School life, between the linesBy Admissions Diary
School stories, admissions adventures, and the things parents talk about on the way home.
School portraits · New York City
In May 2025 the student paper at a Manhattan high school covered the most divisive event of the spring: a racing game patch. The same issue asked which element would win a fight.
School portraits · Chicago, Illinois
A Chicago public high school gave students one class a week they could choose for themselves. The students knew exactly what to choose it for.
School portraits · Chicago, Illinois
Two Chicago seniors recorded a StoryCorps conversation two days before leaving school. It was mostly a map.
School portraits · Chicago, Illinois
Two Chicago sophomores started a fencing seminar at Walter Payton College Prep in 2023. The equipment was borrowed, and someone had to carry it.
School portraits · Queens, New York
Since 1996, a Queens high school has run a whole-school election simulation. Seniors play the candidates, the press and the super PACs. Freshmen are the voters, and suddenly everyone wants to talk to them.
School portraits · New York City
Stuyvesant High School is ten stories tall and has escalators. Two student reporters carried 12-pound backpacks up seven flights with a stopwatch to find out which is faster.
School portraits · New York City
In 1982 some Hunter College High School juniors started a company for student-written plays. Its opening weekend ended in the Blizzard of 1983. Forty-three years later it put on The Brick of Oz.
School portraits · Farmington, Connecticut
The Connecticut girls' school has its own words for every stage: New Girl, Old Girl, Ancient. The graduation program explains the daisies, and the trowel.
School portraits · Mount Hermon, Massachusetts
Every student at the Massachusetts boarding school works three hours a week, and passing workjob is required to graduate. One alumna's favorite memory involves the toilets.
School portraits · Windsor, Connecticut
Students rub the nose on a 1937 memorial plaque before tests. Does it work? A senior gave the honest answer: sometimes.
School portraits · Tarrytown, New York
A new history teacher in 1998 planned his first class harder than any lesson since. Nothing in the plan prepared him for the end of it.
School portraits · Cambridge, Massachusetts
BB&N starts ninth grade with eleven days in the New Hampshire woods. One new student's account of it turns on a bar of soap.
