Reply to What HSPT score for Merit money?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If academic rigor and prestige are your only factors, you probably shouldn’t be looking at just Catholic schools anyway. There’s plenty of DC schools that are a higher tier.

If you are only considering Catholic, then Visi, Gonzaga, GP or Stone Ridge are the first tier of Catholic schools, just academically speaking.

Then, the other ones come in, if you want a bigger coed school, including SJC, DJO and BI. But, once you are considering those schools, you are considering location, friends, sports, etc, and not just academic rigor, so that’s why people are arguing the SJC, Scholars Program or not, is not so prestigious and rigorous that it is worth going to over a place that is closer to your house and friends. 
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I would not consider Visi academically better than SJC’s Scholar program. When DD was in 8th grade, both she and us had Visi as the first choice, primarily because it seemed more prestigious. But after several visits (open houses, shadow days) and asking lots of questions regarding their curriculum and evaluating school fit, we were much less impressed by Visi. They didn’t offer as many AP or honors classes, art classes were abominable and remedial, sports program wasn’t all that impressive. She scored 99% on the HSPT and was accepted into both schools, we chose SJC’s Scholars and the Cadet Corps program. DD loves SJC and all it has offered, and we have not regretted the decision. Icing on the cake - tuition at SJC is so much less, especially with the Presidential merit scholarship.[/quote]

Completely reasonable choice, but again, you admit you thought Visi was more prestigious, and you ended up choosing the Scholars program at SJC bc of more AP classes, art and sports - not just academic rigor and prestige. Plus, you’re also comparing an honors program to a school as a whole. When just comparing Visi vs SJC, Visi is more prestigious and rigorous. [/quote]

The problem is that Visi doesn’t have any sort of honors or scholars program, they just have the basic program for everyone and, academically, it just doesn’t compare to SJC’s Scholars program. When we visited Visi, we sat in on some of the presentations for the various departments and talked to the teachers about the classes, and they just seemed so average. [/quote]

Visi might not have a specific honors program, but they have plenty of honors and AP classes, and I like that anyone can take them with the requisite grades/recommendations. My DD is there and has taken almost exclusively honors and AP classes when available to her and she is getting an excellent education. I do think the traditional college prep classes are easier than the honors/AP, obviously, but there's no way they are 'average' amongst the local Catholic high schools. I would add that Visi gives very little merit money, because they don't have to-they have a high percentage of students enrolled who are top students able to take high rigor classes. As another PP noted, they don't need to lure in top students with money or a specific honors program-the whole school functions as such.[/quote]

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