Joie Jager-Hyman was born and raised on Long Island, where the seeds of her nerdy obsession with schools and education were first planted. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 2000, she accepted a position as Assistant Director of Admissions at her alma matter. Over the next two years, she read and evaluated thousands of applications, and traveled across the country for recruitment events. Going into different high schools opened her eyes to ways in which schools condition students for success or failure later in life. She decided to pursue graduate study in education policy and enrolled at Harvard in September of 2002.

Follow Joie's writing on her group blog,
Crucial Minutiae
As a doctoral student, Joie’s research focuses on access and success in higher education for low-income students. Over the years, she worked as a consultant for several think tanks, non-profit organizations, schools and even wrote two reports for Congress. In the fall of 2005, Joie decided to move to New York to spread her wings and try writing for a non-academic audience. Her first book, Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize is being published by Harper Collins in March 2008. Joie has been featured in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, 02138 magazine and the Boston Globe, and written for the Huffington Post, Women’s eNews and Metro, the world’s most highly circulated newspaper. She also lectures about college admissions and on making the transition between academic and popular writing.

Joie now lives in Brooklyn with her wonderful husband and blogs at Crucial Minutiae, a website founded by her incredible writers' group.

In her spare time, she enjoys walking around New York City, being with friends, trying new recipes, doing pilates, listening to a lot of NPR, reading a ton of magazines and watching too many Sex and the City re-runs. She is also finishing up her dissertation and is doing research with a group of first-year college students in Baltimore.