The family was well off, White's father having risen from somewhat humble beginnings to become president of Horace Waters and Company,a New York piano firm. But as White has stated, there was nothing "fashionable" about his background: "I was a middle class public school kid whose parents were not in the swim and didn't want to be." There were pianos and other instruments in the house,and lots of music, performed with enthusiasm rather than professional dedication. White played the piano. In Mount Vernon High School, White was, as he called himself, a "writing fool." His poems, essays, and short stories were published in the Mount Vernon High School
Oracle, and besides that, he was class artist.
In the fall of 1917, White entered the Liberal Arts College at Cornell University. The beauty of the setting at Ithaca, the intellectual activity, the cosmopolitan student body, the blend of the theoretical and the practical (engineering students surveying on the quadrangle as students went to literature classes), all had a broadening effect on White. He made the board of the Cornell Daily Sun his freshman year, and became editor-in-chief at the end of his junior year. He wrote most of the Sun editorials from 5 April 1920 to 5 April 1921, and in early May 1920 he won first prize for an editorial submitted to the Convention of Eastern College Newspapers.
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