Stillman said, "People that are very connected and wealthy have all the spots there."
The 92nd Street Y is not like most Y's. It costs as much as $14,000 a year for nursery school and as many 3-year-olds arrive in chauffeured Lincolns and Mercedes as they do in strollers.
"There's a tremendous ladder of prestige associated with these schools. The hierarchy is as carefully calibrated and understood by all New Yorkers as the Ivy League," said author James Atlas, who has put two children through the New York City nursery school scene and written about it for The New Yorker magazine.
Woody Allen's child was accepted to the 92nd Street Y nursery school, as were the children of Michael J. Fox, Kevin Kline, Connie Chung, and Katie Couric.
"When their 4-year-old doesn't get into preschools," Atlas said, many of these social elite think "it's the beginning of the end. They didn't get on the track. It's not gonna happen for them. They might have to move to the suburbs. Every dire possibility unfolds before your eyes."
"It's the whole family that applies. It's not just the children. The parents have to be important," Atlas said, "It's a package."
And far from a sure thing, even for a multimillionaire like Grubman. Once a highly respected figure on Wall Street, Grubman is now alleged to have given a favorable rating to AT&T stock in exchange for his twin toddlers' acceptance into the Y.
Favors Among Friends
During the time that he was trying to gain admission for the twins, he had also been asked by his boss, Sanford I. Weill, to take a "fresh look" at his longheld negative view of AT&T. And now an e-mail to Weill that was leaked to The Wall Street Journal seems to link the two events.
Titled "AT&T and the 92nd Street Y," Grubman's e-mail first makes clear he is re-evaluating AT&T and then proceeds to ask his boss, Weill, to help get his twins into the Y nursery school. Grubman wrote getting his children into nursery school "comes down to 'who you know.'"
