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 2021 Manhattan, Brooklyn, Riverdale or Westchester private school admission, now is your time to get started getting help. Due to the COVID pandemic, we are currently helping families get into private schools in Florida, the Hamptons, New York State, LA, Seattle and elsewhere. We're also helping families hoping to "upgrade" within NYC private schools. This is your family's chance to work with Emily Glickman, 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 2019-2020 admission more parents than ever wanted to book with Abacus Guide; we had to turn many families away. For 2020-2021, 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.

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.

BASIS Independent Schools has expanded! BASIS sent Abacus Mom this information about their new campuses:

BASIS Independent Schools Expand to Four Campuses in New York City

New Chelsea Upper School Campus and Downtown Brooklyn Lower School Campus Slated to Open Fall 2021

BASIS Independent Schools, the world-acclaimed network of private schools, announced the expansion of BASIS Independent Manhattan to include a new Upper School campus in Chelsea that will house their growing High School Program. Meanwhile BASIS Independent Brooklyn will expand to a separate Lower School Campus at the City Point complex in Downtown Brooklyn due to increased enrollment. Both new campuses will open in fall 2021, and applications for the 2021-2022 school year are open.

BASIS Independent Manhattan will now serve students in PreK through High School across both campuses. The original BASIS Independent Manhattan campus at 795 Columbus Avenue will focus on students in PreK to grade 5. The new 34,000-square-foot Upper School campus is located at 556 West 22^nd Street right across from the sports complex Chelsea Piers, and it will accommodate grades 6-12.

“Our expansion is evidence of the demand for our BASIS Curriculum,” stated Mark Allen, Head of School for BASIS Independent Manhattan. ”Our program blends rigorous standards and foundational disciplinary study with ingenuity, creativity, and inclusiveness to create a world-class educational model. We know families have many choices among the long-standing and most reputable private schools in the country in New York City. The demand for our program is humbling, and we are committed to making it available to students and families.”

BASIS Independent Brooklyn opened seven years ago, and the separate Lower School campus allows for more students to benefit from the rigorous, rich BASIS Curriculum. The new 62,000-square-foot Lower School campus will serve students in PreK through grade 2. The original Red Hook campus will now focus on students in grades 3-12.

Ms. Shari D. Cameron was recently named Head of School for the new Lower School campus. Ms. Cameron spent the past five years as a Director at BASIS Independent Brooklyn leading teams across Academic Programs, Admissions, and Student Affairs before assuming the role of Associate Head of School last year. During that time, Ms. Cameron was specifically training to grow into the Head of School role preparing for this opportunity.

“For the past three years we worked to find the right real estate to realize our vision for a nearby campus for our youngest students,” said Shari D. Cameron. “Starting in fall 2021, we are excited to bring our well-rounded, globally-benchmarked program to City Point in Downtown Brooklyn.”

Applications and information for the 2021-2022 school year is available at https://brooklyn.basisindependent.com/ and https://manhattan.basisindependent.com/.

We were so happy today to get this email from a satisfied Private School Admissions Support client:

Emily,

Many thanks as always.

You are our guardian angel.

Paul Sullivan of The New York Times, writes in his Wealth Matters column Private Schools Hold New Attraction for Rich Parents that there has a huge uptick in families seeking private school education for their children. After all the uncertainty of the summer, when many families were not sure if they wanted in-person or remote education, currently in-person seems more desirable, perhaps because we have not read recently of major outbreaks stemming from private school attendance. Sullivan writes:

In New York, parents at one of the city’s most elite private schools, the Dalton School, which remains remote even when competitors have in-person learning, have begun to complain.

Its reputation for excellent teaching and college placement keeps parents from leaving, said Emily Glickman, president of Abacus Guide Educational Consulting, which works with families to get their children into private schools in New York. Schools with less competitive reputations have struggled more.

“It’s interesting because parents are all looking left and right to see what their friends’ kids are doing,” Ms. Glickman said. “No one is sure what is better.”

As Sullivan correctly notes, on balance, right now most parents appear to prefer in-person education. However, this can backfire, as happened this week at Horace Mann, where in-person teaching in the middle school and high school was suspended for two weeks after several employees tested positive for Covid.