Admissions For The 2026-2027 School Year
Because of a variety of factors, the fall admissions season for the 2026-2027 school year – at every divisional level from preschool to lower school to upper school to college – has been one of the most competitive in years. While it won’t be wrapped up for months to come, there’s a lot we can learn from what we’re already seeing in order to maximize the remainder of this school year and get well ahead of the admissions season to come.
A Unique School Planning Perspective
As skillful elementary educators who grew into college counseling with our families, Faya and I bring a unique perspective to this work, which we’ve been doing in private practice for 17 years now. That we move nimbly between preschool and kindergarten planning to elementary and middle school planning to high school and college planning feels so natural and obvious to us; we can’t imagine being limited by a more narrow perspective. In fact, our expertise across each school division is a huge advantage and informs our creativity and differentiated planning with families.
In our work with families of younger students, we find that parents are often negatively judged for talking about any sort of college planning for their rising kindergartener when selecting a lower school, but, in fact, it’s reasonable to take the long view, so long as it’s done in balance and with the right spirit. If it wasn’t reasonable, then independent schools wouldn’t leverage their college placements as part of their value proposition for incoming families, and families wouldn’t be so eager to have this transparency.
A Holistic Review Application Process
At each of these levels, in today’s educational landscape, a holistic review application process is in place, but it’s not defined in one singular and perfectly clear way. Instead, it’s much more subjective, and different factors are under consideration depending on the school environment, the age of the student, and the context of the student and family, which means that applicants face different standards, and schools are being more blunt about it when they speak in public, particularly the college folks.
Therefore, a set of guidelines from Admissions Directors on a school-by-school basis – combined with logic, experience, relationships, appropriate etiquette, and strong social skills – are our best set of tools to approach and navigate a positive and successful fall admissions season process, which we enjoy year after year with our families because they follow our advice and work in close partnership with us. Nothing motivates us more than seeing our students at every age level succeed, and it’s a gift to grow with our students over time and see how they evolve, mature, and contribute in positive ways from young children to adolescents to teenagers and young adults. We share in so many milestone events in addition to small and big successes along the way, that we’re constantly filled with joy, pride, and admiration for what our students are able to accomplish!
Given what we’re seeing this admissions season, we expect that the upcoming admissions season for the 2027-2028 school year will continue to be quite competitive, and we urge families to plan now for better pacing and a more pleasurable experience. A family can engage in a competitive process in ways that are constructive, reasonable, open-minded, explorative, balanced, and supportive of a student’s strengths and interests, and Faya and I would love to help you with that in any way, shape, or form!
Why Is Admissions So Competitive Right Now?
High interest in “great schools” has led to a huge increase in applications at highly desirable schools during the fall admissions season, and which schools are considered “great schools” has narrowed. Narrowing and shifting interest occurs because of market conditions, politics, safety and belonging considerations, perceived rigor, and perceived value. For example, while we have approximately 4,000 colleges in the United States, our families are typically prioritizing about 15% of them. For the approximately 300 boarding schools in the United States, our families are typically prioritizing about 7% of them. For the approximately 200 independent schools in NYC, our families are typically prioritizing 25% of them. With a concentration of highly competitive students and great parent partners looking at a narrower set of schools, the competition is naturally increasing, which requires everyone to step up, lean in, accept the challenge, develop resiliency, be more open-minded, or choose a different pathway.
Everything is a choice. When families report that they have to jump through ten hoops to get admitted to a certain school, we suggest reframing as follows: We value X, Y, and Z school communities, so we choose to engage in their processes, and we feel fortunate to have such great options available to us.
Otherwise, there are alternative options that a family might consider easier to navigate and less expensive to sustain, and undoubtedly students from those schools also achieve and succeed in life. There’s an argument to be made for the David vs. Goliath paradigm. If you’re going to swing hard for the most competitive schools, then you know you’re opting into a particularly skewed community that typically comes with higher expectations, more pressure, and, ultimately, a more competitive college application process since colleges can only take so many students from any one particular school. The stage is set in the lower school division, and it develops incrementally over a 13-year run. At each natural entry point, some “lifers” exit, and a cohort of new students join, and these new students have met a seriously challenging threshold in order to be admitted, which further increases the level of peer competition in the upper grades.
There Are No Guarantees
We must remember that there isn’t one way to do schooling. There’s no school that can absolutely guarantee phenomenal teaching for every student in every class all the time. There’s no school that can absolutely guarantee only nice and inclusive students in every class or grade level all the time. There’s no school that’s a guaranteed feeder to any particular college that your student might prefer. Therefore, there’s a level of risk involved with any school placement decision, and families need to be prepared to actively manage their own situation despite whatever resources may appear to be available at school. Autopilot mode is unrealistic, and private tutoring and supplemental educational consulting or college counseling is likely to be a part of the experience along the way.
The Importance of Standardized Testing
With a healthy and competitive applicant pool, highly desirable independent schools, boarding schools, and colleges are in a good position to vet applicants stringently and apply very high expectations during the fall admissions season. These same standards help to sustain the tone for what makes the school highly desirable in the first place. With the pandemic in the rearview mirror, most competitive schools have reversed test-optional policies and require students to submit scores. Where the policies remain test-optional, it’s really not what it seems, and the expectation is that applicants from highly competitive and privileged settings will seek to exceed any minimal admissions requirements. For this same pool of competitive applicants, it’s expected that their test scores will fall to the high end of the school or college’s score range. Yale, for example, shows score ranges for the middle 80% of students, those ranging from the 10th to the 90th percentiles, but logic suggests that you’re in a pretty risky position if you fall to the 10th percentile of the score range unless there’s something rather exceptional about the candidate’s application. The same logic holds true for entry to grade 6 or grade 9, the most typical entry points in New York City, in addition to other attrition-based entry points that require standardized testing.
The Importance of On-The-Spot Essay Writing
Another important factor is authentic, on-the-spot, and timed independent writing, which is relevant for most K-12 independent schools starting with entry to grade 3. It’s also relevant for college admissions, but it’s only applicable for students who choose the ACT and opt into the writing section. The SAT no longer offers an essay writing opportunity, which is really too bad. It’s not lost on us that independent schools value this on-the-spot, timed, independent writing sample on the way in via the ISEE or SSAT, but then many schools diminish the importance of this writing on the way out (aka college exmissions). The party line is that, “It doesn’t really matter to colleges,” but we just don’t really buy that. In an educational climate marked by grade inflation and rampant use of AI for assistive writing, we don’t understand why an elite school would shy away from having its students showcase their writing prowess. The message ought to be, “Opt-in, exceed expectations, and showcase your skillset!” These writing tasks are manageable, formulaic, and highly coachable. Naturally the colleges, in their holistic review process differentiated by context, would like to have an additional data point to consider related to on-the-spot, independent writing. They’d also love to have AP scores or IB scores – or any number of other data points – to consider even though they’re not necessarily required nor explicitly discussed on an admissions page.
Unless a student has a formalized typing accommodation in place – and even then there are exceptions – this writing will have to be handwritten and legible, and it will be a timed task. Sadly, so many students have been disadvantaged by lacking handwriting instruction at the elementary level and any systemic standard across grade levels. Diminished opportunities for practicing handwritten work at school has resulted in lower writing stamina and patience for proofreading, revising, and rewriting. As a general guideline:
- First and Second Graders are working on responses that are 1-5 sentences with an illustration. In the US, it’s common to find explicit handwriting instruction for printed letters. In the UK and France, they learn to read and write cursive.
- Third Graders are working to master a single paragraph and move into 2- and 3-paragraph essays. This is typically when US schools introduce cursive handwriting, if it’s still part of their curriculum. They might also introduce typing practice, too, albeit usually quite lightly.
- Fourth Graders are working to master 3-, 4-, and 5-paragraph essays. Some US schools introduce, or continue to instruct, cursive handwriting at this age level. It’s also a popular age to instruct or encourage typing skills, but it’s very often not systematic.
- Fifth Graders are working to master and enhance 5+ paragraph essays and reports. It’s unlikely they have explicit handwriting instruction or systematic typing practice in place.
- The presentation of writing on the page has an impact on the reader, and illegible or messy writing is more likely to receive lower scores. Notably, we’re seeing an increase in blue book style, in-class essay writing at the upper school and college levels because of concerns about academic integrity, so developing facility and stamina with handwritten work remains a necessary foundational skill. Cursive should be taught and mastered, and it doesn’t need to be overcomplicated. There are various forms of cursive that range from simple joined-up letters – such as Handwriting Without Tears – to advanced calligraphy, so there’s something for everyone! In our experience, kids really like learning cursive, and they feel good about learning to write and read a “secret code”.
The Importance of Writing Samples
Beyond an independent writing sample, schools also want evidence of other written work that has expectedly gone through a writing process, but its authenticity and integrity is being carefully assessed. This written work comes in the form of multiple student statements, ranging in length depending on the school and age group, and graded writing samples with teacher feedback, which has become oddly difficult to gather from schools when a family is applying out. What we’d like to see is an abundance of writing, across all three writing purposes – writing to persuade, writing to inform, and writing to entertain – that showcases a top-notch approach to Writer’s Workshop, and results in a robust portfolio of written work across every grade level.
Because of the rise in AI usage, school faculty anticipate “cheating” with writing, so students have a huge burden of proof to demonstrate their genuine work. This is achievable by explicitly teaching and practicing specific writing skills – also referred to as writing traits – which include ideas, organizational structures, grammar and conventions, sentence fluency, enhanced and intentional word choice, and writing with your voice in addition to the presentation of the work itself and the impression it leaves on the reader. My high school French teacher used to tell us that he should be paid double because he was teaching us both English and French. Syntax and grammar matter, they deserve attention and proper referencing, and we shouldn’t be afraid to correct student work as a teachable moment.
Benchmarking and Differentiating Instruction
It’s often too easy to look at educational planning and decision making in highly siloed ways, but that’s the wrong approach. It’s not reasonable to tell the parent of a preschooler or elementary student to just NOT think about college or life beyond high school. There’s a reason that schools and school systems engage in curriculum mapping and backward design. Skillful teaching is meant to be outcome oriented, and instructional units should have clear essential questions and mastery objectives that are measurable and connect to skills that were expected to be mastered in prior grade levels as well as connected to skills on deck at the next grade level.
Benchmarking is necessary in order to appropriately challenge each student and differentiate instruction within a classroom of any size, whether a teacher is managing 12 students or 30 students. What happens in the primary grades impacts what can happen in the intermediate elementary grades and beyond. Therefore, studying the patterns and expectations associated with admissions processes at every divisional level helps us to understand what skills are necessary incrementally, and it shouldn’t be “shock and awe” when a family decides to come to the planning table for a 6th grade move, a 9th grade move, a college application process, or something in between. Admissions testing is a great way – but certainly not the only way – to audit academic skills and performance in order to organize a targeted program that addresses any prerequisite gaps or provides academic enrichment. This work is useful whether you’re considering or expecting to move school settings or not.
Approaching The Fall Admissions Season Sensibly
But if you’re specifically thinking about a PreK-12 school transition for the 2026-2027 school year, we’ve got to move quickly.
And if you’re thinking about a PreK-12 school transition for the 2027-2028 school year – or if you have a high school freshman, sophomore, or junior who is not yet engaged in proactive planning and preparation for the eventual college application process – then please reach out NOW to get better organized.
Don’t fall into the trap of approaching the fall admissions season as a fall activity or the college application process as an 11th and 12th grade event. Instead, start early, focus your attention, and tune out illogical noise in order to increase the odds of a more pleasurable and successful experience! Faya and I are here to help with hourly, ad hoc consultation as well as comprehensive support!
We look forward to hearing from you!
Warm regards,
Brad Hoffman and Faya Hoffman
Co-Founders and Learning Concierges, My Learning Springboard
