[3] She went to high school in Watertown, Massachusetts,[4] before studying at Radcliffe College, where she gained highest second-year honors in 1887, and graduated in 1888.

[1]: 201  At first she taught Greek and Latin at the Cambridge School for Girls, while continuing to teach graduate courses at Radcliffe, and in 1893 moved to Vassar College.

[3] Macurdy was awarded a fellowship from the Woman's Education Association of Boston, which allowed her to study at the University of Berlin from 1899 to 1900, taking classes taught by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.

[5]: 111 During her early career, Macurdy cultivated a relationship through letters with Gilbert Murray, who supported and encouraged her work, particularly after they met in 1907.

[5]: 119 Macurdy's pioneering academic achievements did not have wholly positive results, as her increased success brought her into conflict with the scholar who had first hired her to Vassar, Abby Leach.

In January 1908, Leach formally proposed Macurdy's dismissal to the Vassar president, James Monroe Taylor, claiming that she needed a younger more "adaptable" colleague for her work.

[5]: 117  When Henry Noble MacCracken took office as the new President of Vassar in 1915, Leach immediately presented her case for the dismissal of Macurdy to him.

[5]: 117  However, MacCracken instead proposed the following year that Macurdy should be given a permanent post, and promoted to the rank of full professor, and the trustees agreed.

[1]: 206  She continued to be an effective teacher, lecturer, and international traveller, despite the fact that in 1919 she had begun to lose her hearing, a loss which then proceeded rapidly until she was almost entirely deaf by her mid-fifties.

[1]: 206 In contrast with Abby Leach, at whose hands she had suffered so much difficulty, Macurdy worked hard to promote the careers and scholarship of other younger female colleagues.

[1]: 211  Macurdy is recognised for being one of the few early women classicists who, rather than attempting to follow the paths laid out by male scholars and suppress her own gender, established her own approach to academic work.

[1]: 209–210  She also recognised the need to use a wide range of material evidence in order to move past traditional scholarship, based primarily on the study of texts, and in her works therefore discussed coins, sculpture, vases, inscriptions and papyri.