NYC Private Schools

Emily Glickman Top Private School Consultant

NOW is the Time: NYC Private School Admissions Consulting... If your child will be going through the NYC private school application process for 2022 Manhattan, Brooklyn, Riverdale or Westchester private school admission, now is your time to get started getting help.

Despite the pandemic, elite city private schools are more popular than ever as public school families seek to enter and current private school students wish to "upgrade". Suburban, country and Florida private schools are also highly sought after by relocating families.

Emily Glickman helps families, whatever their goal. This is your family's chance to work with her.

As one of NYC's most experienced and respected private school consultants, Emily has been featured in every major New York publication as well as many from around the world. In her more than twenty years in practice, Emily has been trusted by thousands of educated, distinguished New Yorkers and countless relocating families from around the US and the globe to help ensure their children's success.

For 2020-2021 admission more parents than ever wanted to book with Abacus Guide; we had to turn many families away. For 2021-2022, help your child get into the country's best private schools by signing up early.  Now is the Time.

Call today 212-712-2228 or email best NYC private school consultant.

Abacus Mom received this announcement from the Darrow School, which is accepting applications for the Spring Semester.

The Darrow School is a private co-education boarding and day school for grades 9-12 and Post Graduate. Located in the Hudson Valley, at the Berkshires' foothills, our 365-acre campus is at the center of world-renowned arts and culture. Founded in 1936, Darrow prepares students for success, providing the framework to deepen thinking with specialized programs inspiring our students to explore the creative spaces where ideas intersect, and solutions emerge.

The Darrow School's new Centers for Excellence will allow students to hone their unique talents or skills, debuted this Fall. A curricular program rather than a physical space, the Centers' curriculum focuses on three major subject areas: Art, Design, and Innovation; Musicianship and Performance, and Academic and Personal Enrichment (CAPE). Like a college concentration or minor, the Centers allow students to delve deeply into a specialty of their choice.

● The Center for Art, Design, and Innovation offers traditional visual arts courses and classes in graphic arts and design, web development, animation, game design, robotics, and coding. Students will have opportunities to engage with the local community through visits with professionals in the field, museum exhibitions, and college programs.

● The Center for Musicianship and Performance begins with classroom study that leads to opportunities experiencing off-campus concerts and workshops, honing their performance, writing, and production skills. Students can study with guest artists and take original classes on the social impact of music on society at Darrow's state-of-the-art Performing Arts Center.

● CAPE programming tackles the topics of financial literacy, health and wellness, learning skills, and a successful transition to post-high school life. Darrow has a long history of supporting student learning through tutoring and mentoring programs that serve academic needs in powerful ways.

"Darrow has always been a school where students discover their identity and graduate knowing who they are. We want to help students push the envelope in their given specialties and move towards wholeness in life," said Andy Vadnais, Head of School.

In addition to The Centers for Excellence, Darrow has been recognized as a pioneer in the field of "hands-on learning," and teachers use real-world topics and a dynamic approach to capture the imagination and make the subject matter come alive. To learn more about The Darrow School or register for an upcoming Virtual Open House please contact Kristen Kaschub, Director of Admissions & Enrollment Management, at (518) 704-2765 or visit https://www.darrowschool.org/

A Happy New Year indeed as we received this lovely greeting from a current client:

Hi Emily,

As we head into the new year I want to take a moment to convey how truly grateful we are for your guidance, skill and candor. We've all come to trust you immensely!

Abacus Mom received this announcement from Avenues: The World School:

Avenues: The World School is Reinventing Education for a Fast-Changing World. 

The world has changed profoundly this year, and with it, the ways in which we educate our children. In this quickly-changing landscape, Avenues: The World School is uniquely positioned to serve students and families. Instead of settling for traditional best practices in education, Avenues is investing in better ones; their in-house R&D department is dedicated to finding more effective ways to educate and equip students for an uncertain future.

Avenues is one school with many campuses, providing transformative, world-focused learning experiences. Founded with the vision to form an intentionally connected community, Avenues has defined a new category of school—a world school. Their students are part of a community that has grown across multiple continents and an online campus, and their global admissions policy means that a student admitted to one campus is admitted to all. As the world changes, Avenues evolves with it, meeting its families wherever they are:

Avenues New York Their first campus opened in 2012. Located in Chelsea, Avenues New York is an independent school serving toddler–12th grade students. Students from our first five graduating classes are studying at many of the finest educational institutions of the world, and are well on their way to becoming, in the words of our mission statement, “architects that transcend the ordinary.” They are currently offering virtual parent information events, which provide a vivid overview of the school and include a live Q&A with their leadership team. You can learn about their safe and successful campus reopening of campus here.

Avenues Online

Their virtual campus that serves toddler–grade 12 students has set a new standard for online education. Avenues Online offers daily interaction with world-class faculty, individualized and flexible scheduling options, expert college counseling support and access to Avenues’ global network of brick-and-mortar campuses across the globe.

While Avenues Online is a primarily virtual experience, the curriculum reflects an interdisciplinary, project-based approach to education, requiring students to turn off their computers and engage in authentic hands-on learning experiences. These experiences are further enriched by collaborations with faculty and a close-knit cohort that spans the globe. Learn more by visiting their website and getting in touch at admissions-on@avenues.org.

Avenues@HOME

For toddler–5th grade students, Avenues@HOME, world-class online instruction is complemented by an Avenues teacher who comes to your home and works one-on-one with your child(ren). @HOME teachers are assigned exclusively to their families—i.e., one @HOME teacher per family—and trained in practices that minimize health risks.

Avenues Studio Hamptons

Avenues in the Hamptons is a studio campus providing a uniquely adaptive, learner-centered school experience by combining our transformative, web-based academic program with exceptional one-on-one mentoring, personalized learning experiences, local community engagement and individually customized schedules.

Regardless of where Avenues is, students have access to a truly integrated learning community that goes beyond what’s expected in order to develop the thought leaders and innovators of tomorrow. To learn more, please visit their website and don’t hesitate to reach out.

New York’s 4-Year-Olds are mastering Zoom to get into elite NYC private school kindergartens, writes Amanda Gordon of Bloomberg. Gordon comprehensively covers the extreme lengths some parents are going to, including hiring test prep tutors and video editors, to help their children master private schools' video requirements for kindergarten applicants. In 2020-2021, due to Covid restrictions, NYC private schools are in many cases requiring video-based testing (the T&E for about 30 schools, the FLI for Horace Mann and Riverdale), parent-submitted home videos (Trinity, Town, Nightingale) and in many cases, video child interviewing. It's enough to make a parent and child's head spin.

Whether 4- and 5-year-olds can be tested for anything has long been debated. “They keep wanting to test 4-year-olds and evaluate who is the smartest and most qualified, despite the fact that so many educators think that making a prediction about a 4-year-old’s future potential based on an exam is ludicrous,” said Emily Glickman, president of Abacus Guide Educational Consulting. “It’s a bad idea and especially this year. Plenty of 4-year-olds don’t like Zoom.”

NYC public schools, which historically offer a lot: in many schools, strong academic instruction, true urban, inclusive communities, and the chance to go to school with your neighbors or with other bright kids, are sadly suffering due to Covid. Many public school parents are disappointed in current instruction, inadequate and aging facilities, and the lack of plan for specialized school admission. Some fear schools won’t just bounce back, as big earners desert the city.

Jessica Dickler of CNBC writes, Families jump to private schools as coronavirus drags on:

As the pandemic drags on through the fall, more families are seeking out schools that are fully in-person rather than remote — and, for many, that means switching to an independent institution, despite the cost.

“My phone is ringing off the hook with New York City public school families applying to private middle and high school,” said Emily Glickman, the president of Abacus Guide Educational Consulting in New York.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of people calling me this late into the fall,” she said. “There’s an explosion of families looking to make a last-minute change.”

While many wealthy private school families have decamped to Florida, Aspen or Scarsdale, they are being replaced by NYC public school transplants. I think the middle schools and high schools will have a record year with public school applicants given my own call patterns.