More N.Y. Toddlers Vie for Pre-School Spots

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If you think Wall Street's woes might have put a damper on the number of Manhattan parents willing to pay more than $30,000 a year for nursery school, making the infamous admissions process less cutthroat this year, think again.

"They've never been more competitive," says Amanda Uhry, founder of Manhattan Private School Advisors, a consulting firm that charges $18,000 to $24,000 to help parents get their kids into top schools. For 2010, "we're seeing almost twice the number of parents we saw a year ago."

This shouldn't come as a big surprise, considering the number of well-heeled New Yorkers who will be celebrating their third birthdays in 2010. Birth rates in the U.S. hit a pre-recession high in 2007. In New York City, the rate was 65.3 births per 1,000 females age 15 to 44 in 2007, compared with 62.9 in 1998.

"Four is the new two when it comes to having kids in New York," Uhry says, adding that in some preschools, there will be up to 70 applications for each open slot.

Recession-related public school budget cutbacks are bolstering private school applications, too, Uhry says. And nobody's building new schools to meet demand because of the high cost of property in New York, not to mention the cost of liability insurance for the playground.

And so thousands of frantic parents will be storming phone lines and pounding pavement on the Tuesday after Labor Day, which is traditionally when private schools open up the application process for the following school year. Most schools limit the number of applications they'll accept, let alone the number of students. Many schools require a written essay, and Uhry says it's very important that parents take it as seriously as they did their own college admission essays. Some parents have resorted to hiring professional writers, she says.