The Rat Race Beginneth: Preschool Admissions

The Metropolitan family recently had its first preschool interview and lived to tell the tale.

By way of brief background for those of you who are not familiar with the Manhattan preschool process: remember applying to college? Imagine doing it when you're between one and two years old. That's the process. (I exaggerate only very slightly.) Here's some background reading: a New York Magazine story and a Washington Post story on the fun of preschool applications.

For us, the "where to apply" quandary wasn't much of a quandary at all. There are two factors: age and location. The Toddler's birthdate is such that she is only eligible for certain schools offering a "young twos" program. And we want the school to be within walking distance of our apartment, both for convenience of drop-offs and pick-ups and for ease of playdate scheduling. So between the young twos issue and the location-within-20-blocks-of-our-apartment issue, the schools pretty much selected themselves.

Now, of course, we need a school to select the Toddler!

Diva (who is also going through this process) and I have discussed this at some length, and have concluded the following. Let's say that 10% of all toddlers are wildly unmanageable or otherwise unadmittable. And let's also say that 10% of all parents are deeply unlikeable or otherwise unsuitable for the social circle that is that school's Parents Association. Even if you assume that those two groups are mutually exclusive (that is, that the unadmittable toddlers don't belong to the unlikeable parents), that still leaves you with 80% of the applicant population that is perfectly acceptable.

So how exactly are these preschools distinguishing between my perfectly acceptable Toddler and any of the other 80% of perfectly acceptable Toddlers? Beats me. At the end of the day, I have to take it on faith that some school will find all three members of the Metropolitan family to be exactly what they're looking for, and that we will find that school to be similarly perfect for us.

As for the interview itself, the Toddler presented herself as well as we could have hoped for. She was poised, friendly, independent-minded, cheerful, curious, and inquisitive. Oh, and really darned cute, too. I have no ability to gauge how well Mr. Metropolitan and I did, except to say that I think we were at least reasonably likeable. But if the Toddler gets dinged, she can always blame Mommy and Daddy.