A Preface to SOTA 2026
By TMP 43rd Editorial Board
From April 13 to April 24, for the third year in a row, The Milton Paper conducted the largest optional survey of the Milton student body. Drawing on The Philippian’s “State of the Academy” survey and the “Sin Poll” we used to run, we surveyed Milton students on academics, sex, politics, substances, technology, and more. Last year, we increased our sample size by 8% of the student population, going from 53% to 61%. This year, we did the same; 69% of students filled out State of the Acad.
Today, we’re excited to share with you the results of our updated survey, with many questions refined, added, or removed based on feedback we received last year, as well as our own journalistic assessments of unanswered questions at Milton. In particular, we significantly expanded our section on politics and worldview. As political conversations at Milton and beyond have grown more polarized, we have been troubled by students’ haste to assume that all of their peers believe one thing. This perception, in our view, discourages political discussion, and we hoped this year’s State of the Acad (SOTA) could dispel that conception. For the most part, our data indicates a diversity of ideas, albeit on a spectrum that leans liberal: no individual political belief, as phrased in our survey, was espoused by over 63% of respondents. The most popular belief, at 62.2%, was opposition to legacy admissions. Only two other political stances—full support for abortion and raising taxes on the rich—had outright majorities.
Our other findings this year, as in past years, have ranged from the comedic to the insightful to the alarming. For the third year in a row, the percentage of respondents who believe in a “day-boarder divide” at Milton has increased. As Milton reckons with digital technology usage, the proportion of students who admitted to using artificial intelligence on classwork without teacher approval appears to have stayed steady at 41%, while last year’s edition of SOTA saw a 13% increase. Alarmingly, we also found a suggested correlation between respondents’ daily average screen time and their likelihood to have reported sleeping for less than seven hours a night—confirming the results of numerous studies and pertaining unmistakably to Milton’s ongoing phone policy debate.
In these pages, you will find visualizations of these results and many others. We hope that, if nothing else, you find some joy in reading this issue with your friends and learn something new about our school. More importantly, though, we hope this survey equips you to play a positive role in Milton’s community discourse. When voicing your opinions about life at Milton, whether through writing opinion pieces for one of the school papers or engaging in casual lunchtime conversations with friends, ground your perspective in statistical fact by referring back to this survey. Find out, through SOTA, where you stand on political and cultural issues compared to your peers, and use that information as a springboard to advocate for your beliefs; moreover, find the courage to start conversations rooted in disagreement.
Finally, don’t take this data at face value; the figures in this survey do not represent the whole school—rather, they reflect the responses of the 490 students who filled out the survey, a group that overrepresents female-identifying students and day students, not to mention the possibility of false responses, which we do our utmost to remove. Take SOTA as an opportunity to practice your critical thinking, parse our findings, and come to your own conclusions. In your reading, reject hasty generalizations and embrace nuance.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who made this year’s State of the Acad possible. Thank you to Mr. Idsvoog, Ms. Morrison, Ms. Stone, Mr. Bingham, Pati, Nemo, Kaci, The Philippian, and all 490 of you who took the time to fill out our survey. We hope you get out of reading SOTA at least as much as you put into making it happen.
Signing off,
TMP 43 ♥️