Can anyone help me understand the meta puzzle from puzzle day 2026?

Spoilers for the meta puzzle below if anyone was still hoping to try it on their own!

Can anyone help me understand what I’m missing with the meta puzzle from this year’s puzzle day? I wasn’t able to finish it in time so I’ve just watched the solutions video. But I don’t understand the zebra puzzle portion.

From the third paragraph I worked out that 1 student each will attend Honeycutt Community College, Jenni Nevels Academy, Sixton State and Leventhal School of Music. Two will attend Kentworth University and three Leif Iverson Institute of Technology.

I then wrote down 1-9 for the GPAs (1 being the highest rank) as we know no two students have the same GPA. From the fourth paragraph we know Class Clown is ranked 4th.

From the fifth paragraph this means the Nerd is 5th. The Foreign Exchange, Goth and Theatre Kid are somewhere 1-3, and the Band Geek, Jock, Rebel, Slacker are 6-9.

Then from the sixth paragraph we can work out Slacker is 6th and Rebel 9th. The person going to Sixton State is 7th and the music theory loving student is 8th. We know chemistry is 1st or 2nd and Theatre Kid 2nd or 3rd.

But then how do you work out the rest? The video says you can solve this part of the puzzle without any of the other solutions. Can someone help me understand what I’m missing?