St. Ignatius College Preparatory

For other uses, see Saint Ignatius College (disambiguation).

This article is about the high school in San Francisco, CA. For the similarly named high school in Chicago, Illinois, see St. Ignatius College Prep.

Saint Ignatius College Preparatory
Location
2001 37th Avenue, San Francisco, California
Information
Type	Private, Coeducational
Motto	"For the Greater Glory of God"
Religious affiliation(s)	Roman Catholic
Established	1855
Principal	Patrick Ruff
Grades	9 - 12
Enrollment	1,446
Campus	Urban
Color(s)	Red and Blue
Mascot	Wildcats
Publication	The Quill (Literary magazine)
Newspaper	Inside SI
Yearbook	Ignation
Tuition	$16,990 (2011)

St. Ignatius College Preparatory is a preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 1855. Located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, in the Sunset District of San Francisco, St. Ignatius is one of the oldest secondary schools in the U.S. state of California. It is known also as S.I.

History

St. Ignatius was founded as a one-room schoolhouse on Market Street by Fr. Anthony Maraschi, a Jesuit priest, just after the California Gold Rush in 1855. Maraschi paid $11,000 for the property which was to become the original church and schoolhouse. The church opened on July 15, 1855, and three months later, on October 15, the school opened its doors to its first students.

SI was the high school division of what later became the University of San Francisco, but it has since split from the university and changed locations five times due to the growth of the student body and natural disaster. In the 1860s, the school built a new site, adjacent to the first, on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. In 1880, SI moved its campus to a location on Van Ness Avenue in the heart of San Francisco, and by 1883, SI had become the largest Jesuit school in the nation. Within 26 years of the relocation, however, St. Ignatius would be completely destroyed. Though the school would survive the tremors of the 1906 earthquake with only moderate damage, the subsequent fires destroyed the school and church, forcing SI to find a new location near Golden Gate Park, a hastily constructed "temporary" wooden building, affectionately known as the "Shirt Factory", which housed the school for more than 20 years, from 1906 to 1929.

In 1927, the high school was separated from the university, becoming St. Ignatius High School. Two years later, SI relocated its campus once more, this time to Stanyan Street, where it remained for 40 years. In the fall of 1969, Father Harry Carlin moved SI to its current Sunset District campus, whereupon the current name, St. Ignatius College Preparatory, was adopted.

Though originally founded as an all-boys school, SI became coeducational in 1989 and is now home to 1,400 students.

SI celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2005.

St. Ignatius is a Catholic, college preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition serving the San Francisco Bay Area. St. Ignatius strives to develop young women and men of competence, conscience, and compassion through an integrated program of academic, spiritual, and extra-curricular activities. St. Ignatius seeks to develop students who strive toward the Jesuit ideal of the magis: a thirst for the more, for the greater good, for the most courageous response to the challenges of our time in the fullest development of students' talents, and for a life-long disposition to serve.

— Mission statement

Admissions Criteria

In general, an 8th grade applicant should have the following qualifications:

• Should perform well above grade level on standardized tests taken in the seventh and eighth grade at his or her present school.
• Should be progressing in academic subjects commensurate with ability.
• Should receive a favorable recommendation from the principal, teacher, or counselor of the school the student now attends.
• Should perform well enough on the entrance examination to indicate that he or she is capable of achievement in a rigorous college preparatory course of study. The exam is the High School Placement Test (HSPT) and is published by the Scholastic Testing Service (STS). The exam consists of individual tests covering verbal ability, quantitative ability, reading comprehension, vocabulary, language arts, and mathematics.
• The student and parents should be committed to the student's active participation in the religious and extracurricular activities of the community he or she seeks to join. This includes a genuine interest in after school activities, liturgies, retreats, and community service.

Academics and Student Body

To prepare students for college, St. Ignatius requires coursework in English, mathematics, social science, physical science, foreign language, fine arts, physical education, and religious studies. Students are taught by a faculty that, in 2004, was one of 12 schools nationwide to be honored by Today's Catholic Teacher magazine for excellence and innovation in education. St. Ignatius offers honors courses and Advanced Placement classes, which may be used for college credit with a passing score. SI has one of the largest and most successful Advanced Placement programs in the country. In 2010, students took 1,422 tests and passed 1,142, breaking the school record in both regards. Also, students scored more than 700 4s and 5s on these tests. This performance ranks SI among the top 150 schools (the top 2/3rds of 1 percent) in the nation. SI’s pass rate of 80.3 percent is 23 points higher than the national average.

Additional information:

• Student body: 33% students of color, 50% girls/50% boys, 24% students receive nearly $2.1 million in financial aid
• Current ethnic diversity: 64% Caucasian, 18% Asian American, 10% Latino, 4% African American, 4% decline to state or other
• Experienced and dedicated faculty (80% with masters degrees, 7% with doctorates, 11 in Jesuit community)
• Active campus ministry program with retreats and Friday morning liturgies
• A vibrant and diverse fine and performing arts program, including new choral/music building
• A top-60 Prep School
• One of the 12 best Catholic schools in the nation for professional development
• A top-30 school in the nation for AP scores, with about 1100 exams administered last year and an 80.9% pass rate
• SAT scores more than 150 points above national and state average
• Financially stable: $75 million in endowment
• 65 athletic teams with over 900 students participating
• 62 clubs with more than 1,000 members
• Nearly 18,000 alumni, two-thirds of whom live in the Bay Area
• Campus is 20 acres on two sites
• Student to Teacher Ratio: 14 to 1; average class size is 25
• Typically 100% graduates attend four year colleges

Athletics

Sports are a major component of student life at St. Ignatius with approximately 1400 students competing on 65 teams in 26 sports, including American football, basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, water polo, swimming, lacrosse, tennis, cross country, golf, crew, track and field. The Wildcats generally participate in the Western Catholic Athletic League (WCAL) in the Central Coast Section of California, though for some sports, teams belong to other leagues. Its athletics are nationally ranked. The men's rowing team has won the US Rowing Youth National Championships on three occasions, first in 1997 and in consecutive years between 2005 and 2006. In addition, the crew has competed in the world-renowned Henley Royal Regatta in England, where St. Ignatius won Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup in 2006. The lacrosse team has consistently won the state championship and was ranked nationally in 2007 and 2008, marking the first time a lacrosse team west of the Mississippi has been ranked nationally. The school's soccer team is also nationally ranked by ESPN. In 2009 the SI soccer team won both the WCAL Championship and the CCS Championship. In 2010 they won WCAL for a second consecutive year. The SI Football team reached new accolades when they won the 2006 WCAL Championship for the first time since 1967. The team later went on to win the CCS Division III Championship, setting a new bar for SI Football.^{[citation needed]} In 2011, after a normal season, the Wildcat Football Team qualified for the CCS Division III Championship. The team then went on a streak to upset Aptos, Valley Christian, and Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory to win the CCS Division III Championship.

Wildcat teams practice and compete in facilities on campus and in the surrounding area. J.B. Murphy Field and Jack Wilsey Track are used by the football, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey and track and field teams. J.B. Murphy Field has undergone a ten million dollar renovation and now features a Sprinturf synthetic turf surface. SI offers two gymnasiums for basketball and volleyball, four tennis courts, and the Herbst Natatorium for the swimming and diving program and water polo teams. The rowing and baseball teams compete off-campus at San Francisco's Lake Merced and Daly City's Marchbanks Field, respectively.

Rivalry with Sacred Heart Cathedral

St. Ignatius' traditional rival is Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, also located in San Francisco. The SI-SH rivalry began with a rugby game on St. Patrick's Day in 1893. SI and SH compete against each other in football, basketball, and baseball for the Bruce-Mahoney Trophy, which is named after one SI and one SH alumni who died in World War II. St. Ignatius is ahead in the series 40–19, with a record winning series of 12 years (1974–1985). Most recently, SH won the trophy in 2011-2012.

Fight Song

SI began an important sports tradition in 1933 when Fenton Gervase O’Toole ’34 wrote the words that generations of Ignatians have sung at rallies and games. The November 8, 1933, edition of The Red and Blue reported on this event: Here it is:

To the Red and Blue we’ll all be true,

We’ll wave her banner to the sky,

We’ll fight for you, old Red and Blue,

We’ll fight for Saint Ignatius High!

And victory will be our goal —

For we will reach it, if we try,

So let us fight—with all our might—

We’re gonna fight, fight, fight, fight, fight!”

Ignatian’s Song of Victory Made by F. O’Toole '34

Notable alumni

Igor Olshansky

• Daniel J. Callaghan - Congressional Medal of Honor recipient
• William Callaghan, 1914, USN Vice Admiral and first captain of the USS Missouri (BB-63)
• Igor Olshansky, 2000, NFL football player, Defensive Lineman for the Miami Dolphins
• Jerry Brown - 32nd and 39th Governor of California
• Dan Fouts - NFL Pro Bowl Quarterback, played for the San Diego Chargers. NFL Hall of Fame.
• Darren Criss - Musician, Actor, Singer-Songwriter, Composer
• George Moscone - Mayor of San Francisco
• John Paul Getty, Jr. - Philanthropist
• Gordon Getty - Billionaire and businessman
• Francis Jue - actor
• Paul Otellini - President and CEO of Intel

See also

• San Francisco high schools

External links

• St. Ignatius College Preparatory website