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"  We&amp;#039;ve all heard the stories. The friend of a friend who wrote a $50,000 check from the maternity ward to secure Junior&amp;#039;s spot in the high school graduating class of 2030. The couple that built a library/parking structure/music room as a well-meaning gesture after they toured the school and &amp;quot;saw a need.&amp;quot; Then there&amp;#039;s the one about the admissions director who pointed to two stacks of paperwork on her desk and said, &amp;quot;This is the pile of candidates we&amp;#039;re considering. Yours is in the other one.&amp;quot; Over the past 18 months these tales have tagged along with me as I toured 12 private schools, attended open houses, and simulated playdates with my five-year-old twins, who on one occasion cavorted in a schoolyard with numbers pinned to their shirts like livestock at a state fair, all in the name of kindergarten admission. We live in Los Angeles, a city where the private school process is just as cutthroat as in New York, as it is in Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The incessant babble about where little Wolfie or Juniper or Harlow (remember, I live in L.A.) will learn to hold a pencil correctly, to the tune of $25,000 per year, often includes the terms fundraising, development, advancement, and capital campaigns. In a word: money. Money is not my native language, which explains why I&amp;#039;m a writer, not a hedge fund manager. So I needed a crash course in private school economics. What are the real financial expectations of the families applying to private schools these days? If trying to buy your way into a prestigious school is so frowned upon, how do the shameless 1-percenters whose bank accounts are their best shot at gaining entry let their philanthropic enthusiasm be known? And then, once those of us who don&amp;#039;t have the means to build a new wing are (hopefully) accepted by a school, what are the expectations for giving beyond tuition? The first rule of private school fundraising is to not acknowledge that it exists; just let the elephant linger unacknowledged, throughout the admissions process. If a school mentions plans for a new gym, an improved art studio, or a cutting-edge science lab, the appropriate response is to marvel at the sleek plans and project how your budding young chemist Orson would thrive in such a facility. Scoffing at the cost, or volunteering to front it, is not advised. &amp;quot;I know for a fact that the top-tier schools in Los Angeles will not accept donations from a family that is participating in the admissions process,&amp;quot; says Michelle Nitka, a clinical psychologist and author of Coping with Preschool Panic, who counsels clients on private school entry. But the reality is that at least 5 percent of each class, whether it&amp;#039;s at a K--6 elementary school, a two-century-old boarding school, or a small liberal arts college, is &amp;quot;targeted for development&amp;quot; by administrators, meaning that it&amp;#039;s picked for admission in part because of an assumed generosity. (&amp;quot;If a school is in the middle of a big capital campaign, then it&amp;#039;s possible for that number to be higher,&amp;quot; says Nitka.) Someone has to buy all those Bunsen burners, or fill the financial aid coffers--it&amp;#039;s just the talking-about-it part that feels icky, so if you&amp;#039;re determined to communicate that you have a fat wallet and are itching to share, let someone else do it for you. &amp;quot;We advise clients to have someone, ideally an ethical person who is close to the school, contact a trustee or someone in admissions or development and say, &amp;#039;I have a friend or colleague who&amp;#039;s applying to a school with their child, and did you know that they are the daughter of so-and-so, because their name might not ring a bell?&amp;#039; &amp;quot; says Suzanne Rheault, founder of Aristotle Circle, a New York--based business that connects families with admissions advisers and tutors for students applying at any level, from elementary school to graduate school. &amp;quot;Or, &amp;#039;I just want to alert you to the fact that this family, in the past, has been extremely generous with their community.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; There are infinite ways for schools to learn about their applicants and to ferret out who the potential big givers are without saying a word, thanks to the vast amount of information available online. Did you write your address on the application? Then you have Zillow.com to thank for revealing how much you paid for your home and when. Did you post pictures from your two-week Amangani vacation on Facebook? Kill at the box office? It&amp;#039;s all just a Google away. But what if you ask someone for an endorsement and then decide not to enroll your child? Rheault and Nitka caution clients against asking someone to go to bat for you unless it&amp;#039;s your first or second choice, so as not to burn a critical bridge for, say, another of your children. And if you do change your mind, contact the person who referred you immediately to break the news. &amp;quot;Honesty is important. If you can, you say, &amp;#039;This school is amazing, and in the end it&amp;#039;s going to come down to this school and that school.&amp;#039; At least they know there&amp;#039;s a possibility you won&amp;#039;t accept,&amp;quot; Rheault says. &amp;quot;If it&amp;#039;s your fifth choice, don&amp;#039;t put that person in that position.&amp;quot; Nitka recommends notifying the person who referred you to graciously explain in detail why you chose another school (it&amp;#039;s single-gender, has better athletics, has a stronger math program, etc.) and sending a brief but thoughtful note to the school you rejected--or more. &amp;quot;To help assuage any bad feelings, make a donation to the school that you were accepted to but decided not to attend. It doesn&amp;#039;t have to be a lot,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a good faith gesture. It helps save a friendship and some credibility.&amp;quot; Once the acceptance letters start to roll in, including one from your school of choice, hopefully, so do the calls for donations. It may be difficult to accept the fact that the steep tuition simply does not cover the costs of running the school, but it&amp;#039;s true. Every school needs generous families. Several anonymous sources said that an additional 10 percent of the tuition is a good guideline for a family of more moderate means to follow when it comes to fundraising. Typically a school will appoint a few willing families in the community to solicit money from the others, or hire a development officer to do the dirty work, and they usually suggest an actual dollar amount. One friend, an established screenwriter who is a parent at our twins&amp;#039; new school, says he got a call from a colleague of his agent&amp;#039;s suggesting a donation in the solid seven-figure zone. &amp;quot;I said, &amp;#039;If you work with my agent, you should know I can&amp;#039;t afford that,&amp;#039; &amp;quot; he says with a laugh. My husband and I got our first call of this nature almost exactly one month into the new school year. The twins were accepted to our top choice and a couple of others, by some minor miracle. We hadn&amp;#039;t offered a penny to any of them before, and if our history of giving to the nerdiest environmental nonprofits was what secured two spots on the coveted roster, I&amp;#039;d be surprised. I&amp;#039;d like to think that our cherubic children wrangled their own entry with their significant charms. Just last week I got a little misty-eyed as I imagined how they&amp;#039;ll shine over the years, blossoming into well-adjusted adolescents in such an idyllic school environment, as I tasted the tang of envelope glue on my tongue and dropped the fundraising check into the mail slot. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a993/what-makes-the-rich-beg-1358667926-21-clone-1361807981/>