Whether your child is applying to nursery school, kindergarten, high school, or college, the moment you have been waiting for is finally on the horizon. But before we tear open the acceptances and rejections next month, we must first tackle the results of the ever-present battery of standardized tests.

At this very moment, countless New York parents are basking in or cursing, tutoring for or nervously awaiting the results of their children’s ERB, Stanford-Binet, New York State Assessment, Specialized High School Admissions Test, ACT, PSAT, SAT I,SAT II Subject Tests, Advanced Placement Test, and others IQ tests that some schools administer, as if the usual batch isn’t revealing enough.

Whether your children are 4 or 14, and going to public school or private, it seems you won’t be able to avoid standardized tests. What should we make of these unavoidable hurdles? Do they offer insight into our children? Should the results, which are weighed considerably by admissions officers, be ignored by parents, who are far more finely tuned to their children’s weaknesses and strengths? Is it even possible to overlook the result of a test that ranks your child with thousands of other children across the country?

A friend told me recently that she could not care less what her 4-year-old son received on his ERBs, the test required by the admissions departments of most private schools in New York City. She and her husband are planning to send their son to the same school their older child attended – a school that, unlike many competitive schools in the city these days, has a sibling-friendly policy.

“As long as he doesn’t bomb it, the results really won’t matter to the school or to me,” she said.

The results didn’t matter until they arrived – and were in the 99th percentile.

She struggled not to look at her son in a different way. “I always knew he was super bright, but I never thought he would test so well,” she said. She mentioned what many parents experience when their second or third child receives the results from the same standardized test their older child has already taken. “No one wants to compare their kids, but you just can’t help it.”

It seems there is a danger to receiving such bottom-line numbers (even though the ERB results are accompanied by a page long, written commentary), even when the results are good.

But of course, the danger in overanalyzing the results is greater when the numbers are not stellar. Despite the fact that the ERB instructs parents that test results “do not predict long-range school success,” it is difficult to take this to heart when your child – the apple of your eye – ranks in the 40th or 50th percentiles.

“Years ago I had parents in this school who had a great child,” said one nursery school administrator. “The kid did just average on the ERBs. Nothing terrible. I am telling you that for years, every single time this girl came home with a great report card, or an A on a paper, her parents were surprised. The results from one test she took when she was 4 years old permanently changed their expectations of her. The tests can be dangerous.”

It’s easy to dismiss the tests given to preschoolers. But what about the kids applying to Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, Andover and Choate, Collegiate and Dalton? As the little test-takers get older, it gets harder to ignore the results, particularly because the teenagers themselves are well aware of the role the exams play in determining their admittance to high school.

“We’ve tried to downplay the whole process,” said the mother of an 8th-grader applying to a group of highly selective public high schools, as well as Riverdale, Fieldston, and other elite private schools. “We haven’t gotten any tutors involved and are just letting the chips fall where they may, but I have to concede that our son’s a great test-taker.”

Ah – that dirty little secret. No educator will really say this on the record, but some children are just better at taking standardized tests than others. “No matter how much you tutor some kids, their results are going to stay within a certain range,” said one high-priced tutor. “Forget the knowledge of the actual information being tested – there is a whole art to taking these tests. And I mean art. Some of it can be taught. Another part of it is instinctual, and that can’t be taught.”

Eventually our children will reach the ultimate exercise in standardized-testing madness – the college application process. There is great debate as to whether or not the SATs serve as a helpful guide to admission officers, and just how much consideration the scores should be given when weighed against grades, teacher recommendations, and extracurricular activities. After all, when classes offered by for-profit companies such as Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions offer to help you get “the high SAT score you need,” it’s hard to consider the process fair.

But it’s also hard to imagine that standardized tests are going away anytime soon.It may be that like our great country itself, the use of standardized tests is flawed, but no better system exists.

We parents are able to see the fine shades of gray that make up our children – the talents and the limitations, the emotional intelligence as well as the other kinds that are tested for in 3-hour increments.

But once you’ve decided to raise children in this city, it is impractical to think that you or your child is going to be able to ignore the standardized testing that is required of him. To some extent, you are obligated to take it seriously.

But not too seriously. After all, can you really remember how you did on your SATS, APs, and ERBs?