NEW YORK, NY October 03, 2009 —Parents of New York City eighth graders can start planning ahead. A citywide high school fair is being held Saturday and Sunday at the campus of Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene.

REPORTER: Students can apply to any of 800 high schools and programs with different criteria. Pamela Wheaton, director of the website Inside Schools.org says the Department of Education has done a better job of getting information to parents, but it can still be a daunting process.

WHEATON: You have a lot of immigrant parents in the city and they are still, at many times, under the perception that they can just walk into their neighborhood school or that their child just has the right to go into their zoned school. But the fact is that many areas of the city do not have zoned schools anymore.]

REPORTER: Wheaton advises students to include all the schools they're interested in on the application form, because they can rank up to twelve choices.

More fairs will be held this month in all five boroughs.