As a follow-up to "American High", Showtime commissioned Cutler to spend the 2002–2003 school year with a group of freshmen at the University of Texas in Austin. As with "American High" Cutler and his team assembled a group of students, filmed them cinema verite style for the full school year and provided them with digital cameras so that they could contribute their own footage to the project as well. When "Freshman Diaries" premiered on Showtime in August, 2003, Steve Johnson wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "Yes, the new 'reality' genre has dominated television, too often with simple-minded tributes to hormones and humiliation. But it has also made room for some compelling new documentary work that networks likely would have never had the courage to put on TV. Case in point: Sunday's new "Freshman Diaries"". David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun wrote, "This is the place where the immediacy, and edge, of reality TV meets the power of the documentary film to show us the world as seen through the eyes of others".