Although Jacqueline wanted to pursue a history scholarship at Oxford, her father did not allow her. Instead, she prepared for the general horticultural examination of the Royal Horticultural Society, which she passed with high marks in March 1924. The following September she was among eight women in a group of 30 students who comprised the first-year class at the Architectural Association (AA) which at that time still followed traditional Beaux Arts principles and methods. In mid-1926 she took a job working for a small firm of "garden architects" in her London neighbourhood and was also enrolled in an evening course at the London School of Economics.
