Author: Nelson Rosario

A minor, nearly unimportant aspect of Dua Lipa’s life story is often overlooked in favor of the Grammy Awards and chart records: she was once told she couldn’t sing by a primary school music teacher. She was having trouble hitting the high notes during her choir audition at Fitzjohn’s Primary in West Hampstead, and the answer was no. It’s the kind of moment where many things could have come to an end. Rather, it led her to Sylvia Young Theatre School, where she began weekend classes at age nine and, apparently for the first time, was told the opposite. That…

You can see the inconsistencies of St. John’s University before you even park when you drive up Queens’ Utopia Parkway on a weekday morning. A few hundred yards away, chemistry majors are preparing for the possibility that their entire department may not exist for the next incoming class, while students in scrubs head toward the new health sciences building, which recently received LEED Gold certification. It’s an odd time for a school that is either quietly collapsing or flourishing, depending on which headline you read this month. With more than 20,000 students and a presence from Rome to Staten Island,…

On open day mornings, a certain kind of anxious energy descends upon the University Park campus. Parents hold folded schedule printouts. Hovering close to the Trent Building, prospective students are partially distracted by the lake behind them and partially listening to a tour guide. Every year, this little scene is repeated, and for some reason, it never gets old. The next in-person open day at the University of Nottingham is set for Friday, June 26, 2026. Additional dates are set for the summer and fall, including June 27, September 12, and October 10 at University Park and Jubilee Campus. Biosciences…

Sarah Jessica Parker never endured a lecture in college. In her twenties, she never chose a major, never stayed up late in a dorm room, and never attended a graduation. Nevertheless, this June, as a recently awarded honorary Doctor of Arts, she addressed the Class of 2026 at Northwestern University from a podium at Chicago’s United Center while dressed in academic robes. It’s an odd sort of full circle that illustrates how unusual her education actually was. Parker was born in Nelsonville, Ohio, in 1965 as one of eight children in a family that, according to her, had financial difficulties.…

On a weekday morning in Burbank, Illinois, drive down 77th Street and you’ll see the typical school start rhythm: buses idling, a few stragglers jogging toward the doors, a parent double-parked near the flagpole. The scene doesn’t shout history. However, more of it can be found in the hallways of Reavis High School than most visitors would realize. The narrative nearly didn’t take place. Voters established Cook County School District 220 in 1940, but the resources and labor needed for construction were consumed by World War II. When a Cook County Superior Court injunction halted construction in 1945, a utility…

Every May, an adolescent in a small Howrah apartment or a Salt Lake coaching center opens a new tab on their browser for the fifth time in an hour. The results of the WBJEE are available. The rank has been determined. Finding the true meaning of that number is the next step, for which no one truly prepares you. The WBJEE college predictor comes into play at this point. It’s not a novel concept. For years, career platforms have been using these tools to predict where a student might end up this time by feeding in opening and closing ranks…

Discussions concerning Alain Leroy Locke College Preparatory Academy frequently bring up a point that is unrelated to test results. It’s the picture of inspirational signs that are displayed on campus, the kind of modest, upbeat gesture that doesn’t appear in a spreadsheet. Even though the entire future of the school rested in the hands of individuals who had never set foot in those halls, those signs remained there earlier this month. For almost 60 years, the school—known to the majority of South Los Angeles as just Locke—has carried more weight than a high school most likely ought to. Built in…

Walking out of college with one semester remaining in your sophomore year, no degree in hand, and staking everything on a sport where most people fail requires a certain kind of nerve. In retrospect, Jordan Spieth’s December 2012 action hardly seems like a risk at all. However, no one could have assured him that it would succeed at the time. When Spieth enrolled at the University of Texas in the fall of 2011, he was already well-known. He was the nation’s top-ranked junior golfer, a three-time state champion from Dallas’ Jesuit College Preparatory School, and a two-time U.S. Junior Amateur…

The rubberized tracks at Leon and Chiles High Schools belonged to everyone for about a year. Before sunrise, early risers laced up. In the evening heat, retirees strolled around. The lanes were used as a second home by the Tallahassee Zoom, a youth running club. This week, that arrangement came to an end—quietly at first, then loudly. Leon County Schools announced on social media on Thursday morning that all of the district’s high school track and field facilities would be closed to the public “for the foreseeable future” as of Saturday, June 20. No chronology. No date for reopening. Simply…

The early parts of Malia Obama’s education are intriguing because they have an almost ordinary quality. She had asthma, played soccer, and attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as a child in Hyde Park, Chicago, prior to the Secret Service code names and the international travels. It’s difficult not to believe that the importance of education was ingrained in the family from the beginning because both of her parents were academics and her mother was an associate dean at the university. In 2009, everything changed. When her father was elected president, Malia was ten years old. A few weeks…