How to match schools when the family is still in Germany

School matching fails when parents collect brochures and call it a plan. A match is a child, a language, a start date, and a seat that exists.

Write the constraints in one page: ages, current curriculum, support needs, and the languages you will actually use at home. A Thai-German household does not need a school that flatters every passport. It needs a school the children can enter in the month you land.

Put sibling places in the first question, not the last. The campus you love is useless if the younger child is waitlisted.

Then draw the commute. In Rio, traffic is not a mood. A school forty minutes away on a Sunday is not forty minutes on a Tuesday. We only keep homes inside a radius the family will still accept in month six.

Application windows do not care that your lease is unsigned. Track deadlines, tests, and document translations as their own calendar. Hold a backup school before you decline the first offer.

Apichaya Brako coordinates the shortlist and the visits. Admissions decisions belong to the school.