If you're like many new parents, nothing's too good for your little genius, including $30,440 for preschool so your 4-year-old can occupy a few hours each day playing with blocks and finger painting in an organized setting.

Think that's a typo? Think again. That is the price of admission to the preschool program at New York's Ethical¹ Culture Fieldston School. Other private schools in aren't much better. Bank Street, also in New York, will set you back $27,450; pre-K at Washington's Sidwell Friends runs $26,790. Compared to that, The Center for Early Education in Los Angeles, with its $15,400 tuition, seems like a bargain.

Forbes.com hunted down the most expensive preschools in the biggest urban areas across the country using local school guidebooks, Web sites and experts to compare tuitions and programs. There is no central database that tracks tuition trends, not even locally, says Deborah Ashe, director of admissions in the lower school at New York's Trevor Day School, where preschool tuition is $24,200. And there are a lot of variables. Some schools that are preschool-only programs have comparably lower tuitions than preschools affiliated² with elementary schools, and some schools get funding from the government.

Tuitions have been rising at an 8% clip across the board, according to some experts. That's more than the annual tuition increase at Ivy³ League colleges. But there is something to be said for the hefty premiums⁴, according to Victoria Goldman, author of preschool guidebooks for New York and Los Angeles and mom of two New York private school kids. "You get what you pay for," she says.

Mostly what she means is facilities. The elite⁵ Episcopal School on Manhattan's Upper East Side, for example, which costs $14,500 a year, is housed in an elegant seven-story townhouse. Seven years ago, Boston's nearly 100-year-old Tenacre School (pre-K tuition is $16,000-plus) built a new gymnasium, library and multimedia⁶ center.

Washington, D.C.'s Sidwell Friends School gutted⁷ a few buildings and built a new "green" middle school. "Many of the older schools are antiquated⁸ and in constant need of upkeeping," says Georgia Irvin, author of a schools guidebook for the D.C. metropolitan⁹ area.

But paying the tuition is easy compared with getting in. Entrance to an exclusive private preschool is a painful right of passage for thousands of upscale New York moms every year, kicking off with a mad rush of speed dialing early in the morning the day after Labor¹⁰ Day to secure applications before schools run out of them.

The way the game works, at least for many top private nursery schools: You call to get the application, rush it back to the school and wait anxiously for word you will be granted a tour and your child will be invited to an on-site pseudo-interview the schools call a "play-date."

Some schools dispense¹¹ with the play-date and just meet with families individually. Some ask for essays. Some just want to know where you live and work. (Presumably much information about your potential as a big donor¹² can be gleaned¹³ from your address and employer).

Then there is the bone-chilling, mind-bending wait during which you agonize¹⁴ over your kid's performance during the play date and handicap her chances vs. the others (including that kid who went fishing in the classroom fish tank). While the process starts in September, it doesn't end until early March, when the notifications are mailed.

After conquering the application process and winning a coveted¹⁵ spot, no small feat¹⁶ in itself, the reality hits hard. Preschool, for most just a few hours a day in the mornings, can cost more than studying for an engineering degree at Michigan, and much more at some very selective schools.

Of course, the lure¹⁷ for many is the program itself. At the 92nd Street Y, a school that gained a fair amount of notoriety for its role in the Wall Street research scandal a few years back, kids are engaged in an archeology "dig" and sculpture projects, among other things.

At New York's Horace Mann, where educating a 4-year-old sets you back $26,880, kids are taught reading and computer readiness. At Chicago City Day School, tuition $17,000-plus, instruction in foreign languages, drama, music and science begins in the junior kindergarten.

Many parents view private preschool as a necessary step in the even more stressful process of securing a place in a private grade school, the process for which has been chronicled recently in the documentary "Getting In" on the TLC cable channel.

In truth, the other thing pushing parents to send kids to preschool is the cold reality that kindergarten has become the new first grade, with parents pushing academic learning earlier with the fear that their kids will fall behind if they don't meet major milestones¹⁸ like reading well before what is considered normal.

如果你象很多年轻父母那样，为了让四岁大的孩子每天都能花几小时玩玩积木或画画手指画而花费，30，440美元，对你的小天才并没有什么好处.

那是不是印刷错误啊？在想想，那是纽约Ethical Culture Fieldson 学校幼儿园课程的价格，其它私立学校的情况也差不多，另一所在纽约的Bank Street 幼儿园的价格是27，450美元；华盛顿的的Sidwell Friends 幼儿园的价格是26，790美元。这样比较起来洛杉矶的早期教育中心15，400美元的价格就象是讨价还价后的费用。

想象一下：简直就是个天价的幼儿园

Forbes 网站和专家通过对学费及课程的比价从最大城区当地学校指南上获取了关最贵幼儿园的情况，没有关于学费纪录的数据库中心即使是部分的，据纽约特雷佛走读学校初级部注册主任Deborah Ashe 说，幼儿园的学费是24，200美元而且还存在一些变量。有些幼儿园只是课程学费比其它附属小学幼儿园低，一些学校还可从政府获得资金。

据专家们说学费已经涨了百分之八。比艾维联合大学一学年的学费还高，在另一本关于纽约和洛杉矶学校指南的书上，一位有两个孩子在纽约私立幼儿园的妈妈关于学费金的问题谈了她的看法，“物有所值”，她主要的意思很简单，例如，在曼哈顿贫民区的最好的教会学校一年只要14500美元，是一片很雅致的七层高的建筑群。七年前，位于波士顿有一百年历史的Tenacre学校（幼儿园的学费是16000美元）建了一个新体育馆，图书馆和多媒体中心。

华盛顿的Sidwell Friends学校拆除了一些建筑建造了一所新的“绿色”中学，“许多古老的学校都陈旧了，需要经常的维修”华盛顿市区学校指南的作者Georgia Zrvin说。但是花费总比收获容易，对于纽约成千的属于高级消费者的妈妈们来说获得进入高级私立幼儿园的通行证简直就是一种痛苦，劳工节一过，为了确保在学校挤满以前能万无一失的申请到名额，每天清早都要疯了一样的拨了一个又一个的电话，这种情况至少在许多最好的私立幼儿园都发生过：先打电话申请，然后急忙冲到学校，接着怀着紧张的心情等到一句话可以到学校去一趟，然后才邀孩子去做一个由指定地点的名义上的面试，学校称为 “游戏假日”。

有些学校省去了游戏假日，只是分别会见每个家庭，有时随机问些问题，有些只想知道你住在哪，在哪工作，（只是了解一些大概情况，从你的住址或工作了解一下你是否会是一个拥有潜力的大捐赠者）。

然后你可能会有一个手脚冰凉，大脑空白的等待，等着你给孩子准备的表演结果，等着游戏的假日，以及与其他人的竞争机会，（包括哪个孩子会去教室的鱼缸钓鱼），这个过程从九月份开始直到第二年三月份通知被寄出才结束。

经过克服重重困难的申请过程，赢得你所梦寐以求的那一点，并不是万事大吉了，实际上还差得远呢，对于能最终走进幼儿园只是万里长征的第一步，它比获得密歇根州的工程学位甚至比去一些更有名的的学校学习还难。当然了，最有诱惑力的还是课程本身，过去几年里在华尔街关于丑闻的地调查中，位于第92街Y的一所学校由于它的 表现 获得了相当多的恶名，孩子们忙于在考古学里“挖据”在其它学科上刻苦研究。

在纽约的Horance mam,四岁孩子的教育费用是26880美元，在那里教孩子阅读以及计算机装备。芝加哥走读学校的学费是17000美元，幼儿园的初级阶段就教授外语，戏剧音乐，简单科学。

很多家长认为私立幼儿园是很关键的一步，甚至比能去一个放心的私立小学更加紧迫，这个过程最近已经被编写进了纪录片“收获”，在TLC有限频道播放。

坦白的讲，家长急迫的要送孩子去幼儿园另外的原因是幼儿园已经成另外一个新的年级，这已经成为一个冷酷的现实，用家长们急切的的理论来讲，更早的学习知识害怕孩子会落后别人，早接触一些里程碑一样的东西，象在顺理成章以前就能很好的阅读。