Applying to Kindergarten when you are in New York City is a daunting and exhausting process. There is even this one school that makes it harder for parents to get their children enrolled.
Hunter College Elementary School is one of the most selective schools in Manhattan. This school has a certain level of exclusivity that encompasses that of Harvard's. They only accept 50 kindergarten students each year and evaluates 4 year olds.
Hunter College Elementary School is a publicly funded school offering Kindergarten through sixth grade for gifted students. It is being managed and administered by a college of the City University of New York, the Hunter College.
The Kindergarten admission is crucial because you cannot afford to get rejected or you cannot apply to the same school again. It is even better in Harvard because you are still given the chance to transfer.
From a pool of 2,500 applicants, Hunter only chooses 25 boys and 25 girls for admission and all of the applicants should be residents of Manhattan. To be exact, Hunter only accepts 2% of the total number of aspirants.
Potential Hunter Students are first asked to take a Stanford-Binet IQ test which they are given 3 weeks to complete. The school warns parents that they should not be preparing their children for the test or they will be disqualified. A total 250 students with the highest scores will be identified. These remaining applicants will be observed based on their individual interactions with peers and with teachers.
The reason why Hunter has an unbelievably tough process for admission is because they are renowned for their ability to provide excellent learning experience to the students who are really gifted and they provide it free of all tuition charges.
