Each family must submit a Parent Application giving us a “Mom and Dad’s eye view” into how their child travels through the world. This ensures that your voice is included in the admissions process, while also giving us ‘soft markers’ for issues that we have found tend to be commonly over-, under- or mis-diagnosed within our population of students. Owing to the limitations of our online system, this is a 2-step process, so watch for an email with a link to complete step 2!

At the conclusion of the form, we ask each family to upload all of the evaluations that they currently have for a child, across psycho-educational and therapeutic realms. We do not rely on full scale IQ, prior identification as gifted or other measures that are influenced by processing speed and/or working memory, and indeed we admit students who are challenged in those areas. This file is reviewed by our clinical team and Head of School, under the direction of our Director of Programs, Dr. Steven Mattis: an internationally-recognized neuropsychologist and licensed psychologist. Together, we examine the specific data in each child’s neuropsychological and neurophysiological profiles—not the labels they’ve been given along the way. You will also be asked to submit a $125 application fee; this fee helps us to partially defray the costs of our clinical team’s application review.

Families are not required to provide teacher recommendations or to alert their current educational setting that they intend to apply.

If our team feels that you child may be a good fit for our program, your child will be invited to spend a day with our current students, staff and clinicians at Cajal. Our interview days are designed to give us an opportunity to make sure we understand your child’s programming needs, and to give your child an opportunity to experience our program. During your child’s interview day, they will spend some time one-on-one with our Head of School, our neuropsychologist and one of our physio therapists, and they have brief ELA and math screenings with our teachers. They will also attend a class with currently-enrolled students so they have a chance to experience our program, and will participate in a structured social activity with a peer who is currently enrolled. This is a full-day, drop off experience; if you have concerns about your child’s readiness for a full day interview please mention this in your child’s application or discuss it with our team.

During your child’s Interview Day (or shortly thereafter if multiple students are interviewing on the same day), we will also schedule meetings the child’s parents or guardians to meet with each of our neuropsychologist and our Head of School. These meetings are important to helping us apply our unique profile analysis to ensure that we properly understand the foundations of their observed struggles and based on that make an appropriate admissions decision and program design. These meetings are also important opportunities for us to hear directly from you what you think would make the biggest difference for your child, to learn about their experiences in prior school environments and to answer any questions you may have.

Shortly after the Interview Day, our team will meet to integrate input from all of the team members who met your child with our analysis of your child’s prior evaluations. This allows us to identify both your child’s current presenting needs and our assessment of the like origin of those challenges, applying our Neuro- and Trauma-Informed Approach to analyzing student needs. We will then make an admissions decision, informed by the suitability of our approaches for meeting your child’s needs as well as the need to balance an appropriate mix of needs, ages and abilities within our program. Admissions decisions are made based on a rolling basis, with priority being given to applications for immediate placement. If we feel that your child is a good fit for our program but do not have a spot or feel that we don’t have the right mix of students for them at the present time, we will place your child on a waitlist and will update you as soon as possible.

Once an admissions decision has been reached, students who are ready to enroll in our gifted educational program without further support or differentiation for special needs will receive an offer to enroll at our Base Tuition level. If your child, in our expert assessment, is not yet able to fully access their gifts, we will develop your child’s Student Growth Catalyst: a highly-individualized, comprehensive program that is like an IEP in that it contains a mix of therapies, accommodations and differentiation meeting the child where they are today, along with goals and objectives for the year ahead. However, our Student Growth Catalysts are unlike an IEP in that the purpose and application of those services bring the child through a neurodevelopmental journey that rebuilds their challenged academic and social abilities from the bottom-up—thus in some cases removing the need for an IEP all together.

The supplemental fee for this Student Growth Catalyst is set by our admissions team, based on your child’s starting point in a series of Catalyst Stages and thus the type of neurodevelopmental work and overall programming complexity required for your child to progress to the next stage. Your child’s tuition will be reevaluated at the end of each academic school year and will be reduced as your child becomes ready to progress to the next Catalyst Stage.

Attend an Info Session to Learn More About Our Program

Attend an Information Session

We strongly encourage all parents to attend an Information Session or watch a recording of one online as part of the admissions process. All parents will be required to certify that they have done so before enrolling in the program. In each session, you will hear from our visionary co-founder and Head of School about our innovative approach and the neuroscience behind it.

Come Preview the Program for an Afternoon!

The most effective way to evaluate our program is for your child to come through our standard Application process, however families wishing to try the program out in advance can do so through our Workshop Wednesdays program with a more limited parent application.

Have Questions? Schedule a Zoom with our Head of School!