Path Less Traveled

The Northern Line train stops and Maggie Wainwright exits the tube at Kentish Town. Wearing bright red bell-bottom pants and a feather boa scarf, she stands taller than her five-foot-eight frame thanks to trendy thick-soled boots. It has been a busy day, but this young London transplant shows no signs of fatigue. 

 

For the first fourteen years of her life, Maggie lived like everyone else in her quiet rural town of Red Hook, New York – youth soccer during the week, and apple picking and trips to the local farmers’ market on weekends. But her heart was elsewhere. 

 

She loved acting; but in Red Hook, theater was just an afterthought. So she took initiative, creating backyard musicals with the other kids in the neighborhood. At a very young age, Maggie already had starring roles such as Wendy in Peter Pan and the lead cow in a homemade production of “Cows the Musical” based on a Sandra Boynton childrens’ album.

 

If she didn’t end up on Broadway, Maggie would likely become the first female president. 

 

By age ten she was more well-versed in politics than most adults in town. Her political awakening was triggered by hydrofracking, a hot issue in upstate New York politics at the time.

 

“Fracking was probably my ‘coming to Jesus’ moment – realizing what was going on in the world.” She talked fracking with just about anyone who was willing to listen and even skipped school to attend protests at the state capitol in Albany. 

 

Although Maggie loved her home town and was already committed to local issues, she hungered for a larger world. She had aged out of her impromptu musicals but there was no place to go from there – Red Hook’s high school didn’t even have a theater, let alone a theater program. Small-town political heat rarely rose above a simmer except when the school budget needed voter approval. And at home, her mom, Cindy, had to craft her own academic assignments to keep Maggie engaged as she effortlessly flew through her classes at school.

 

Maggie shifted her focus to the wider world. “I applied to boarding school thinking it was going to be like Hogwarts. You know, like learning magic and being a young British school child,” she joked. “But also, I think I was really looking for an academic challenge.”

 

Maggie leapt into this project with her typical determination, and wound up at the elite Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Famous for its generational wealth and distinguished alumni (like former president Franklin Pierce and tech CEOs Adam D’Angelo and Mark Zuckerberg), Exeter presented a vast scope of new opportunities – and challenges.

 

“I had gone to sleepaway music theory camp for all summers of middle school. And that took place on a boarding school campus so I sort of figured that was what boarding school was going to be like... doing spontaneous drag operas in the courtyards, singing songs through dinner, and playing mafia based on famous composers.”

 

“It turned out a lot less wacky and fun than I had anticipated.” 

 

Maggie needed a full scholarship to make private school feasible for her family, so she applied only to the six boarding schools with the largest endowments in the country. Exeter was number one. As a result, she was an outlier. “The majority of the student body was receiving zero aid at all. I read in this admissions brochure – probably not one that they publicize widely because it’s embarrassing – that 50 percent of students at Exeter are from the top two percent of incomes in the US.” 

 

This financial disparity quickly isolated Maggie socially. “It was insanity. Utter Insanity. I could write a whole stand up comedy routine.” She switches to a high-pitched, mocking tone. “‘Oh, I found a diamond earring in the showers, girls! Who dropped their Cartier bracelet?’ People had memorized the real estate value of each other’s houses.” 

 

Although she struggled to find her people, Maggie found her element within the classroom, finally being challenged academically in a way she never had been before. 

 

“Teachers were willing and able to challenge students as far as they needed to be challenged individually. There was always a new project to work on or idea to explore.... Class sizes were small and the student body was incredibly engaged academically – just totally on top of things.”

 

She fell in love with Exeter’s Harkness method, a style of teaching where students sit around an oval table and lead discussion themselves. “Oh it’s a great pedagogical model. It encouraged independent thinking and teamwork. I really miss that focus not only on analytical thinking, but the coherent and artful presentation of analytical thinking in a group.”

 

“I did definitely get that academic challenge I was looking for at Exeter. I really had the best educational experience of my life to date.” 

 

Maggie similarly threw herself into extracurriculars. “I adored mock trial. I miss it with my whole being. It's like acting and improv and legal theory and politics all rolled into one. I got in trouble for saying quite shocking things sometimes on the stand. But I have no regrets. And I think it was such a training for politics where you have to not only have a convincing argument, but also make people feel like they're on your side.” 

 

For the first time, Maggie faced a plethora of opportunities to pursue her passions. She headed both Exeter’s drama club and Theater Games with Kids, a volunteer group that taught theater at local elementary schools. She worked a summer job at the New York Historical Society and another for her local congressman, both positions she found through Exeter’s network. And she served as president of the school’s Democratic Club leading up to the 2020 election which immersed her in the world of politics like never before.

 

“Exeter was the perfect place to [pursue my political interests]. It's in New Hampshire, which is the first state with a primary, so every presidential hopeful was coming and recruiting us. We could volunteer and phone bank and really get as involved as we possibly wanted. So being president of Democratic Club, that was just so, so exciting and such a privilege to have that experience.”

 

Even with her vast involvement in student activities, Maggie’s differences with the student body only grew as she entered junior year and began planning for college. “I don't think I felt the pressure that most other people felt surrounding the college process.... I was mostly excited.” Maggie’s optimistic outlook wasn’t adopted by many; the expectations of getting into a top university utterly consumed the other students.

 

“Like, half a dozen people are hospitalized every year on Ivy Decision Day at Exeter. I wish I was kidding.” Almost a third of Exeter’s graduating class matriculates to the Ivy Leagues. “That's really how success is measured at Exeter.” 

 

Yet Maggie remained true to herself and her own goals, once again taking the path less traveled. 

 

“There was such a rat race going on around me. And maybe I was a little naive... but I knew what I wanted, which was to go to college in a city. And so I pursued that.” 

 

Maggie applied to ten schools, five of which were in London, a city that captured her imagination when she visited a few years prior. 

 

“I'd always been really excited by the idea of going abroad and having an adventure. I have always loved British writing and culture and comedy and was very interested in navigating a new culture... I was really prioritizing [my social experience]: What are the social opportunities going to be like? Who are the kinds of people I’d be surrounded by?”

 

Yet the U.K. remained a backup plan; Maggie’s dreams of living in New York City never waned. She applied early decision to Columbia and ranked NYU as a close second. Two other applications went to schools in Washington D.C., and the last went to Brandeis in the Boston suburbs – her least-desired option. 

 

Unlike her peers, Maggie was driven more by her own insatiable curiosity than by grades. Even so, she built a compelling resume of achievements, including earning all A's, boasting stellar extracurriculars, and scoring 1580 out of 1600 on the SAT’s. Which is why it came as a surprise when Maggie hadn’t been accepted anywhere by early April. 

 

After much stress and self-doubt, her first acceptance letter finally came – from Brandeis. It didn’t offer the cosmopolitan adventure she longed for, but it was her only U.S. option. So she felt obligated to make the best of it. 

 

With the encouragement of her school advisers, Maggie put down the deposit.

 

“I went to [Brandeis’s] Accepted Students Day and that did not help matters. I hated the architecture. I hated the suburb of Waltham. I was shocked by how elementary the expectations were concerning living independently and operating independently. The Dean of Students said ‘Hey everybody, we understand making the transition to college can be hard, but don't worry, we have these individual classes in the first week where we teach you all how to do your laundry’ and I was like, ‘What?’”

 

“Ultimately, that visit helped me understand why I needed to go to London.” 

 

Thankfully, London came calling. Maggie was accepted to all but one of her U.K. schools and chose to enroll in King’s College.

 

Maggie’s arrival in London immediately reminded her that she had chosen the harder path. There were zero orientation events for new students. Her dormitory apartment had a bed frame, mattress, desk and chair – and nothing else. Her first task was to find someplace to buy a pot and pan so she could eat, and a pillow.

 

She knocked on random doors to introduce herself to her classmates, who hailed from other European countries in addition to the U.K. This wasn’t Exeter. “There's so much great socioeconomic diversity. One [of my roommates] is first generation, and both of them are supporting themselves through college, paying for everything, and I really, really appreciate that kind of richness of experience. Life feels realer and connections feel more meaningful, you know? There's less privilege and there's much more diversity of thought and lived experience.”

 

Her whole life, Maggie’s been a fish out of water, longing for a larger pond to explore. Finally, she had found a place where she wasn’t the most unconventionally dressed, or the most left-wing thinker, or the only one who could recite every piece of Shakespeare’s from start to finish. 

 

“There’s just nothing better. Everyone’s so interesting.... Everybody’s got a million things going on. For example, my friend Tom, he designs the lights for West End shows and he’s also a computer science major at the top of his class. And there's always something to do in London, always some people to meet up with, always a new show to go to, always a new pub to try or a friend who wants to take you over for dinner. It feels designed to suit me.”

 

A bachelor’s degree in the British higher education system takes only three years, so Maggie is now working on her next life transition. She is studying for the LSAT and plans to attend law school to prepare for a career in politics and government. As she contemplates her third round of applying to schools, Maggie is introspective. “The first time was about academics, the second time was about social life. I think the third time I undergo this process, I'm trying to synthesize those elements. So I'm really excited about this round.”

 

Even though she will most likely return to the U.S. for her next phase, Maggie will bring some 

hard-earned perspective. “It's important to take care of the whole person inside you. You shouldn't feel bad about making choices that are going to fulfill your… intellectual quest but also who you are as a human being and what you need to thrive.”