Reply to Tell me about Catholic School Over Fairfax County

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can anyone comment on St. Louis vs. St. Mary's vs. Blessed Sacrament? Difficulty to get into each at K? Would like to pick our parish in part based on the school.[/quote]

Unless you're going to pick your house based on the parish (and maybe that's exactly what you're saying), you can't just pick your parish in the Arlington Diocese.  You can obviously attend wherever you want, but they generally won't allow you to become a member unless you live within parish boundaries.  And if you're not a member of the parish for 1 year before applying, then you don't get parish preference in getting into the school.  You may know all of that already, but it was new to us when we started down this road and completely different than where DH and I grew up.

I can comment on St. Mary's and Blessed Sacrament.  We did not live in-parish for either.  We got into St. Mary's from out of parish for K.  I picked up the application the morning it was released at the open house (a day in November), filled it out, and mailed it back the same day (they don't allow hand delivery).  DS got in, but they also did 4 K classes that year.  They typically do only 3 but will sometimes do 4.  I don't know if he would've gotten in if they had done 3 classes.

We did not get into Blessed Sacrament the same year.  BS opens early one morning in maybe February or early March for receipt of applications from nonparishioners.  Ours was the first nonparishioner application received, and DS did not get in, but they only have one class.  We didn't apply to St. Louis because it wasn't geographically convenient for us at the time.  We live much closer to it now, and many of our neighbors' kids go there and are very happy.

We ended up at St. Mary's, which was our preference from the beginning, and have had a great experience all around so far.

Keep in mind that these schools have a very different feel to them. St. Mary's is more urban, very large (3-4 classes per grade and about 22-27 kids per class), no green space (if that's important to you), a full time aide in each classroom at least K-2.  BS is much smaller and more suburban in feel with only 1 class per grade. I've heard the class can have as many as 30 students, but don't have personal experience.  I can't speak to St. Louis at all.[/quote]

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