Are Prep Schools Really Real?
Pop quiz: Ask yourself what a prep school is. We’re obsessed with watching the dangerous liaisons involving enfants terribles on shows like Gossip Girl and in movies like Cruel Intentions. But the idea of the prep — at least by the standards depicted in the media — is decidedly warped, or worse, misinterpreted. Prep school is just what it implies: preparatory schooling. But as we know, it stands instead for a high-society brattery at which privilege is mistaken for power and entitlement considered a right. That being said, have we inflated the notion of prep schools to a point of absurdity? Does their reputation match their infamy? To put it another way, are they worth it? The upcoming Bravo reality show NYC Prep is doing the institutions no new favors. It’s teased to look like a Gossip Girl clone, only — if you can believe it — less realistic. The New York Observer’s Irina Aleksander went to a series of prep school graduation ceremonies across New York to see how the kids (and their m
