Jacqueline entered Chapin in New York City in 1935 for kindergarten and the early years of grammar school. From 1942 to 1944 she attended the Holton-Arms School in Washington, DC through her first year of high school; she transferred to Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut for the remainder of high school, graduating in 1947. She spent her first two years of college at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, and spent her junior year (1949-1950) in France at the University of Grenoble and The Sorbonne in a program through Smith College. She returned to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1951 with a B.A in French Literature.
Yet she still spent her life decorating and turning her head away from the obvious.