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It's a difficult and potentially life-altering decision every eighth grader in the city has to make: where to go to high school.

At schools like M.S. 131 in Chinatown, Manhattan, many of the parents do not speak English and are unfamiliar with the educational system, so the staff works hard to help students make a good choice.

"You have to get the parents involved and if there isn't an adult at home in some ways, you have to help the kid and act as that parent for them in terms of helping to steer them to a good high school choice," says Assistant Principal Jon Levin of M.S. 131.

Unlike most of the country, where public school students are automatically enrolled in a local high school, students here have the benefits and the burden of making their own choice.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the process has been streamlined but the options have multiplied to more than 700 different programs.

Students are supposed to list on a form 12 schools that they would like to attend, which takes a lot of research. After that, they just hope to be admitted.

The process of finding a school that is a good fit, and then being accepted, can be both time-consuming and complicated.

"It really helps if you have a parent advocate who can navigate the process. It takes months," says Clara Hemphill of The New School. "You visit maybe a dozen schools. You are expected to take test for some of them, auditions for another, write an essay, a portfolio."

One student says her older sister has been advising her rather than their parents.

"They try to but because they don't know much about English or high schools, they just know that seventh grade is important," said student Wendy Yang.

To encourage parents to get involved, M.S. 131 hosts its own fair.

"A lot of the parents are interested in helping their child but because of the language difficulties or work constraints," says M.S. 131 guidance counselor Hilda Abadia. "They cannot leave the neighborhood or leave their job, so we bring it to the school."

This weekend, more than 30,000 students and family members are expected to attend the High School Fair at Brooklyn Tech, but that's just a small fraction of the 81,000 who went through the application process last year.