Zoey Brooks and her younger brother, Dustin are new students at Pacific Coast Academy (PCA), an elite boarding school in California. While there, Zoey meets Chase Matthews, a friendly guy with high hopes of getting a girlfriend. Chase leads Zoey to her dorm, where she meets Nicole Bristow, a savvy girl who is easily attracted to hot boys, and Dana Cruz, a tomboy who does not accept diversity. A boy named Logan Reese challenges the girls to a basketball match. Logan picks his team, which includes Chase and Michael Barrett, another friendly guy who is willing to accept a challenge. Zoey chooses her team, which includes Nicole, Dana, and Quinn Pensky, a meddlesome scientist who is always inventing wacky items. The girls lose the basketball game by one point, prompting Logan to tease them. The coach of the basketball team then asks Zoey and Dana if they want to join the basketball team because they helped the most. Zoey accepts, while Dana says she will "think about it."

Zoey's roommates, Nicole and Dana, do not get along and fight every day, which drives Zoey crazy. Once Zoey tells them how annoying they are, they go against Zoey and all three of them are not friends anymore. Zoey decides to move in with Quinn, but soon finds her constant testing experiments bothering. Since Nicole and Dana are not her friends and Quinn is strange to be around with, Zoey starts hanging out with Chase. Zoey and Chase plan on watching a movie. Logan keeps on telling Chase that he is in love with Zoey and should try getting her away from making up with Nicole and Dana. As the movie rolls around, Zoey has already become friends with Nicole and Dana and the movie date, meant for 2, becomes a movie date of 4. Meanwhile, after spending all his money on gummy worms, Dustin is trying to find a way to earn money. He tries tutoring students how to speak Spanish only to fail miserably as Dustin hardly knows Spanish. In the end, he succeeds in earning money by playing guitar and sing his own song, "Gummy Worm Blues."

Zoey and the other girls are in the girls lounge playing a game called Confess or Stress, where a player must either tell a secret or do a dare. Chase and Logan visit the lounge during the game, and while there, Logan gives the girls a huge teddy bear. Logan then decides to "rest" in his dorm because he is not feeling well. The next day, the girls' personal secrets are being heard all over campus, with new secrets coming out as more days pass. Soon, Zoey gets blamed by the other girls for revealing their secrets. In putting a stop to all this, Zoey, Quinn and Nicole check the bear Logan gave them, which has been in the lounge ever since, and discover it has a webcam inside it. Zoey asks Chase if he is part of this scheme, which he denies. The two become aware that Logan has been spying on the girls after looking on his laptop. To catch Logan in the act, the girls give him something to watch, which leads him to tell Dean Rivers about it. In the end, Logan gets in trouble and loses his job at Sushi Rox for faking his sick time.

Dustin has a run-in with a school bully after helping him in class.

The girls decide to get even with the boys after falling victim to their pranks, but Zoey's prank puts all the girls at PCA in danger of being expelled.

The kids at PCA are assigned to make a TV commercial for a new scooter.

Chase writes a play about an alien girl with Zoey as the lead, but gets severely flustered of when Logan gets the part of her would-be earthly boyfriend instead of him. Meanwhile, Dustin gets sick and Quinn tries to treat his ailments with some of her usual unconventional methods.

Quinn develops a crush on a boy named Mark, but when Zoey finds out that Mark's not interested, she takes it upon herself to organize a fake "date" between the two.

The girls join the 'Spring Fling' planning committee and try to get a celebrity to to perform at the event.

Zoey's prototype backpack gets stolen by a PCA bookstore employee, Stacy, and the whole school goes crazy over 'Stacy's' backpack design.

In an attempt to get out of gym class, the kids expose a loophole in PCA policy and form a Disc Golf team.

The kids of PCA learn that the dates for the school dance will be determined by a personality test. What will happen when Dana ends up paired with Logan, Zoey is caught between two guys who cheated in the test, and Nicole is paired with a guy perkier than she is?

Zoey and her friends can't wait for the beach party that PCA is throwing. But, due to Quinn's experiment, everyone gets knocked out and wakes up late. Even after missing the bus, Zoey is determined to get to the party. What could go wrong?