There is one private school near us that does not do IQ testing. Instead, they screen parents for their SES, which just rubs me the wrong way and really makes SO angry so we never applied.
How do they do that? If you mean that they don't offer financial aid, it could just be that they don't have extra funds available.
This is all second-hand info so I'm not sure how much of that is true but what I hear is that they ask if one of the parents (and they really mean the mother) is available to volunteer in the classroom on a consistent basis. We live in a city where the cost of living is outrageously high so this is only possible if the breadwinner makes over $150,000 unless one wants to live on bread and water.
The interview process really focuses on the parents rather than the child. They want to know what kind of life style you have and ask questions to sort out who comes from old money. Again, second-hand story but a friend w/ a Ph.D in physics who is married to a MD tried out for this school and their PG+ child was rejected, not even wait-listed. Both parents went to public schools until college and made it on their own without much help from their middle-class parents. They live in a very exclusive residential area but they do not belong to a selective country club or own a cabin in Chamonix. The school is definitely looking for a certain type of family.
They offer generous financial aid and they do take a handful of children whose parents cannot afford to pay $21,000+ tuition so we could have gotten in as one of their FA cases* but I don't think we'd have felt very comfortable in this community.
* If we had applied and she was accepted, that is. SO most likely would have said something really abrasive to put them off.
