feel you get from touring and interviewing at the schools you liked the most: Do your child’s style and academic inclinations match up with what the school seems to be looking for? And should you send your first-choice letter to the school you like most where you also think you have the best chance of getting into, or the one you most desire? Which strategy you choose often comes down to your attitude toward risk.

11. What if I get shut out?
It doesn’t happen often, despite what the gossip on urbanbaby.com’s New York schools online forum would have you believe, but it happens: “I always get a bunch of calls on February 15 from parents who didn’t get in anywhere,” says Uhry. “It’s what I like to call the start of the second season of the admissions process.”

It may seem like the end of the world, but there are always options. First, get on the phone to all the schools you didn’t end up applying to. “There are always schools that still have openings,” says Uhry. “It’s a matter of talking to admissions directors to see who’s got what.”

Many pre-Ks take kids for an extra year of nursery school, especially when their birthdays run into the second half of the year. Schools like the vaunted 92nd Street Y and the Weekday School often have spaces because so many kids leave for kindergarten at K-8 schools. “Having that extra year with us to mature and do more academic work has been very successful with families that come to us for kindergarten, in terms of placement at elementary schools,” says Linda Herman, director of the Weekday School. “The selective schools like having a child who’s had that extra year of seasoning,” she says.

One downtown mother found that applying after the kindergarten crush was a much easier process. “Instead of 500 applicants, we were one of ten, applying for two spots. It was a much calmer feel,” she says. Her daughter applied to four schools and was accepted at two.

And a mom on the Upper West Side who’s applying for a second time at Trinity this year says, “I know the admissions person now. She’s very sympathetic. I get the feeling she’s pulling for me, because she knows how much I want to get in.”

—Andrew Marks, New York Magazine
11/28/2005

Author Terrified by a Crazed Dad

If anyone tells you it's tough finding a good nursery school place for tiny tots in this country, spare a thought for desperate parents in the States.

Places are so prized, tens of thousands of dollars and occasionally an awful lot more—change hands in a bid to secure a pre-school place for under-fives.

Bestselling author Karen Quinn knows the ins and outs of the business better than most.

She's written an international blockbuster based on her experiences running an agency which helps parents land places in New York's best nurseries.

Now, Catherine Zeta-Jones has just agreed to star in a major movie on the book.

But Karen has told The Weekly News of the terror she faced when she feared a crazed dad was going to kill her in her own home.

The Ivy Chronicles is Karen's highly-entertaining, fictionalised account of her real-life experiences. The agencies are known as "Baby Ivys" because they're the starting point for an educational path hopefully leading to a prestigious Ivy League University, such as Harvard or Yale.

But parents rejected for highly-rated schools don't take it well.

"I had a father at my home who was seeking my help as his son hadn't got the place he wanted," confided Karen during a visit to the UK.

Danger

"The more he recalled what had happened, the more incensed and upset he got. Finally, he lost it completely and went totally mad.

I honestly felt my life was in danger. I managed to get into the kitchen and put all the knives away, as I felt he could kill me.

"The more he recalled what had happened, the more incensed and upset he got. Finally, he lost it completely and went totally mad.

I honestly felt my life was in danger. I managed to get into the kitchen and put all the knives away, as I felt he could kill me.

"I was thinking that I could die over a school place!"

New York has hundreds of parents chasing every vacancy at the most highly-regarded schools, and Karen's Smart City Kids agency is one of a number which offer help.

"We look to coach parents and children," she explained.

"The children are tested before admission, so we advise them and their parents what to expect, and we also coach parents on how they should behave.

"It can be desperately hard to get in.

"I once went to a meeting at a school at which 600 parents were trying to land one of just a handful of places available.

"They're so desperate, they'll pay fortunes in 'donations' to secure a place. There was a huge scandal over a £l-million payment, and I've heard so many other tales of tens, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, changing hands. "I've seen businessmen, senior figures who are chief executives of big corporations, in floods of tears when their beloved toddler was rejected."

The Ivy Chronicles has been a huge hit, and is a Summer Read recommendation of Richard & Judy's Book Club on Channel 4.

Now, Cathenne Zeta-Jones has bought the rights and plans to star in the movie.

"Although the book is fictional, it's based on my experiences," adds Karen.

"I'm very excited at the fact that Catherine will be filming it, and I'm looking forward to meeting her."

The Ivy Chronicles is published by Pocket Books. price £6.99.

—The Weekly News, London
7/30/2005

The Ivy League

We love this great new chick-lit book, which will soon be a film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones

—The Observer, London
7/17/2005

THE IVY CHRONICLES
Karen Quinn

This follows the fortunes of Ivy Ames as she comes to terms with losing her high-powered job, husband and plush New York apartment. Ivy is naturally crushed but pulls herself together and establishes an agency to help parents get their children in the city's finest schools. This is when the author's observational prowness comes in to its own as she captures this insanely competitive world with humour, spirit, wisdom and heart.

—Lancashire Evening Post
7/2/2005

Summer Reads

Sales of the final pick in Richard & Judy's promotion grow, but at a lesser rate

It was arguably a misfortune for Karen Quinn's The Ivy Chronicles (Pocket) to be up last for discussion in this year's summer read strand on Channel 4 's "Richard & Judy" show.

Quinn's novel, published on 23rd May, the day the show's selection was made public, had a full run of sales opportunities across the six-week promotion, and entered the top 50 straightaway—before all its rivals. Weekly sales stayed solidly around the 6,000 mark before enjoying spikes of 44%,39% and 20% in the past three weeks.

The latest jump, following its slot last Wednesday 13th July, was the smallest experienced by any of the six picks—Anthony Capella's The Food of Love crime Warner) received the biggest boost, of nearly 175%, a month ago. Harry Potter may have been one factor in the less pronounced impact of the final show, along with a certain amount of consumer and retail fatigue. Amazon and Ottakar's both offered The Ivy Chronicles at £3.99 last week (see Logobrand's Price Watch below), but Tesco, for instance, was selling the book at its full r.r.p.

"Richard &Judy" stickers and three-for-two promotions will remain throughout the summer though, and The Ivy Chronicles will add to its life sales of 66,549. Of the summer read selections, only Capella's book and Susan Fletcher's Eve Green (Harper Perennial), with 68,036 and 69,230 respectively, have sold more copies.

—The Bookseller
7/22/2005

Australia's Sunrise Book Club picks The Ivy Chronicles as the August 2005 book of the month:

Welcome to the Sunrise-New Idea Book Club.

We have launched the Sunrise-New Idea Book Club. Each month Kochie, Mel, Simon and Beretts will read a chosen book and viewers are encouraged to read along with them.

Each week on Friday the Bookclub team will get together on the show and discuss the assigned chapters for the week.

Get reading and join in the fun of the Sunrise-New Idea Book Club.

This month's read

The Ivy Chronicles - Karen Quinn
Ivy Ames loses her high-powered Wall Street job, her husband and her Park Avenue apartment all in one afternoon. Bent but not broken, she reinvents herself as a private school admissions adviser, whose well-heeled clients will do literally anything to get their children into the A-list schools. This is a raucous tale that will delight anyone who loved Bridget Jones Diary. The Ivy Chronicles (ISBN 0743492161) retails for $19.95 and is available from all good booksellers.

*For next Friday, your bookclub homework is to read up to the end of chapter eight.*

Tuesday, August 23

Mel's Diary
The Ivy Chronicles is a fun easy read, but pretty far fetched.

Part One is a bit of a wild ride after she loses her job, husband and apartment. I mean how bad can one day be?

Her life is so far removed from any of ours, but I did laugh at a few realistic moments... the killing of the school guinea pig, her desperation for a Radical Reinvention upon finding herself single, and Faith, the rich best friend who has it all. Oh and a date with George Clooney. Despite her life I'm actually starting to feel sorry for Ivy, and that's keeping me hooked.
Mel

Simon's Diary
The Ivy Chronicles so far is a very light and breezy read, that gives you a giggle and doesn't overly tax you if you're undertaking a few chapters before lights out at the end of the day. It's a very New York story... just fine for me as it's my favourite city in the world. With an assortment of characters, all quirky, some loathsome, who either live with, work with or a friends of, the central and mostly likeable, Ivy.

I guess it's a book that women can relate to more than blokes (my partner Linda read it in 2 days), but I'm enjoying it. In the city that never sleeps, high achieving Ivy and her kids have just had a big upheaval and relatively speaking, are on the bones of their backsides... but methinks she has something in store for the people who helped put her there.
More to follow...
Simon

Mark's Diary
Wow - what a day for Ivy. Could things get any worse than losing your job, and finding your husband with the wife of the guy who got you sacked? Sounds like she's finding her feet after some pretty dramatic adjustment. Still shocked by the Manhattan lifestyle, it's hard to believe those sort of luxuries exist... daily baths with rose petals - that must be every girl's dream. Everyone should have a friend like Faith - what about that pre-nup.

Really hooked on this book, despite originally thinking I'd never be able to get past the first few pages. Looked like it'd be a soppy, fluffy chick book, but it's nice, relaxing reading.
Go Ivy.
Mark

'Ivy' grew out of experiences
Author with Denver ties draws on real life for humorous novel

Author Karen Quinn admits that she poured much of her real life onto
the pages of her best-seller, The Ivy Chronicles.

Like the book's frenzied protagonist Ivy Ames, Quinn was downsized from
a large corporation and started a business to help Manhattanites get
their children into exclusive nursery schools.

But not everything Ames experiences is rooted in reality.

"I did not catch my husband with another woman, but everyone thinks I
did," laments Quinn, whose literary alter ego found her husband in the
bathtub with a colleague's wife. "I can't tell you how many friends
have tried to find out if that's true."

Even her daughter's psychiatrist was convinced Quinn's marriage was on
the rocks because of the fictional affair. "It was hysterical. They
both came running out (of the office) to see if I was getting a
divorce," says Quinn, who's been married for more than two decades.

The University of Colorado and University of Denver graduate returns to
Denver to talk about her book today at a reception at the Denver
Woman's Press Club.

For Quinn, straightening out such misperceptions is a small price to
pay, given the success of her funny, female-friendly tome. The
first-time author sold the movie rights to the book to actress
Catherine Zeta-Jones even before it hit shelves. And sales were brisk
once The Ivy Chronicles was released, landing the title a spot on The
New York Times best-seller list for a few weeks.

"It just goes to show you that you never know what's going to happen,"
says Quinn, who previously hadn't written anything except holiday
newsletters.

Though she'd always dreamed of becoming a writer or an artist, Quinn
followed a more practical career path. She went to law school,
practiced for a few years and then became a marketing executive.

She was on the vice-president track at American Express until the
company laid her off five years ago. Aimless, she and a friend started
a firm to guide New York parents through the difficult admissions
process at the city's elite schools.

Quinn spent three years helping run Smart City Kids before realizing
the company wasn't generating enough profit to support two people. The
stress of working with difficult and often obsessive parents also was
taking its toll.

"I would take on these families and it was like I was going through the
experience myself," explains Quinn. "I had a hard time not taking it
personally."

The Ivy Chronicles draws upon Quinn's travails at Smart City, although
she was careful to disguise certain events and former clients.

In one case, Ivy convinces a single mom to hire an actor to pose as the
father of her daughter to make her application more attractive to
admissions officers - a situation that was inspired by a woman who
pulled the same stunt in real life. "She got into a really good school
and ended up having a pretend divorce," says Quinn.

In another scene, Ivy attempts to cancel an informational workshop
during a hurricane and is met by an angry mob who wants the session to
continue, despite the disaster. Quinn says she and her partner
experienced something similar the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.

"When we got there every single person showed up, and when we tried to
cancel they wouldn't let us," she says.

Worse though, says Quinn, was one father who, on a visit to her home,
grew so upset about the admissions process that she feared for her life.

"I left the room and put my knives away," recalls Quinn. "I thought,
'At least I gotta hide the weapons.' "

Not surprisingly, Quinn doesn't miss Smart City, which her partner
continues to run. "We're very close friends and she continues to tell
me stories that boggle my mind."

Quinn, meanwhile, is busy working on a second novel, which is set in
the same Upper East Side world as The Ivy Chronicles.

In many ways, she serves as proof that success doesn't depend on
attending Ivy League schools. Quinn, whose family calls Denver home,
got her degree in marketing from CU before getting her law degree from
DU.

"I personally feel that if you can go to these great schools, good, but
you don't have to," Quinn says. "It does not ensure a happy life."

—Erika Gonzalez, Rocky Mountain News
5/20/2005

Headline Awaits Just the Right Sunday/Sundae Pun

Karen Quinn and Jill Kargman were already deep in conversation when I got to Serendipity yesterday afternoon. Jill had just started talking about attending the Chanel-themed Costume Institute gala in her capacity as a Style.com columnist. Jill actually grew up within blocks of the ice cream parlor, so she told us about seeing Andy Warhol in the 'hood when she was younger, then coming back to Serendipity as an Interview staffer when they installed an Andy doll as a hanging decoration.

We got to talking about their novels, and Karen explained how she initially wrote The Ivy Chronicles on a three-month deadline after she left the private school admissions consultancy that inspired her novel, and how she's trying to work out a more comfortable daily schedule as she finishes her second book. Jill, meanwhile, continued her successful collaboration with day school classmate Carrie Karasyov, putting together the plot of Wolves in Chic Clothing over the phone (Karasyov's in Santa Monica), then taking the scenes in alternating stints. The two of them are currently working on a YA novel, to be called Bittersweet Sixteen. (Which she said will be a little bit edgy, but nowhere near as controversial as Rainbow Party.)

While they drank their frozen hot chocolates and I dug into a hot fudge sundae, Karen offered a few suggestions on private school applications for Jill's daughter, while Jill talked about how Karen's 13-year-old might enjoy boarding school, based on her own teenage experiences. Both of them said they love living in and writing about New York City, and have no plans to either move or change themes.

—Ron Hogan, Beatrice.com
5/4/2005

The £3bn cost of bringing up an Alpha child

A new report reveals just how much parents spend on nursery care - and increasingly their cash is going to hothouses where toddlers learn Latin, Japanese and yoga. But are they doing the best by their children - or merely indulging their own competitive spirit?

Laura Laurens doesn't get normal junk mail; instead she wakes up every day to a mini paper mountain of leaflets offering classes in Japanese, painting and yoga for her child: a not-yet-talking toddler who cannot hold a pen or sit still for more than two minutes, much less wield a paintbrush or hold a lotus position.

'The leaflets began arriving before Josh was born,' said the former antiques dealer, who lives with her husband, an investment banker, in a neat townhouse in Kensington, west London. 'I tried ignoring them, but every child I met seemed to be attending at least one class every day.

'When Josh reached seven months, I was suddenly hit by the fear of God that he would not get into the hugely over-subscribed nursery school I had put him down for,' said Laurens. 'I thought that if I didn't start immediately he would never catch up. I would have failed him.'

Feeling that if class war had reached the playpen then the battle must be waged in a whole-hearted way, Laurens resolved against half-measures and booked Josh into baby language classes, baby yoga, sign language and aerobics. It was, she remembers, a nightmare. She - and Josh - lasted a single month.

'I mean, what was I thinking?' she now asks in shame and disbelief. 'Josh just wanted to be a normal baby and there was I, trying to hothouse him to within an inch of his life, pretending it was for his own good when in fact I had become some mad, competitive mother.'

Laurens is far from alone: a survey this week reveals that the value of the British nursery industry has hit a record high, with parents ever more willing to immerse their pre-school children in a super-competitive, hyper-stimulating world of toddler classes to get them into their super-nursery of choice. Welcome to the world of 'alpha babies'.

Emily Richardson from Sheffield estimates that she spent around £2,160 a year for three years on lessons for her daughter, Elizabeth, to ensure she got into her private 'super-nursery' last year - a privilege for which she now spends £215 a week. 'Part of me knows it's ridiculous,' she sighs. 'But I don't want to take the chance. This nursery is wonderful: it teaches Japanese, Latin and ballet. There is nothing Lizzy can't do there. How can that not improve her chances in later life when she has to compete against others?'
Outwardly, parents of pre-nursery age children claim they worry that failure to get into the best nursery will set in motion a domino effect that will eventually shut their children out of the best universities.

Inwardly, however, those working in the field sense the motivation could be considerably less wholesome: Kate, for example, has been working for three years at one of the most upmarket London private baby daycare centres, but is still shocked by the competition she sees between parents, often waged at the cost of their own children.

'You see babies swaddled in designer gear and mothers ignoring their toddlers and leaving them to bump their heads while they discuss whose baby has started tennis yet and which toddler is able to paint best,' she said.

The situation is beginning to resemble Karen Quinn's book, The Ivy Chronicles, the semi-fictionalised account published last month relating her experience as a coach for Manhattan parents desperate to ensure their children trumped the gruelling ordeal of exams, interviews and background checks demanded by the city's exclusive kindergartens.

Now being made into a film starring Catherine Zeta Jones, the book laid bare a world where parents feel unable to hold their heads high if their toddlers are not able to identify farmyard animals in a variety of languages while simultaneously depicting them in a range of artistic mediums, from fingerpainting to rudimentary computer graphics.

It is a world that is becoming eerily familiar to Kate: 'I know that parents have always been competitive but there are so many new ways in which toddlers can be judged as succeeding or failing, that it seems to have spiralled out of control,' she said. 'I find it all a bit terrifying. I feel so sorry for the poor kiddies.'

Mark Pilbrow, a headhunter in Brook Green, west London, agrees: 'There is a two-year-old in one of my children's classes who can do Roman numerals as well as the normal numbers and is being trained in Latin and French,' he said. 'She has very deliberately been hothoused: she was even potty-trained a year before any of the other children,' he added. 'The awful thing is that she can't relate to any of the other children she meets; she just stands there and howls. It's heartbreaking.'

According to a new survey, The Children's Nurseries 2005, by independent healthcare analysts Laing and Buisson, the UK nursery market is now worth its weight in gold-plated nappies: generating an estimated income of more than £3 billion in 2004.

It is, says Philip Blackburn, author of the report, an increase of 20 per cent in the last year with the strongest growth in the private sector, which represents 86 per cent of the total UK nursery places and harvests £2.84 billion of the £3bn total. 'The children's nursery market is now more than seven times the size in value that it was at the end of the Eighties, while in real terms the market has more than tripled in size,' Blackburn stated.

The growth in profits is not down to an increase in demand, he adds, because the under-five population has been on a slight downward trend since the mid-Seventies. Instead, parents seem simply to be prepared to pay ever-increasing fees to get their children access to nurseries they believe will best improve their chances of success in later life.

'The UK children's nursery market is funded primarily by self-paying, private individuals,' said Blackburn, pointing out that British parents are already spending almost five per cent more on day care nursery services than they did last year. 'Last year, British parents spent around £2.7bn on children's day care nursery services while this year, the average full-time fee is £134 per week, and £189 in London, a rise of 4.5 per cent on 2004.'

With parents eager to fork over enormous sums, nurseries are now able to play hardball with big business: there are around 145 major providers of day care in the UK, with the number of major providers growing by a third in as many years.

'Acquisition and merger activity picked up strongly in 2004, with most of the large nursery groups acquiring one or two medium-sized businesses at the very least,' said Blackburn.

Serious money is involved: the biggest deal to date took place in May last year when Nord Anglia bought the Leapfrog Day Nurseries for £60 million.
But as competition increases, so too do waiting lists for the most admired nurseries. When Caroline, a city banker, gave birth last year to her first son, she was so determined to get him into their local nursery that she called the admissions office herself the same day.

'I have no apologies to make,' she says. 'I even tried registering Bobby at the nursery before he was born because I knew I was going to have a Caesarean, I knew what date it was going to take place and I even knew the sex of the baby and what his name was going to be.

'The nursery wouldn't let me do that though, which I guess I can sort of understand but on the other hand, if they introduce rules as ridiculous as having to put your baby on a waiting list for a nursery, then I'm sure as hell going to play them to my advantage,' she added. 'I mean, to my child's advantage.'

But as the waiting lists for the best nurseries lengthen, Blackburn's survey found that others are beginning to suffer: the average vacancy rate at UK nurseries has risen from 11 per cent in 2002 to 17 per cent at the start of 2005. Average occupancy is now 83 per cent, down from nearly 90 per cent three years ago.

'Competition within the children's nursery sector is likely to intensify in the near future, particularly as the government's public sector programmes develop,' said Blackburn.

'Growth has been met to a large extent by increasing demand from parents for childcare, but there are clear trends that demand cannot keep up with the expansion in nursery supply.'

'Most nurseries across the UK are seeing their occupancy slide downwards as vacancies build up. Some regions in the south of England may have reached near saturation given current economic trends and childcare preferences,' he said.

Sian, the manager of a nursery school in Camden which has seen occupancy tumble in the past three years, believes that her centre is being made to suffer because she refuses to introduce the exhaustive range of baby classes.

'Until children actually have to go to school, I think the most important thing you can give them is space to have a rich fantasy life,' she said. 'I refuse to conform to all this structured learning stuff for pre-schoolers. They should be rushing around, immersed in their own little worlds.

'I'll admit that my hardline attitude against baby lessons is losing me customers but that is not because their children are unhappy here; it's because their parents are unhappy admitting to their friends that little Johnny hasn't started Latin at the age of three.

'It's a complete fallacy that high-achieving children are the happy ones,' she added. 'Happy children are the well-balanced ones, and those are the ones who have been given the space in their lives to discover who they are.

'Happy children are also the ones whose parents have the time and money to give them a comfortable time,' she added. 'I consider part of my service is keeping my prices as low as reasonably possible but I see parents exchanging this arrangement for another that will financially squeeze them until the pips squeak.'

There is little sign, however, that the sky-high fees of the more competitive nurseries are going to the staff delivering their much-vaunted services. According to Blackburn, the three-quarters of nursery employees who are qualified in childcare or education and were paid just £6.61 per hour in January 2005. Unqualified staff are even worse off with a salaries close to the new adult minimum wage of £4.85 per hour.

'I can't believe the options some of these children are being given and the money their parents are prepared to spend on them,' said Evelyn, a qualified nursery assistant earning just over £5.50 an hour at a south-west London private nursery that charges parents more than £180 a week. 'But I can't help feel the children would prefer more time with their parents.

'If the parents didn't work so hard, they wouldn't earn so much but wouldn't have to spend as much on guilty presents. You hear a lot about downshifting and quality of life, but you don't see much evidence of it in this neck of the woods.'

'It can all get very ruthless'

Mark Pilbrow from west London is only slightly embarrassed to admit that guilt is one motivator for sending his 22-month-old twins, Poppy and James, to four activities a week, including French, music and Crechendo babygym sessions (a private gym designed to 'ensure that children are confident physically, in preparation for entry into the right nursery schools').

'Our poor things watch Babar videos in French but we wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun for them,' he said. 'Early on, you are aware that others are talking about these classes. You start by thinking it's naff and then become part of the crowd.

'It's a bit early but we do it to make up for fact that they have two working parents,' he said. 'The French classes are a guilt thing in a different way: we're a bilingual family and should be bringing them up that way, but we're not because we don't have the time.'

The Pilbrows pay £45 a week to send the twins to their pre-school classes. 'It's true they're barely talking but the language classes are brilliant: they get nursery rhymes and songs sung to them in French, so when they do start visiting their relatives in France, the sound of the language won't frighten or shock them.'

The twins are also taken to their local library once a week by the nanny. 'The pressure is there if you are the sort of parent to feel it - it can get absolutely ruthless - but we won't do anything that isn't fun.'

—Amelia Hill, The Observer
4/3/2005

Sunday Lunch with ... Karen Quinn

REMEMBER JACK GRUBMAN?

Once a high-flying stock analyst for Citigroup, he fell from grace a couple of years ago when, among other charges, he was accused of changing his rating of AT&T stock in an attempt to get his twins admitted to the 92nd Street Y preschool. This was the kind of story that, to normal people, seemed to smack of inconceivable privilege and insiderdom.

To New Yorkers, it sounded pretty much like business as usual.

Karen Quinn is a New Yorker.A tiny woman with a bright red jacket and a spiky short haircut, Quinn walks in to Marshall Field's State Street store and looks around with satisfaction. She likes it here, especially when she makes her way up to the seventh floor's famed Walnut Room and finds herself quite at home among the lunching ladies already sipping tea and nibbling salads.

Quinn's novel, The Ivy Chronicles (Viking, $23.95), is an only-slightly fictionalized account of the years she spent as a private school admissions counselor, specializing in getting kids into the best, most competitive and most expensive New York nursery schools. The Jack Grubmans of the world actually were her business.

They know who they are

So the first thing I want to know is how her ex-clients feel about her book. Because I've guessed -- correctly, as it turns out -- that the single mother who hires an actor to play her husband and the father who seems to lose his sanity when his daughter does badly on an aptitude test and all the book's other neurotic, super-competitive parents are based on real people.

"They know," she says, with a smile and a slight twang that hints at her San Antonio roots. "It's not like they don't know. They know how crazy it is.

"So, they can laugh at themselves, I ask dubiously.She shakes her head. The craziest parents don't seem to recognize themselves in the book's characters, she says. They recognize only everyone else.In fact, she tells me, the father who behaved the most outrageously -- and whose antics are described in some detail -- called Quinn to find out why he hadn't been included. "I told him, 'You were one of my favorite clients,' " she says, letting a little more of her drawl slip through.

It's all sort of funny and wacky -- watch the rich New Yorkers scramble to outdo one another in the desperate scramble to obtain something many people get for free -- until Quinn happens to mention the time she "had a father in my apartment, and he got so upset I was actually in fear for my life. I went into the kitchen and hid the knives.

"Quinn is careful to make clear that while she was in this world, she was never really of it.Having moved to New York when her husband was transferred there for his job, she'd never heard of the elaborate and competitive rituals the city's rich people have created around getting their kids into the "right" preschools. There's the admissions testing and the interview process and the required recommendations -- the stuff of which the most competitive college applications are made.

"The thing that got me into the business was going through this as a parent," says Quinn, a mother of two."My daughter was 2, and I started asking around, and everyone told me I was very late and probably wouldn't get in anywhere. . . . People were getting their kids tutors for the admissions tests. I didn't do anything, which was a mistake."

Lifestyles of the rich

Attending the highly ritualized open houses for Manhattan preschools, she ran into women whose lifestyles and spending habits were the stuff of glossy magazines. Private planes -- generally kept at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport -- were mentioned with alarming regularity."I remember thinking how out of place I was," she says. "Why would they pick the Quinns when they could have Mrs. Teterboro?"

Quinn, who ended up starting her own children in a Quaker school, resolved to help other parents get through the preschool admissions process.She had a vision of working with "regular people," she says, contrasting herself to the third-generation Upper East Side bluebloods who seemed to be born with the intuitive knack -- and very flexible budget -- required for getting their kids set up for an Ivy League life.But even regular people, she says, taking a bite of her chicken pot pie, could lose sight of their priorities.

"Not even 9/11 set them straight"

On Sept. 11, my phone rang off the hook," she says in disbelief. "People had the rest of the day off from work, and they figured it was a good time to get a head start on their school applications.

"Did these parents honestly believe that their kids' lives would be ruined if they didn't get into the right preschool?Apparently, yes."People would call in the middle of the night when they were having anxiety attacks," she recalls. "By the end, I was glad to get out of it."

Quinn left the admissions counseling business for a variety of reasons, she says, and the idea of writing a book about her experiences was something of a lark."The only thing I'd written before was a holiday letter," she says. "And, basically, I thought if I could write a holiday letter, I could write a novel."

The novel, with a wry, comic voice and a chick-lit style cover -- lots of pink -- is selling well. And it's been optioned by Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is said to want to play its title character, the punningly named admissions counselor Ivy Ames.So I ask Quinn if she's considered the possibility of one day being "Mrs. Teterboro" rich.

No, no, she demurs. Because she is really just a regular person. Really.

—Debra Pickett, Sun-Times
3/13/2005

The Little Ivy League

A NEW YORK WORK OF FICTION, 'The Ivy Chronicles', traces the lengths that many Manhattan mothers will go to get their child into the right kindergarten. But, as Michael Shelden discovers, the reality is even more scary. For New York's elite, it's never too early for their children to start networking

"While Veronica takes many different classes, from language to music to public speaking, her favourite activity is dancing. Recently, a renowned talent scout tried to sign her, but we felt she was too young for Broadway. She loves choreographing her own shows and helping her seamstress sew sparkly costumes for all her performances. In short, Veronica has accomplished more in her four-and-a-half years on earth than many adults achieve in a lifetime."

For the children of New York's wealthiest families, the class war begins at the tender age of four. That's when the little darlings must prove themselves worthy of acceptance at one of the city's private kindergartens, where thousands compete for a relatively small number of openings at a dozen or so exclusive schools. The admissions process is so intense that many of the rejected families are devastated and slink away to the suburbs, convinced their child's future is blighted.

Enter Karen Quinn, who started a company to coach parents and children through the gruelling ordeal of exams, interviews and background checks, and who has now written a fictional account of her work among Manhattan's angst-ridden elite. Her tale is both harrowing and hilarious.

"One mother who came to me was in tears, absolutely distraught," she tells me in a tone that sounds like a kindly doctor recalling the case of a dying patient.

"One of the schools had given her some negative feedback about her daughter. They hadn't even said no yet, but just the possibility of being rejected was enough to make this woman ask me: 'How have I failed my child? Where did I go wrong?'"

Although the mother in question was a powerful businesswoman who earned half a million pounds a year - and could easily afford the annual fees of £20,000 - she couldn't figure out how to rescue her daughter before it was too late. Savvy Karen Quinn immediately understood the right solution, advising the woman to spend more money, albeit discreetly.

"The school wasn't aware of how much she was worth," says Quinn. "All she needed to do was hint to the right people that she was 'generous', which is a polite way of saying she could be a big donor to the endowment."

How big?

"A million dollars will usually do it. But some people give a lot less or a lot more. I know one man who built an entire gymnasium for his daughter's school and it was already finished when she began kindergarten. The school even named it after her, which made it awkward. Imagine how embarrassed she would have been around the other children."

Why so much fuss over four- and five-year-olds? Supposedly, the parents worry that their children's failure to get into the best kindergarten creates a domino effect that will eventually shut them out from the best universities. But the real reason seems to be mum and dad's own vanity. They can't hold their heads high in society if little Muffie or young master Shane aren't classmates of the other children of New York's rich and mighty.

"The whole thing is about making contacts that will last a lifetime," says Quinn. "You become part of a vast network that offers a lot of rewards. So the schools are picky and they judge the parents as well as the child. I've had mothers tell me that their child `interviewed well' and had high test scores, but that the school found the family less than impressive and rejected them."

Such brazen displays of snobbery are rare elsewhere in America, but it's a tight market where private education is concerned in New York and the best schools call the shots. The state schools are so appallingly bad that everyone avoids them if they can afford to.

"The situation is so difficult that it often drives very strong and accomplished people to break down and cry or rant," says Quinn. "Women tend to handle it better than men. The men can't understand why they have to win the approval of school officials who make far less money than they do. I once had a father visit me and he became so angry that I feared for my life. I went to the kitchen and hid my knives."

The overwrought four-year-olds don't fare much better. Their parents and tutors and therapists drill them night and day, making sure they don't let the family down by failing to subtract the right number of objects in a game or not answering some vaguely philosophical question ("Why do we have windows?"), or simply by picking their noses at the wrong moment, as four-year-olds will do.

In the middle of tutoring a girl for the dreaded Kindergarten Admissions Test, Quinn became carried away and was firing questions one right after the other until the exhausted child flung up her hands and said stop. "I'm only four," protested the girl.

"I knew that it was time to get out of the business," says Quinn. "That sent me over the edge."

She never meant to make a career of it. Originally a lawyer in Denver, she came to New York in the mid-1980s and worked at American Express for 15 years. When she was suddenly made redundant, she looked round for a business to start and seized on the unusual idea of advising parents of prospective kindergartners.

"I told myself to think of something people hate doing for themselves, but that I could do for them," she says.

Married to a fellow lawyer, she is the mother of a young son and daughter and knows from her own experience the terrors that await novice parents seeking a good school for their children. But she was never wealthy enough to compete against the Manhattan super-rich and had only a vague idea of how they dominated the kindergarten competition. Her new business opened her eyes.

She found herself in a world of private jets and private islands and stretch limos. People were willing to pay her thousands of dollars to give their four-year-olds an advantage against other children applying to the same small group of schools.

Modest and unaffected, she lives in a fashionable, but not luxurious section of Lower Manhattan and - at 50 - resembles not at all the woman who has signed to play her in the film version of her story - Catherine Zeta-Jones. There was nothing very glamorous about her work.

On the contrary, she now seems to feel a little guilty about encouraging so many children to take life too seriously too soon.

"Most children at that age aren't interested in doing the kinds of things demanded of them on the tests," says Quinn. "They don't want to identify various shapes and compare them, much less add or subtract.

"I know of one wealthy mother who boasted that she had spent a solid month training her daughter to draw shapes -even stars. She was worried about it because the nursery school had warned her that her daughter needed the extra work or wouldn't pass the tests."

On one occasion, a zealous mother watched as Quinn instructed the woman's son on the best method of recognising colours. In the middle of the lesson, the boy put his head down and fell asleep.

"I wanted to get up and go home," she says. But his mother said no, keep talking to him. When I pointed out that he was sleeping soundly, she says: `He will pick it up subliminally.' So I sat there lecturing him and all for nothing."

It was one of her low moments, but there were others she is proud of. She helped many parents of ordinary means to navigate the rough waters of the kindergarten system, which serves as a kind of doorway in American education to the more challenging levels available to older pupils.

"Unless they make a great deal of money, it's very hard for families to afford private schools," says Quinn. "But people want what they think is best for their children and will do whatever is necessary to get it. So I would help them by advising the mother to do volunteer work for the school or to use the family's contacts to seek out the best deals.

"Of course, at least a few places at each school are reserved for diversity. The normal rules don't apply in those cases. To avoid having schools made up mostly of whites, they sprinkle them with some colour."

It is an odd fact that the private schools of Manhattan devote so much energy to keeping out people and then - perhaps out of guilt - throw open the doors at the last moment to allow a few "disadvantaged" children in. They claim to be doing all the children a favour by this action, but Quinn isn't so sure.

"My partner in the business is black and her son found a place at one of the better schools," she says. "But it's not easy for these children to rub shoulders with those who live in big houses when they live in subsidised public housing. They can't help feeling different and will hesitate to ask other children home after school."

Quinn notes the irony that the most selective private school in New York is named after Horace Mann, who was America's first great pioneer of state-sponsored education. If any children from the general public get into the Horace Mann School today, it is usually because they are enlisted as recruits in the "diversity" campaign.

The more you talk to Karen Quinn, the more you realise that her book has a very serious side to balance its host of comic adventures featuring the pampered rich behaving badly. She cares about education and sees it being served so poorly by a system that is riddled with snobbery and cronyism on the private side and poverty and mismanagement on the public side.

"It doesn't have to be this way, but the system is now being squeezed so hard that the competition in the private field has shifted to the nursery schools," she says.

"It used to be that everyone waited until the kindergarten year to push their children forward. Now, they fight over getting their two-year-old into the best nursery school."

No wonder Quinn left her business to her partner and got out in 2003 and has never looked back, except to chronicle her experiences in her new novel.

"Writing the novel was cathartic," she says. "I had a lot to get out of my system."

Indeed, she wrote at white-hot speed, finishing her first draft in only three months. All the frustration of the previous three years came pouring out as she described the obsessive parents who are willing to do almost anything for a place at school for a child of four or five.

The writing itself was so enjoyable that she can't wait to produce another book. "After all these years, I've finally found something I really enjoy doing. That's a great relief."

—The Sunday Telegraph
2/25/2005

Educating Baby Ivy, the Yale kids who start young

THE SECRETS OF THE PROFESSIONAL “FIXERS” WHO HELP WEALTHY PARENTS get their children into America’s most exclusive kindergartens are to be revealed in a new book.

The Ivy Chronicles, a lightly fictionalised account of the career of Karen Quinn, a former American Express executive turned kindergarten “facilitator”, will be published in Britain in March, to be followed by a Hollywood film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Quinn, 42, helped start Smart City Kids, one of several agencies in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta training families to secure places in pre-schools that turn away up to 500 children for every one they accept.

These establishments, known as “Baby Ivys” because they are thought to boost children’s chances of entering Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Yale, are split into three divisions: toddler, nursery and kindergarten.

Zeta-Jones is familiar with the system: her 20-month-old daughter, Carys, already attends an exclusive institution in New York, where she and her husband, Michael Douglas, live for part of the year. The child is expected to graduate to a nearby nursery where the comedian Jerry Seinfeld sends his daughter Sascha.

The race from toddler group to nursery and on to one of the top 20 kindergartens is not for the slow or poor. Advisers charge £3,000 to train parents and children for admission tests and fees are up to £15,000 a year, the same as Yale.

Some Baby Ivy secrets leaked out two years ago when a Manhattan banker, Jack Grubman, tried to get his twin three-year-old daughters into the 92nd Street Y nursery.

According to court papers, Grubman boosted the price of a telephone company’s shares in return for a $1m donation to the school. The scheme backfired and Grubman eventually sent his children to a public pre-school like those attended by 4m other young Americans.

Nina Bauer, a facilitator at the Ivywise Kids agency, managed to get her daughter Eliza into the 92nd Street Y this year. “It was stressful, but it’s so worth it,” said the 34-year-old former teacher. “They do everything in depth: when they are learning about the colour purple, they paint the walls purple, dress in purple and have live musicians in every day singing songs about purple.”

Quinn said intense competition for pre-school places was spreading. “It started in New York, when middle-class parents decided to stay in Manhattan rather than fly to the suburbs, meaning the supply of good nursery schools lagged behind demand; and now it’s almost as bad in LA, Atlanta and Boston.”

Quinn said she felt sorry for one client called Susan, a single mother who hired an actor to play her husband for a kindergarten interview only to suffer an “unfortunate divorce” before her first parents’ evening.

Another parent trained an older son to pose as his four-year-old brother for the exams and interview. “And then you have to coach (the parents) in writing their essay about why they think the school should accept their child,” added Quinn.

Tests change up the ladder. Toddlers are observed to see how they get on with their peers, while a two-year-old might be asked to sing a song. But at the end of nursery a psychological profile is prepared for the chosen kindergarten.

One facilitator said she was asked by an LA couple to hire a hacker to access the e-mailed report. “They wanted the words ‘little angel’ and ‘credit to our nursery’ inserted,” she said.

—John Harlow, The Sunday Times
12/12/2004

Two Days, Two Big Buys

VIKING'S PAM DORMAN STAYED UP LATE two nights in a row recently reading two big new debut women's novels and ended up winning one of them at auction and rapidly preempting the other. The auction win was of Telling Tales Out of School by Karen Quinn, a comic saga of upscale New Yorkers' shenanigans to get their infants into the best kindergartens (shades of The Nanny Diaries!). This was a North American rights buy from agent Robin Straus, with Andrew Nurnberg in London handling U.K. and translation, and CAA the movie rights. The preempt was of Capturing Light by Kim Edwards, a touching family saga by an award-winning short story writer. The agent here was Geri Thoma at Elaine Markson, also a North American rights deal. Both novels are aimed at the spring 2005 season.

—John F. Baker, Publisher's Weekly
9/22/2003