“No school will tell you how many spots are open,” said one former admissions director. “Their numbers are sacred to them.”

Omerta aside, every Baby Ivy parent has heard the stories. Some of them are even true. For instance, there’s the one about the secular couple who joined a house of worship on the hope this might somehow boost their child’s chances. Or about reference letters from ambassadors or even presidents. One such letter was delivered in a leather box, via Rolls Royce.

Big Business
The college-admissions scandal revealed the lengths to which some parents will go, including brazen schemes to buy spots at Yale, Stanford and other elite schools. While outright bribery hasn’t been exposed at the Baby Ivies, few parents doubt that, in general, money talks.

Private schools, after all, are big business, and numbers gleaned from 2017 public filings provide a sense of just how big. Collegiate, for instance, had about $342 million in assets. The head of school at Horace Mann made almost $1 million. In its annual report that year, Trinity lamented its endowment-per-student ratio -- at about $71,000 per child -- was “one of the smallest in the city.’’

Even New York’s entry-level 1 percenters -- people who would be considered rich elsewhere –- grouse about the hefty tuition. The scramble over Baby Ivies underscores the city’s wealth inequality, but not in the usual way: It represents the gap between the haves and the have-mores.

“I see families earning $500,000 who consider themselves middle class and the working poor,” said Roxana Reid, founder of educational consulting company Smart City Kids. “It’s an outrageous statement, but it’s connected to insane costs related to housing, education and taxes, and just quality of life in New York.’’

Entry Game
And so, year after year, the games commence. One father recalled a private-school official who kept saying his child would have difficulty gaining admission.

The father’s response: “How can we help?” Those four words changed the tenor of the conversation.

“It showed we were speaking the same language,” the father said. His child got accepted.

Other parents offer donations, buy tables at charity galas or chase after board members on vacation in Anguilla, Deer Valley or Southampton.