I went to an all-female school

But how will the girls join the cheerleading squad if there's no football team?"

Surprisingly, this was the question my mother encountered more than any other when she informed friends that her daughters would be attending the all-girls Hockaday School in Dallas, Texas. Then again, maybe it isn't such a surprise: High school football is taken very seriously in Texas. As it turns out, though, you can be a cheerleader at an all-girls' school. I didn't end up taking advantage of that opportunity, but plenty of girls were relieved that attending a single-sex school didn't necessarily mean giving up high school traditions. Actually, a lot of what you might assume about all-girls education isn't the case at all.

Cheerleading, musicals, dances and any other activities typically involving both sexes took place in conjunction with a nearby boys' school — our "brother" school. These joint activities didn't begin until high school, though. Before that, we were on our own.

I have a cabinet full of videotaped class plays from elementary school and junior high featuring girls in every role: For our eighth grade performance of "Annie," I wore suspenders and a mustache in an attempt to look like "Ensemble Hobo No. 2" from "Hooverville." In fact, the greatest disadvantage of single-sex education may be that it makes for some very unconvincing theater: An earlier class had performed "Annie" with a Daddy Warbucks who was significantly shorter than their little Orphan Annie.

Honestly, though, that's the only real drawback I can see to single-sex education. We certainly had some awkward years at the end of junior high, when we had our first "mixers" with the boys from our partner school, but by high school everyone was able to behave more or less normally around members of the opposite sex.

At Princeton, I've had considerably more trouble adjusting to the weather than to the coed environment. A few of my classes here somehow turned out to be all girls, so I feel right at home. My other, coed classes really don't feel that different from my high school classes. I'd always heard that girls tend to be more confident in their opinions and more likely to participate in college classes when they've attended single-sex schools, but almost every girl I've met at Princeton possesses those qualities. I don't know if that trend is more evident at other schools, but here, anyway, I haven't found academic confidence to come uniquely out of single-sex education.

For me, the greatest advantage of attending an all-girls' school was learning to be friends with other girls. The only surprising difference I've found when talking to girls from coed schools is how many of them say they never had close girlfriends in high school. Single-sex education facilitates that kind of friendship, if only because there's no way to avoid it. I may have 10 tapes of awkwardly cast musicals from my single-sex days, but I also have hundreds of sisters. Emily Dunlay is a freshman from Dallas, TX. She can be reached at edunlay@princeton.edu.