A Milestone Worth Celebrating: 100% High School Acceptance
This year’s graduating 8th Grade class achieved something we’re incredibly proud of: every single student was accepted to every high school she applied to.
For families, that means letters of acceptance. But for us, it means something deeper. It means years of small class sizes where every girl was genuinely known. It means advisory groups that supported not just academic growth, but personal growth. It means a Placement program designed specifically to help our 8th graders understand who they are, what they want, and where they want to go—before they ever submit an application. It means girls who leave GSA are not only academically prepared but self-assured enough to walk into something new and make it their own.
Whether our graduates are heading to competitive independent schools, specialized magnet programs, or public high schools across Austin, they leave with a foundation that is genuinely hard to replicate: the confidence to know their own voice, and the courage to use it.
The Senior Walk: A Tradition That Keeps Getting Bigger
One of the most emotional traditions at GSA unfolds across the school’s campus, where younger students gather to celebrate the graduates walking toward their next chapter.
During the Senior Walk, our graduating Firebird alumni, now finishing high school and preparing to head to college, make one final pass through the school to remember their roots. Younger Firebirds line the campus walkway, cheering, clapping, and reaching in for high-fives. Teachers who have watched these girls grow from the beginning of their educational journey stand by, proud and a little teary. It is loud, joyful, and full of the kind of community that doesn’t happen by accident.
For the kindergartner pressing against the hallway wall to cheer the graduates on, that moment is everything. It makes the future feel real. It says: this is where you’re headed, and it’s going to be extraordinary.
Where Firebirds Fly: The Alumni Heading to College
This year’s celebration is a snapshot of what happens after GSA—and what it shows is that our alumnae are heading in every direction imaginable. They’re heading off to places like Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UT, Sewanee, and more. Some are pursuing architecture, public relations, kinesiology, chemistry, and economics. One is even joining the Washington Ballet while studying at American University. No two paths look alike.
That breadth is not accidental. It is the direct result of an education that never asked our girls to fit a mold but instead gave them the tools, relationships, and confidence to forge their own path. At GSA, we don’t prepare girls for one version of success. We help them discover their own.
Alumni Spotlight: Tess Frazier, GSA Class of 2017
Tess Frazier, a member of the GSA Class of 2017, is graduating from Scripps College this spring—and she was recently awarded a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship, one of the most competitive and meaningful honors available to graduating college seniors in the country. The Watson Fellowship supports graduates who demonstrate exceptional curiosity, leadership, and vision by funding a full year of independent exploration outside the United States. Fellows design their own project and pursue it entirely on their own terms, immersed in cultures and experiences that cannot be found in any classroom.
Tess’s achievement reflects exactly what we work to build at GSA from the very earliest grades: a girl who asks hard questions, follows her curiosity wherever it leads, and has the confidence to pursue something meaningful even when the path isn’t already mapped out.
Her story is the long arc of a GSA education. Not just a strong high school application. Not just an impressive college placement. But a young woman who is genuinely ready to explore the world—and to contribute to it.
This Is What We Mean by "Life After GSA"
At The Girls’ School of Austin, we talk a lot about life after GSA. It shows up in our Placement program, in our advisory system, in the way our teachers build relationships that extend well beyond graduation.
This year’s celebration of our graduates is what that phrase looks like in practice. It begins with an 8th-grade class accepted to every high school they applied to. It continues with Firebird alumni heading to institutions across the country and abroad. And it extends to graduates like Tess Frazier, whose Watson Fellowship reminds us that the confidence and curiosity first nurtured at GSA can carry a young woman all the way around the world.
At The Girls’ School of Austin, graduation is never simply an ending. It is the beginning of everything a girl is capable of becoming.
If you’re exploring all-girls schools in Austin or want to learn more about what a GSA education can offer your daughter, we’d love to meet you.
