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Have you gotten your toddler into a top pre-K program yet? Have you started touring elementary schools? Have you at least enrolled him/her in French lessons yet? No? Little Max/Emma is never getting into Harvard now! Yep, he's totally doomed and you're to blame. According to the Times, private schools are in a "crisis mode in terms of capacity." It doesn't matter that the country is in an economic downturn and that your banker husband may have already lost his job. Mandell School director Gabriella Rowe says the school received 100 applications within 48 hours of announcing a new 25-student kindergarten class. So what are you supposed to do if you still haven't started bulking up your unborn child's extracurriculars?

Throw money at the problem, of course! You can start paying $20,000+ a year from the day your child is born to a school (like Mandell). In turn, they will guarantee a seat in class when your kid reaches kindergarten age. Or you can just go all out and hire a private school admissions consultant like Abacus Guide and Katherine Cohen's IvyWise. What's the alternative? Public school? Heaven forbid.