By Jennifer Kelly Geddes
Editor’s note: Click HERE to learn about a great scholarship for passionate learners from The School Choice Group.
Moving your family is an incredibly nerve-wracking endeavor—from the endless packing, to parting with close friends, to setting up a new house and joining an unfamiliar community. Of course, one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle is figuring out where your kids will go to school. That’s where Liz Perelstein comes in. The founder of one of the largest and most well-regarded school advisory and placement services in the world, she too once had to pull up stakes, though in her case the location had the added stressor of being thousands of miles away—from Westchester to London. “My husband got a new job at an investment bank in London in 1997 and we ended up having to move on two months’ notice,” she recalls. “Our daughter and son were in the grades 4 and 6 and it was February, smack in the middle of the school year.”
Her children were upset, to say the least—and Perelstein admits to a few teary moments herself. “My daughter wasn’t good with change in general and they both had a hard time saying goodbye to friends and quitting their sports teams. And of course my professional life was turned upside down, too,” Perelstein says. At the time, Perelstein, who has a background in education, was working as a deputy principal at a school in Westchester as well as serving on her local school board.
The kids were enrolled in The American School in London and began to thrive, but Perelstein later realized her son probably would have been better suited to the British style of learning. “The fact was, I only considered one place for my kids—and I’m an education professional!” She figured that if someone with her background hardly shopped for a school, then there probably were many expat parents who didn’t do much research either.
Her mission became clear: Perelstein wanted to help other parents settle into their new lives by better understanding the education options for their children. “I started by visiting a lot of the London schools in order to learn each teaching style, and then I put together a brochure. I called myself an ‘education consultant’ and, after an article was written about me, I mailed both documents to various investment banks offering my school services,” she explains. A large firm reached out and gave her a try; a second client soon followed. Word spread, more companies called and, in a matter of months, The School Choice Group was born. “At first I thought I could structure my own time, but the business grew quickly—it was soon in charge of me.”
Sixteen years later, The School Choice Group, headquartered in White Plains, NY, now has over 140 admissions consultants working in cities and business centers around the world, with a significant presence in New York City and the metropolitan area. Multinational corporations such as American Express, PepsiCo, Microsoft, and Starbucks hire their division for corporate clients (School Choice International) to help their employees learn about the schools in their new locations and find a good fit for their children. At the same time, many individuals now also avail themselves of the company’s school advisory services through their private client division (School Search Solutions). Whether you’re a family who’s relocating for a corporate opportunity, or another who lives locally and seeks advice on area schools, the savvy consultants at The School Choice Group aim to make your school search process more informed and less stressful. Services range from phone consultations, which include in-depth explanations of public, private and boarding schools, as well as gifted and special needs programs, to full-service packages, which include setting up tours, arranging interviews, scheduling tests, reviewing applications, and interview prep.
After three years in London, Perelstein and her family returned to the United States—and her business followed. “I saw a similar need for this service in New York City and several UK firms helped to put me in touch with their US counterparts,” she says.
For families in the New York City area interested in their private client services, the key contact at School Search Solutions is Roselyn Drake, who oversees a staff of half a dozen consultants and researchers who serve hundreds of local families each year. Drake, a long-time educational consultant who previously worked in private school administration, is well-acquainted with the only-in-New-York school competition and the level of angst it can trigger, having gone through the private school admissions process for her daughter, now in middle school.
School Search Solutions operates much like the the corporate branch: families can choose from a short consultation to a more in-depth approach.
“We offer an extensive array of services that include meetings with the parents and child, interview preparation, a review of school records, outside testing, and essay review,” Drake explains. Once a full picture of the child is created, a list of schools (usually 8-10) is compiled. “We try to ease the anxiety of the process and reframe education, so that it’s not about the name or reputation of the school but the right fit for the child.”
Families tend to come in droves in the late summer and early fall when applications are released, but School Search Solutions works to place kids throughout the year. Requests for private school help edge out those for public, though Drake’s staff advises on every academic option a family might be interested, including nursery school, G&T, special needs programs, specialized high schools, and boarding schools. They also regularly consult with families who are moving from the city to other parts of the Tri-State area (i.e. to the suburbs).
School Search Solutions’ invaluable assistance is reflected in their carefully cultivated relationships with admissions directors. “We’ve earned a tremendous amount of trust from all kinds of schools, to the point where we get calls from them when there’s an opening in a class that they’d like to fill,” Drake says. This insider knowledge (for example, a single spot in third grade for a boy) sometimes gives Drake’s staff the ability to send candidates for consideration before the opportunity is widely known.
Drake also underscores the excellent work the company’s research team performs to be deeply familiar with education models around the world. This allows them to better help parents who might be used to a school system that’s very different from their new options. For similar reasons, her team stays up-to-date on the various changes in New York City’s public and private school admissions and curriculum policies.
Being deeply familiar with what schools are truly like, and how changing education policies and trends impact them, is the heart of School Choice’s success because it allows their consultants to help families really hone in on schools that would truly be a good fit for their child. Perelstein reports that her company has a near-perfect record.
“The vast majority of the kids we work with get a spot in a school that suits them,” she says. “Where they’ll do well and, we hope, be happy.”
Visit schoolsearchsolutions.com for more information on their services, or contact info@schoolchoiceintl.com.
