Portman is considered to have been a good student. "I'd rather be smart than be a movie star," she told an interviewer. Although she says her family was not religious, she attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from a public high school, Syosset High School. Portman skipped the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I so she could study for her high school final exams. In June 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in psychology. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of the Lowell House, and wrote a response letter to the Harvard Crimson (the school newspaper) that was considered very well-written, in response to an anti-Israeli essay. Portman pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant (he thanks her in The Case for Israel). She was also a research assistant in a psychology lab, and i