By Kate Pastor

A Press special report

Standing with their toes gripping the edge of the Sky Club's swimming pool last June, a group of rising sixth graders prepared for the plunge.

The ominous clouds that had threatened to move the recent graduates from The Robert J. Christen School, PS 81 indoors had passed. And as the students launched themselves from poolside into the air, tensions from the school year that had gone before seemed to dissipate. The school show had been a hit, graduation had come and gone and decisions about where they would go to school in the fall had been made. So they jumped up carelessly, still on a high from their graduation ceremony in the school's auditorium only days before.

Despite their youth, the children seemed to sense that one segment of their life was done, and that the decisions made by their parents and themselves in the last year would bring dramatic change. The first day of school in the fall would be the first step into a new world.

Where as most children may once have simply followed a path through schools in their neighborhood, nowadays parents often make plans while their kids are still crawling and re-evaluate their options at every stage of the game.

And the process that faces families in the transition from elementary to middle school can be extremely challenging.

"I've heard some people say that applying to middle school is worse than applying to college and I know what they mean, especially if they're not well informed," said Pamela Wheaton, director of the popular schools non-profit information Web site insideschools.org.