School life, between the linesBy Admissions Diary
School stories, admissions adventures, and the things parents talk about on the way home.
Rivalries & rituals · Houston
A Houston rivalry that dates to 1951 gets a week of costumes every October. The costumes have a supply problem.
Parent life · Hotchkiss, Connecticut
In a 2025 essay for The Hotchkiss Record, a student explained how she dodged her parents' calls with invented tests, and what happened when she got sick that winter.
Parent life · Toronto
An Upper Canada College student told his story in the student paper in 2015: one expensive sweater, two weeks of silence, one email to his mother. Schools have since put lost-and-found online.
Parent life · North Carolina & California
Head of School for a Day is a staple of the school auction. The platforms of the winners are remarkably consistent, and remarkably sound.
Parent life · New York & elsewhere
At one Manhattan public school's auction, a class shower curtain went for $400 and six crayon drawings beat a backstage pass to the Temptations.
Parent life · New York
Schools tell families plainly that their wait lists have no order. In our kitchen, over one pot of coffee, my wife and I assigned ourselves a place.
Rivalries & rituals · Boston area
On Switch Day in 2022, three Winsor newspaper editors shadowed students at the boys' school down the road and wrote it up. Lunch was at 1:40.
Rivalries & rituals · Concord, New Hampshire
A 1906 memoir remembers Henry Coit, the nineteenth-century head of St. Paul's School in Concord, who had no muscle at all. He had opinions about vests.
Rivalries & rituals · New York City
In January 2014 Dalton canceled its middle school musical over its stereotypes and offered a song revue and an academic forum. The cast had another idea.
Rivalries & rituals · Milton, Massachusetts
Milton Academy's spring game of Gotcha turns the campus into a week-long game of tag. In 2021, the leader's schedule leaked and a crowd waited outside his class. He had already emailed his teacher.
Rivalries & rituals · Troy, New York
Each December the senior class puts on Revels, a medieval Yuletide play whose roles are kept secret until opening night. Some seniors wear the same costume their mothers wore.
The school archives · New York City
In 1890 students at a Manhattan school pinned the news to the classroom wall. Within two years they had a mimeograph, a Latin title and a relative paying for the printing.
