On “Gilmore Girls,” Rory attends Chilton for her sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school.
Chilton is a prestigious fictional preparatory school in Hartford, Connecticut. Rory begins the series at Stars Hollow High, but transfers to Chilton early in her sophomore year after being accepted there. The school is more academically demanding and is presented as a stronger stepping stone toward her long-held ambition of attending Harvard.
Lorelai cannot comfortably afford Chilton’s tuition, so she asks her estranged parents, Emily and Richard Gilmore, for financial help. They agree to pay, provided Lorelai and Rory attend their weekly Friday Night Dinners. Those dinners become one of the show’s central recurring settings.
Rory spends the remainder of high school at Chilton, where she competes with Paris Geller, clashes with headmaster Charleston, edits the student newspaper, and eventually graduates as valedictorian. A common mix-up is confusing Chilton with Yale, which Rory attends after high school.