Schools and admissions
First, some facts - My son will turn 3 in April, and no, I do not have an admission for him in a 'proper' school. Since June last year, well-meaning people 'in the know' have been asking me, telling me, advising me and scolding me on admissions for my son. I have collected quite a bit of market information on schools, their admission process (the difficulty thereof), the USPs of each school, and the compromises involved. Broadly speaking, two kinds of systems seem to be in vogue. One is a window-based system - the school has a time-window for admission process. This window typically lasts 15 days to 2 months and the process is nearly always the same - the date of handing out applications is announced, one needs to collect applications, fill that up, submit it, and wait for the results. The ratio of applications to seats varies depending on the popularity of the school, my estimate is 10:1 at the minimum. Where the demand far outstrips the supply, rent seeking behaviour