Question: If 20-year-old Katie Holmes has always been a straight- A student, why is she still in high school?
Answer: She's an amazing actress who can pull off way-younger roles because of her fresh face, awesome attitude and terrific talent. Go, Katie!

Katie Holmes is totally believable in this summer's comedy Teaching Mrs. Tingle. Alongside 7th Heaven hottie Barry Watson, Katie stars as Leanne, a high-achieving, college-bound student whose academic future--and, therefore, the rest of her life--rests in the claws of a nasty, unfair teacher.

Thank goodness that wasn't Katie's real-life experience, but the Toledo, Ohio native says her teachers were really strict at Notre Dame, the all-girls parochial school she attended for four years. "Every day we'd have to kneel on the floor and have (our skirts be) no more than two inches above the knee," the beauty, who packs her book bags and hits the halls each week on Dawson's Creek, has recalled. "I didn't have it super-short, but if you had it too long, you were such a dork. You looked like a freshman."

Hmmm, sounds like school uniforms don't solve the world's fashion frets after all. Stressin' over dressin' wasn't Katie's only concern in school. "There was a lot of pressure about grades," the go-gettin' girl--who managed to juggle her homework and afterschool activities, like drama and choir, and still earn A's--has sighed. "Every day you'd walk down the hall and see girls crying about getting a 92 instead of a 93."

But no matter how tough it was, this actress is famous for having made the most out of school. "She was an honor student and she was very focused," her proud principal, Sister Carol Gregory, has raved. Sister Sally Marie Bohnett's agreed: "I remember (her as a) bright-eyed, eager, happy student. Oh, I enjoyed Katie."

The truth is, Katie enjoyed them, too. She didn't mind that her teachers pushed her to do her very best. After all, her 'rents, Kathy and Martin, always told her how important it was to have an excellent education. They were even a bit bummed when their baby girl decided to put off her enrollment at Columbia University in order to continue acting. "They made me promise I would go back," Katie, whose four older sibs all went to college, has revealed.

Besides, she sheepishly admits, there are some things she never learned in school--like how to decipher DC creator Kevin Williamson's syllable-heavy scripts. "At the table read, I would come across words, and before I had to say them, I'd be, like, "How do you say that?'" she's blushed. That's okay, Katie. We've all still got a lot to learn, too!