I recently attended both the St. Michael’s open house and the St. Dominic Savio open house, was impressed by both and found the contrast between the two high schools interesting. Both made a good pitch, and seem like fine schools and the turnout at each was larger than I expected.
St. Michaels has the advantage of current students who could ably function as tour guides through their existing buildings, and their facilities are clearly impressive. The beautiful facilities at St. Michaels reminded me of the expensive elite private Catholic High School in Delaware which I attended. I was surprised to find that St. Michaels no longer has a sports rivalry with nearby St. Stephen’s school (most of St. Michaels key rivals are in San Antonio), and was interested to see that some of the harder science courses suffer from lack of interest there (presumably students don’t want to work so hard?). St. Michaels does not offer two key AP classes that a top notch school really should (Computer Science AB and Physics C, instead they only offer the two less advanced AP exams in each), but other than that minor complaint has a great set of AP offerings. The students were bright and behaved far more maturely than most their age. The math program seems good (although fewer than I would like accelerate to Calculus as Juniors, I understand their reasoning). Although St. Michaels was less exclusive than I realized (seems their typical student scores in about in the top 1/4 of the SAT, I had thought it was higher) they have plenty of obviously exceptional students. The students seem to be kept very, very busy (a mixed blessing) – and the course load (homework) seems high. I got the sense that they had too many electives (especially outside the core math/science/writing areas). Although slightly less expensive than I realized, it is still considerably more expensive ($4,000 more than Saint Dominic Savio). I don’t know if academic or athletic scholarships are offered which could mitigate this. They did mention the total scholarship amounts, but not the income cutoffs or whether the number of Catholic school students in the family was considered in financial aid decisions. They posted a useful faq answering other questions though: http://smca.com/s/851/images/editor_documents/Admissions/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions.pdf All in all the St. Michaels open house was done very professionally.
Saint Dominic Savio’s open house was held in the Holy Family gym and had friendly parents and volunteers, and considering that this is their first open house did well. More attended than I expected. I was pleased that the importance of our faith, and creating a Catholic community, was emphasized. There is no question in my mind, that they are going to try to be a Catholic High School. The emphasis on STEM courses, and the challenging curriculum (like St. Michaels, 4 years of Math, 4 years of Science) is reassuring. The plans for athletic programs and AP courses and curriculum in general matched what I wanted to hear. I was glad to hear that they will be offering Latin (given the recent surge of interest in this in some of the local Catholic grade schools – apparently Latin is now “cool”), not just Spanish. It seems like the St. Dominic Savio parents are already starting to become friends and are more likely to be a tight knit community than those at St. Michaels. The projected enrollment numbers are higher than I would have expected (I believe that they will be successful, even with 1/2 of their projected enrollment)
I was pleased that both seem like great choices for High School, and both could offer distinct advantages over the best public schools in many areas.
