Exposé: Private school taught me how to lie

The air holds an eerie calm as I approach the fortress where I spent the most defining years of my life.

I used to love this feeling—the deep sigh of the wind across the sky, the rustle of decaying leaves gathered beneath towering oaks. In my fresh-faced days, I drove to school in darkness so that I could admire the beauty of the landscape before the morning bell pierced the veil of serenity. The stone and brick was enchanting, like a faerie blessing from another realm, where little-folk spoke in song and spelled with letters woven from magic. But by the first peak of light, the magic was lost in the headlights of an approaching car, another student claiming their seat for the spectacle of madness soon to come.

Now, when I return to the private all-girls school that defined my adolescence, my breath comes in the shudder of a well-traveled machine. Instead of my lungs, it is my heart which fills with tendrils of black. This is the heart of a cynic, a prisoner who has escaped from one purgatory only to stumble full-force into another. There is no magic in these hallowed halls. No halos, no blessings, no faeries. Just a sort of hollowness as I think back to the girl I was in my darkest hours of high school. What I discovered in those four years wasn't education in any meaningful sense. It was indoctrination into a system that prepares us for life by nearly destroying our ability to live it.

I can hear the faint singing of the choir in the distance. I imagine them as if they are in front of me: eight-eight girls in white blouses and golden-brown plaid skirts, voices brought together by a shared alma mater. This is a room of pressurized privilege, individuals who are reminded every day of their fortune by the weight of the expectations that accompany it—whether it came from wealth, hard work, circumstance of birth, or a patchwork of each.

And what has brought me here? I stare through the windows of the glass atrium and shiver again at the eerie calm of the day. Is this a nostalgic visit, a celebration of sisterhood, or a liberation march?

Sisterhood. What an interesting word that is. When I enrolled here, the dean said I had gained one-hundred sisters. This campus was our family home. Here, we would fight amongst ourselves—wage countless battles in a fifteen-hundred day war—but more than that, we would fight for one-another. Looking back, I’m not so sure that we did. Within our first year, our class was falling like soldiers. By sophomore year, the army had dwindled to eighty-eight. Some transferred to public schools, others to rival private institutions. Of those remaining, I trusted fewer than half to keep my secrets, let alone protect my back from a knife.

We were not blood. We were out for blood, sharks trained to devour the tell-tale stench of weakness.

I sigh. Above the front entrance of the building is our motto inscribed in Latin: Non Scholae Sed Vitae Discimus. ”We learn not for school, but for life.” Perhaps at one point, this was true. But my education had been dominated by another, far more pronounced, end goal: To gain admission into an elite university, at whatever cost.

I shiver now, as a long-buried glacier of memories melts within me. They pour into my mind in an icy flood, and I brace myself against the colossal wooden doors.

Many people see private schools and assume they are an instant gateway to Eden. My campus may have mirrored that lush, bountiful paradise, but beneath the roses was stagecraft, a set dressing that hid the danger behind the curtain.

I force myself to take a step forward.

Then, I’m in the crimson waters once more.

The first thing that I notice when I enter my alma mater is the ostentatious branding.

A wall of postcards greets me in the lobby—the college matriculations of the most recent graduating class. They read like a Top 10 list from US News and Reports. I used to aspire to be one of the young women featured in these brochures, clad in sweaters that signaled acceptance to the most exclusive societal clubs. When I was finally included in my senior year, branded in my university’s maize and blues, I felt like a propaganda piece.

All-girls schools preach their devotion to individualism, but from my first day of classes, I was trapped in a system that confused elitism with excellence. Morning meetings took place from cushioned auditorium seats, and classes at round tables with no more than fifteen students in a room. Through the windows, we could glimpse the greenery of the 16-acre courtyard. This is the same courtyard through which, on the first day of classes, a bagpipe player led us in a procession to the other end of the school. The same courtyard where we graduated in ceremonial white, singing an alma mater that hailed the school as it stood tall behind us.

The very language of the building was pompous. In the mornings, we had a thirty minute break between second and third period, which students could use to eat breakfast—not at a cafeteria, no, but a dining hall, with a diverse assortment of soups, salads, sandwiches, and hot meals organized by dietary preference. We did not have a band, but an orchestra. Not a computer room, but an I.T. Hub. Instead of PTA meetings held in a gymnasium, families dined together at wine and charcuterie nights. Instead of field days or trips to D.C., students celebrated the end of the year with lunch at the country club, and adventures to foreign destinations.

When I walk through the halls of my high school today, it hardly resembles the images in my memory. The building has merged traditional 19th-century architecture with a more modern, minimalistic aesthetic, the culmination of three years of renovations. These updates remind me of our rival school, and I wonder if it is coincidence that the $3M-dollar project began shortly after they surpassed us in the rankings. More than likely, this is another strategy to retain the brightest and most malleable minds.

I wrinkle my nose. The place reeks of identity crisis, a school that cannot decide if it wants to own its identity or mimic the trends of the times. But of course, no asset is more valuable, no tradition older, than reputation. The makeovers and glossy brochures weren’t just advertising the school; they were techniques from an ages-old choreography that extolled exclusivity and prestige as the most important virtues. And above all, they were rehearsals that taught us how to present ourselves as luxury goods. Once we were packaged, the next step was clear: compete for who would sell to the highest bidder.

Drunk on the poison of prestige, we were taught that success was a high society, and seats were reserved for only the best.

The Ivy League would accept us, yes, but not nearly as many as deserved a spot. So we competed. Every test was a trial; every club was an arena. We worked in a market with such high demand that it set prices according to impossible standards.

As I pass a classroom, I see a dozen students hunched across a round table, frantically scribbling into the margins of score sheets. Stress hums through the room with an intensity that mimics the isolated thunderstorms outside. The scene reminds me of another stormy afternoon from my sophomore year, when my class sat for a practice ACT. It was a preliminary test, our first introduction to collegiate standardized testing. Our confidence was a deflating tire whose holes we plugged with thin placations. When we opened our testing booklets, one more needle was positioned inside: A list of median testing scores for the top-ranked universities in the country.

This was the lightning bolt, and when it struck its mark, the room descended into a downpour. For the next two years, the rain didn’t let up. We compared our practice ACT scores to the numbers on the list, then to our peers, desperate to know how many had bested us. Once testing was over, we found other ways to predict our chances of admission: GPAs, athletic rankings, honors and APs. Numbers became verdicts, and nothing mattered more than the future.

This wasn’t just stress. It was pre-emptive obsession. At 14 years old, we were being conditioned to associate success with statistics and brand names. To sacrifice our present for imaginary future selves who would always be reaching for more. This problem isn’t limited to private schools—public school students face similar pressures, often with fewer resources and less support. But when you're told you have every advantage, the inability to cope feels like personal failure rather than systemic dysfunction.

Privilege is a vicious thing. Most of us hear the word and treat it like a stained sheet, a disqualifier from success. And it’s true, college admissions cater to the one percent; just ask my peers how many thousands their families spent on private tutoring. But I think many of us were too aware of our fortune, of the benefits awarded to us by our circumstance of birth. Privilege felt like something for which we should apologize. We had to perform, to compete, to make the most of every opportunity served to us on a silver platter, or risk wasting everything we had been given.

By the time I graduated, 75% of my core classes were honors or APs, and every elective in my schedule had a capstone attached. The hallmark program of my school was its ‘fellowships,’ intensive electives that culminated in year-long projects. These were like dissertations for high school students, designed to apply classroom concepts to the real world. I graduated in the top 5% of the program, earning five of the possible nine designations on my transcript. My resume gleamed with hollow titles: nonprofit founder, award-winning researcher, published writer. Each felt like a weight added to an already unbearable load. For however many accolades I earned, my classmates had more. They were state-champion athletes and nationally-acclaimed artists, Presidential Scholars and international debate champions. Some were literally on the path to cure cancer.

After I graduated, I realized that the peers I envied were lies constructed by the propaganda around me.

Blacked out from our portfolios were empty pill bottles and psych ward stays, bandaged wrists and damaged souls. Many of us were addicted, in our own sort of way, to a bad habit. To perfectionism, our parents’ approval, the desperate hope that the next achievement would finally be enough. When that failed, we turned to more dangerous remedies: alcohol, drugs, self-harm. We championed sleep deprivation and dysmorphia, lost hours and pounds as if they would earn us blue ribbons.

The world was told we were thriving. In reality, we were manufactured salesmen, machines on an assembly line. If we were not exhausted, we were simply inefficient. We didn’t know how to ask for help, because we’d been taught to lie about our struggles—smile through the panic and call it grit. All this pressure would be worth it someday, they promised. Until then, burnout wasn’t a warning sign. It was laziness.

There were 88 students in my graduating class, and I can count on one hand those who seemed genuinely happy. The rest of us existed in various states of panic. We were anxious, depressed, and hiding secrets from our families, if we were lucky to have them. I knew women with parents whose love hinged on GPA. Others had addictions, cycled in and out of rehab for years. More still self-harmed, considered or even attempted suicide. Body dysmorphia led a handful to plastic surgery, while the rest suffered in silence or ingested anti-depressants like air.

As for me? I didn’t sleep. I starved myself to the point of fainting in the hallway. I had constant headaches, did my homework through brain fog, and cried in the bathroom stall between classes. Then, I lied to my therapist so that I could be labelled as okay.

I cannot place fault onto the school entirely. Our distress spoke to other issues, too: elitist college admissions processes, families poisoned by the allure of prestige. But as an adolescent, school is our home away from home. These institutions have a moral responsibility to care for us in the context of our present wellbeing, not just our future. Instead, they function like pressure cookers, testing how much heat can be added until we explode. They don’t question whether our stress will break us; they ask how much we can produce before we fall apart. Their immense resources give us the tools to shine… and the pressure to burn.

I once read my admissions file, trying to convince myself that my four years of Hell were worth it. The admissions officers praised my academic rigor and diverse extracurriculars, my knack for turning passion into action within a competitive environment. But being praised for thriving in a toxic system is like congratulating the choir for perfect harmony while each voice cracks under strain. I had to wonder: Was I a standout candidate, one of the best at playing the game, or was I just a pawn being used to advance a dysfunctional system? Or worse, was I both, an amalgamation of grays that reeked much like my identity crisis of a school?

My story isn’t just one of harm; it’s also one of privilege, the kind that cuts both ways.

To paint the system only as destructive would be to miss its cruel paradox. It also built us, brick by brick, with resources of which most students could never dream. In physics, our labs were stocked with equipment that looked more at home in a research university than a high school. My essays came back dripping with ink, every sentence dissected with surgical precision. My college counselor sat with me for hours each week, combing through drafts of applications until they gleamed. That juxtaposition is what makes private school so insidious: the hand that squeezes your throat is the same one that feeds you opportunity.

Private schools teem with luxuries disguised as normalcy, but privilege is never free. Every resource carries an unspoken debt: use it, master it, prove you deserve it. My resume was built on strong foundations, but the scaffolding cut into my palms until they bled. The same tools that elevated me also reminded me, relentlessly, that to stumble was to waste what I'd been given.

I used to think that surviving the system was a rite of passage. In eleventh grade, I watched countless YouTube videos with titles like How I Got Into a Top-Ranked University. Almost every one began the same way: These are just my personal experiences. I don’t recommend doing this much—it’s not healthy, and it’s not the only way to get in. I always laughed at that. Because for all their disclaimers, I had never once heard a story of a student at an elite university who hadn’t been ridiculously overworked. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need to nearly drown just to be told we’re worthy of calmer seas.

Institutions have rewritten success into a currency, earned in silence and measured in metrics. We accept the lie that the strongest person in the room is the one who hides their pain best; but grit shouldn't mean silent suffering. If we’re collapsing, we need to broadcast it loudly, scream until the world is forced to listen. We can’t wait until blood stains the fortress’s white marble. We need to speak up now, before the next generation breaks under this impossible weight.

Maybe my school’s motto, the one carved into its mossy brick, once meant something authentic and profound: We learn not for school, but for life. But today, the phrase is twisted. "Life" is a brand build upon GPAs, test scores, admission letters stamped like visas to a promised land. It’s time to forget that glorification and goldwashing—to redefine how we tell our stories, and to take pride in our achievements without hiding the strings attached.

Change takes courage: from administrators, parents, students. Are we brave enough to demand it?

Some schools are already changing course. They measure success by student wellbeing, not just college acceptances. They celebrate collaboration over competition, teach emotional intelligence alongside economics, and refuse to sacrifice childhood for achievement. Their solution isn't to eliminate challenge or lower standards; it's to redefine what success looks like. To track how many students feel confident and curious rather than how many get into Ivy League universities. To measure whether graduates can handle failure, build relationships, and find meaning in their work.

When I enter my school’s student center, I overhear three girls bemoaning their unfinished college essays. I want to tell them that there is so much more to the world than the lies that have been put inside their heads. That they don’t need a perfect SAT score or an acceptance letter from an Ivy to live a happy life. That in ten years, nobody will care what school they went to or how well they did on some meaningless exam. I step forward, but then I pause. These girls are victims of a society that lies so often it can no longer recognize truth. The words of one woman will not reverse a lifetime of misinformation.

But perhaps, over time, if we speak out as a collective, they might.

As I walk onwards, the voices of the choir grow louder, winding around the corners of the hallway like an unfurling ribbon of blues. I follow them, my path framed by gold cups and silver plaques, engravings glinting in the fluorescent light. I see these trophies for what they are now: Wins born from losses, stories from incredible women who fought countless battles before they won the war.

As I approach the atrium, a multistory room of marble and glass, the music swells. It is beautiful, a hypnotic harmony that predates the mothers of our ancestors. And it is tragic: eighty-eight voices trained to harmonize, to hide the discord, to convince everyone listening that we are thriving. This is performance art, a scene in a carefully scripted play that masks the ruin beneath.

I watch the girls of the choir move their lips in unison.

Then I open my notebook and begin writing.

I am still here now, my muddy footprints charting you a path through the fortress I once called my second home. I think part of me will always be here, and I hope that one day, I can rediscover the magic of this institution without it feeling like a lie. Maybe together, we will watch the sun rise, halos kissing the ivy latticework as it climbs these three stories. A glimmer of light that outshines the former day’s lightning strike.

For now, I will sit here, unraveling the lies of my childhood in search of my truths. I hope that my peers will join me. Until then, the bell tower echoes in the distance—a ticking clock, counting the days until the fortress collapses under the weight of its own silence.

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