The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (21 page)

When it comes to the arts and sciences of social climbing, New York City is the Athens of the twenty-first century. Climbing in the Big Apple isn’t just a spectator sport that the whole city takes part in, it’s a more fundamental ingredient in everyday life than any religion. A family doesn’t put up with the cost, crime, and taxes of NYC if they are not aggressively and devoutly upwardly mobile. The same can be said to a lesser degree of life in any big city in America—Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, Boston, etc.—but when it comes to climbing as a family, NYC is on the cutting edge. Because of this, seeing how it works in NYC will help you work it in your hometown.

The Right School

There are hundreds of private schools in New York City. Sadly, only a small fraction of them are considered the “right schools” and can truly help you and your child’s climb. The yearly tuition
at one of the right private nursery schools is more than twenty thousand dollars per year, and by the time your child is a teenager going to one of the right private high schools it will set you back in the neighborhood of forty grand per annum. All told, sending one child to one of the right schools from nursery through twelfth grade will cost you around half a million dollars. If that seems like a daunting number, know that you aren’t just purchasing academic excellence, you are buying a lifetime’s worth of social entrée for you and your child.

Of course, city climbers can send their child to one of the right boarding schools, too—Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, Deerfield, etc.—they all provide an excellent education. But we feel Mountaineers who send their children away to boarding school are missing the opportunity to climb as a family. Yes, there are first-rate Mountaineering opportunities at elite boarding schools. You can take comfort in knowing your child will be bunking with the children of international tycoons, Chinese billionaires, European royalty, Russian oligarchs, and Third World dictators, at least one of whom will be destined to appear before a human rights tribunal. There’s no question that giving your children an opportunity to make friends with the leaders of a country that lacks an extradition treaty might help them if they grow up to be a fugitive from justice. The question is, what will it do for you now?

Yes, on parent visiting days at boarding school, you will have the opportunity to meet exotic Big Fish and Whale parents of your child’s friends. But even for the most rapid and audacious parent climber, there is so only so much Mountaineering that
can be done in the course of a parents’ weekend, especially when your hobnobbing opportunities are constantly being interrupted by meddlesome meetings with your child’s teachers.

The parents of a child who attends one of these schools will find themselves at drop-off, pick-up, the school playground, athletic contests, etc., making small talk with billionaires, hedge fund princes, prize-winning novelists, Academy Award–winning actors, TV personalities, and diplomats, i.e., people whose bodyguards wouldn’t let you get near them if their child weren’t friends with your child on a daily basis. You won’t ever have to ask Big Fish for their unlisted phone numbers, they’re printed out in the school directory, along with the Big Fish’s nickname . . . that’s
if
your child gets into one of the right schools.

Think of all the exciting and profitable new best friends you could be making if your kid attended one of these elite institutions. You’ve read our chapter on networking; you know what to do once you’re on a first-name basis with a Big Fish. From day one, admission to the right school will enable you and your children to step into the winner’s circle together, and you will have
the privilege of being able to social climb with them as you push their strollers into a better life.

After the pain of childbirth, the hours you’ve had to work Bugabooing your child from park to playground, not to mention the hours upwardly mobile mothers have had to work to afford the nanny to change the diapers and clean up the spit-up while they’re at work, we say moms are entitled to get something for themselves from those bundles of joy that have given them stretch marks. Isn’t it about time your offspring did something for you? Why should you have to do all the climbing?

Any psychologist will tell you it’s not healthy for parents to hide the realities of life from their children: the hard work, the teamwork, and most important, the Mountaineering required to obtain the “good life.” Get them into the right school and they’ll understand Mommy and Daddy didn’t get where they are by magic. Just as you had to climb, so will Junior.

Another advantage of sending your children to one of the right private day schools in the city, as opposed to a private boarding school, is that when the little ones come back to your apartment/home in the afternoon, you’ll be able to coach and debrief them; teach them the subtle cues that will help five-year-olds determine whether they just had a playdate with a millionaire or a centimillionaire, i.e., a bona fide Whale. With a little help your first-grader will easily learn to recognize the difference between a Degas, a Picasso, a Lichtenstein, a Pollock, and a Basquiat, and will be able to tell you which of the kids in his/her class have such high-priced art hanging on their walls. By the time they are in second grade they will be able to ascertain
whether the Monet water lilies above the fireplace is a seventy-nine-dollar print, or a $79 million oil. Do their playmate’s mommy or daddy own the Lear Jet that flies them to Nantucket on weekends or is it just a NetJet? You know the questions they should be asking. And you will have the fun of teaching them the tricks of turning fun into ambition.

Every major city in America has one or more of these right schools. In Houston, the greater percentage of the parents at one of the right schools will be in the oil/energy business. In Palo Alto, the young centimillionaire moms and dads will more than likely be computer geeks. And, of course, in Los Angeles, you’ll have a higher percentage of parents in the entertainment business. Geography affects the makeup of the Big Fish parent
population at the right schools, but one thing remains the same everywhere: Sadly, the best right schools for the upwardly mobile are invariably the ones that reject the most applicants.

Academic excellence is part of the sales pitch at every one of the right schools, regardless of where they’re located. Glossy catalogs boast of second-graders learning Mandarin, Nobel Laureates lecturing fifth-grade science class, etc. But the real appeal, what the right schools are really selling, and the never-mentioned reason Big Fish, Whales, and famous and well-connected parents of every description want their children to go to these right schools is so their offspring will make friends with the children of even bigger Big Fish, bigger Whales, and even more famous and better-connected parents.

In a perfect world, everyone’s children should and would be able to learn Mandarin in the second grade and have a Nobel Laureate lecture them in grade school. But the social climber knows the world is neither perfect nor fair.

Even if you can afford to spend what the average American family of four lives on in a year on your child’s tuition, and even if your privileged tot’s test scores surpass those of 97 percent of the other applicants, there’s no guarantee your child will be accepted into this inner, über academic circle. In fact, the odds are against you. However, if you are a Big Fish/Whale, famous person, or “legacy” (a legacy meaning one of the child’s parents attended the school themselves, which of course means that child has the advantage of being a second-generation social climber), these odds shift dramatically in your favor.

Each right school has its own selective and secretive
admissions policy. Though acceptance is never easy, the younger your children are when you apply, the easier it will be for them to get in. If you wait to fill out your first private school admissions forms until your child is going into the first grade, you and your progeny are sadly already behind the eight ball. How can that be? Because those applicants who have already attended the right feeder or nursery school will have preference over children whose parents were irresponsible enough to wait until they were six to start them social climbing.

What kind of networking/social climbing does it take to get into the high end of the food chain at age two and a half? Take the case of Mr. Jack Grubman. When he was a hot telecom stock analyst at Smith Barney, he wanted his twins to gain admission to the famed 92nd Street Y preschool. Around this time, he had also rated AT&T stock as “neutral,” i.e., not a buy. Shortly after Grubman gave the unfavorable rating, he wrote a memorandum to Mr. Sandy Weill, then CEO of Citibank and a billionaire board member of AT&T, asking Sandy to help his children get into the 92nd Street Y preschool. According to
PBS Frontline
, Grubman wrote, “Given that it’s statistically easier to get into the Harvard Freshman Class than it is to get into preschool at the 92nd Street Y [by the way, this is a correct statement], it comes down to ‘who you know.’”

After writing this memo to Mr. Weill, Mr. Grubman upped his rating of AT&T from “neutral” to “buy.” Which of course was good news for AT&T and Mr. Weill, who then contacted a member of the 92nd Street Y’s board and recommended Mr. Grubman’s children, who were soon accepted. Shortly after,
a Citibank foundation then saw it in its heart to donate a million dollars to the 92nd Street Y preschool. Yes, Mr. Grubman has since been banned from the securities industry, but at least he got his children into one of the right schools.

To those who are saying to themselves, “Thank God that’s not how it works at the right school in my town,” wake up and smell the coffee. Also, think how much Mr. Grubman’s children love him for what he taught them by example about climbing.

So how do parents who aren’t analyzing and rating stocks get a Big Fish or Whale to go to bat for their children? Here’s where love pays off in social climbing.

If you’ve been a great guest at a Big Fish’s home for in excess of five years, have always laughed at their jokes, given them a jar of your bogus homemade jam at each and every visit, and most important, aided and abetted them or their spawn in avoiding disgrace, embarrassment, or arrest, you’re in a good position to get a great letter of recommendation for your child.

Every social climber who has any thought of ever having children should early on identify and befriend any and all Big Fish they encounter who are on the board of one of the right schools in their city. Don’t just make them your child’s godparent. Name your firstborn after them. Help your child write them birthday and holiday cards. Encourage the little ones to call the Big Fish who can do the most for them Uncle and or Auntie.

Never ask acquaintances or friends whose children have already gotten into the right school that you want your child to attend for help or advice concerning admissions. Why? Because they won’t tell you the truth. Why? Because parents like to brag that their child did it all by themselves, and if they admit that their uncle donated a hockey rink or that their spouse affected the stock value of a board member’s company, it will make their child seem less of a little genius.

To those upwardly mobile families who have gotten their progeny into a right school, congratulations! But know that your work has just begun. To take full advantage of the new climbing opportunities your child has opened up for you we suggest the following:

If your nanny is responsible for pick-up and drop-off, make sure that she understands that her Christmas bonus or help with her immigration problem is dependent on her setting up the right playdates. If your three-year-old and your nanny hang
out with, say, a movie star’s child and his/her nanny (Uma Thurman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Woody Allen all have children who attend one of NYC’s right schools), chances are when Uma’s, Jerry’s, or Woody’s kid has his/her birthday party, your child will be invited. In which case you, not your nanny, will bring your child to the birthday bash, ergo, you, having read our book, will soon find yourself friends with Uma, Jerry, or Woody.

Make up an excuse to casually drop into your child’s private school and check the student signup sheets on the school bulletin board to find out whether the right parents are having their sons and daughters sign up for, say, tennis or baseball on the weekends. If the right sport turns out to be tennis and you have a son or daughter who loves baseball, gently explain to your child that if they make the wrong choice and decide to play the sport they like rather than the one you want them to, like tennis, they won’t just be missing out on opportunities Mommy and Daddy worked hard to give them, they will also be making a mistake that could limit their future earning power. If that doesn’t work, try bribery.