Punching Above Their Weight in Mississippi

Deborah Fallows:

Jim and I returned to Columbus, Mississippi, recently to see how development in the Golden Triangle was progressing, and to visit one of our favorite schools, The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. The MSMS is a two-year public residential school for students of all races, ethnic groups, and economic backgrounds from all over Mississippi. You see a glimpse of the school and some of its students at work in the science labs at the end of this Atlantic video produced this past fall.

Ecru (in green), Starkville (orange), and Edwards (blue), Mississippi are the home towns of the student authors in this post. Columbus, home city of the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, is the small red dot near Starkville. (Esri)
Don’t be fooled by the name of the school, with its emphasis on math and science. The school is equally impressive in its humanities programs. We wrote about MSMS here and featured some of the essays from students last year here. We have more for you this year.


Emma Richardson teaches the creative writing class at MSMS, and the essays and poems here are all from her students. This is the first of two collections

Columbus spent $29,817,427.12 during the 2014-2015 school year for 4,516 students or 6,602 per student. Madison, the land of milk and honey spends more than $17,000 per student or 154% more…..