Entrance Exam Pressure at Age 11

Melissa Raffalow furiously highlights a sheet of vocabulary builders in anxious streams of yellow. Sitting in a small Sherman Oaks classroom, she presses hard on her clipboard and writes “STUDY” on the page of Latinate words, underlining it.

The man who handed the word list to Melissa and 14 other students on a recent afternoon ticks off the tricks that he says will help them get into a good school. If you don’t know an answer, guess, Guy Strickland advises the class. And the exam room can be cold, he warns, so take a sweatshirt.

The students are not preparing for college entrance exams. They are drilling for a seventh-grade admission test. Some of the private schools they hope to attend can be as selective as the most prestigious universities.

“It’s not pleasant,” said Janet Raffalow, Melissa’s mother. Her daughter will take the test in January. “It’s like applying for college at 11 years old--only it’s more intense.”

That intensity is fueling a fast-growing industry of prep classes and $200-an-hour consultants for children facing the school application thicket. And though many parents swear by the courses and coaches, the business is unregulated, offers no guarantees and draws the anger of school officials who consider it a worthless source of stress.

“I don’t believe that there’s any gain to be made by making parents more anxious about the process,” said Gennifer Yoshimaru, admissions director at Crossroads School in Santa Monica.

Test preparation services such as Strickland’s say they are thriving in the Los Angeles area, where parents shell out $30 to $75 an hour for the weekly courses. No one tracks total enrollment in the classes, but representatives for a number of firms say more students sign up every year.

Most of their young clients will take the Independent School Entrance Examination, the test used by campuses that tend to attract the most applicants and charge the highest tuition. The three-hour test is administered in the U.S. and abroad each year to about 40,000 students in fourth through 11th grades.

Boarding schools and San Francisco day schools often use the Secondary School Admission Test, which is taken annually by 55,000 students in the U.S. and about 70 other countries. Most Catholic high schools use the High School Placement Test, given to 150,000 students nationally each year.

“Our teachers tell us it’s not hard at all and not to get stressed out,” Melissa said. Her Valley Glen elementary school, Laurence 2000, offers Independent School Entrance Examination tips during the school day.

Strickland’s $485, eight-week courses in preparation for the exam are filled with go-getters like Melissa, the straight-A students and star athletes who seem to be shoo-ins for any school. Melissa’s extracurricular activities include Hebrew school, gymnastics, flute lessons, Girl Scouts and, this year, the prep class.

“We thought we would feel guilty if we didn’t do anything, because I think most of the kids are doing something,” Janet Raffalow said.

Another mother, whose daughter has an edge at one school because her older sister goes there, put the girl in Strickland’s class as “insurance.”

“It’s not going to make or break, but why not?” she said. Concerned that schools frown on prep classes, the Westside woman did not want her name printed because “there’s too much at stake.”

‘It’s Sort of Like Having a Personal Trainer’

Not every student needs to take a course, said Howard Tager, founder of Ivy West, a firm that charges about $1,100 for tutors who prepare students one on one.

“It’s sort of like having a personal trainer,” he said. “Some people will show up at the gym and have the discipline to do it. Others need a trainer.”

Mary Beth Barry, who admits students to Brentwood School’s sixth grade, estimates that 75% of the applicants she interviews have taken prep courses. “Kids are very honest. I ask and they tell me,” she said.

Parents, however, rarely reveal to schools that their child received outside help, Barry said. “I think they really want you to believe that this is the student au naturel, that they really are this gifted,” she said.

Educational consultants are sometimes behind that preening. They help parents find schools and advise them on applications. Some families visit a consultant once, just to learn about the various schools; others seek their advice throughout the months-long admission process. If the family is looking for boarding schools, consultants typically charge a flat fee of $2,000 or more.

“Sometimes people will pay anything to get their kid into a school,” said Harriett Bay, who counsels about 200 clients each year and is among a rapidly growing group that specializes in finding schools for students with learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

Because Los Angeles and the Bay Area are among the most competitive private-school markets in the country, California is the busiest market for educational consultants, said Mark Sklarow, executive director of the Independent Educational Consultants Assn.

The group’s nationwide membership has doubled to about 350 since 1996, and about 1,400 people applied last year, Sklarow said. The group accepts about 50 new members each year. They must have worked at least three years as a consultant, with a minimum of 75 students.

Most consultants do not advertise. They typically work for themselves and rely on referrals from past clients. Some have worked in admissions offices, others as teachers or school counselors. They often also work with students applying to college.

Demand for consultants builds each autumn when families with high expectations come knocking.

“I have families come in and think I can put them into an elite private school tomorrow,” said Teri Solochek, a consultant and clinical psychologist. “They don’t understand how involved the process is.”

Applying to a private school starts with open houses, at which students and parents tour campuses and learn about the programs. Entrance exams that measure a student’s vocabulary, reasoning, reading comprehension and mathematical ability are given beginning in December. Applications and letters of recommendation are usually due Feb. 1.

“It’s become a campaign,” said Amanda Mallory, a San Francisco consultant who once worked in admissions at a Bay Area school.

And the costs add up, even before parents start paying tuition as high as $18,000 a year.

“I don’t know how people have three kids in private school. I think private school is a fortune, personally,” said Bay, who taught at a public school before becoming a consultant.

Although she advises clients to consider public schools, most are convinced that a private education--especially an expensive one--will give their children a leg up when it’s time to apply to college.

“You love your kid, and you want them to do their best and you want the best for them,” said Jeff, who enrolled his 11-year-old son in two Independent School Entrance Examination prep courses but did not want the schools where he is applying to know.

School Officials Fight Losing Battle

Admissions directors and test administrators once publicly opposed test preparation classes. They worried that the courses made students even more nervous about the admission process and that the companies’ use of actual tests could foster cheating.

But school officials say they gave up their fight after the classes became so popular. “It was such a losing battle,” said Yoshimaru of Crossroads.

Test coaches dismiss the disdain for what they do as hypocritical. They say schools that expect students to study for history and math tests should understand why a student would prep for an entrance exam.

“My question for admissions people is why is it OK to spend $12,000 for a [private] education, but it’s not OK to spend 400 bucks [for a test prep course],” said Strickland, who taught at several Los Angeles private schools before becoming a test preparation coach.

Admissions directors also question the value of education consultants. With minimal research, they say, families can navigate the admissions process unaided.

Yoshimaru said consultants can make it more difficult for a school to evaluate “the real kid,” particularly in the interview.

“You can tell by the polish,” she added. “You can tell by the answers. They sound like pat answers. We actually work to crack the veneer that [consultants] drill into the kids.”

The consultants say that they hold families’ hands through a process that can confuse and unnerve them, but that no promises are made.

“I think that they think maybe I have some special information, which I always tell them I don’t,” said Patsy Palmer, a consultant with a doctorate in child psychology. “I think they also think I can help them get in, which I tell them I can’t.”

Palmer belongs to the consultants association, but membership is not required for what she does. Nor is adherence to the group’s ethical standards. The association’s Sklarow said families and schools report a variety of misdeeds committed by consultants not in the trade group: collecting kickbacks for directing students to schools, writing application essays for students and withholding unflattering information about the students from schools.

No government agency is responsible for monitoring abuses in the industry. In the last year, Sklarow said, the consultants association ousted one member for incompetence and another for pressuring a family to pay a disputed fee.

For Melissa Raffalow, whose parents did not employ a consultant, the interviews at four prep schools are over. Now, she is reviewing Strickland’s tips for multiple-choice tests.

Always select the politically correct answer, he advised her. Always give the environmentally correct answer. Near the end of the test the obvious answer is wrong.

The Independent School Entrance Examination is three weeks away.