MSJ Grad 2011. A five star review system isnt good...

MSJ Grad 2011. A five star review system isnt good enough because there are some good things and bad things that need to be considered.

Pros:
MSJ is a very competent school when it comes to academics and I had no problem adjusting to a college workload. The teachers are considerate and make the effort to show that they care about individual success. The athletics are very good and it shows with the addition of a new gymnasium. The school is also very tolerant of other religions and sexualities despite being a catholic school. You can truly tell that the teachers here are genuine.

Cons:
This isn't to say MSJ is perfect as it is far from perfect. The biggest problem I encountered during my time there (2007-2011) was that the upper management was for the most part completely disliked by the student body and any higher up administration that had a good reputation was swiftly removed from the school and or barred from promotion. Parents have too much control over the staff of the school which has resulted in quality staff being ran out. All it takes is couple complaints and the school forces the person to resign even if the complaints are ridiculous/irrelevant. I witnessed bullying being ignored and whenever the victim tried to do something he was either kicked out of the school or reprimanded in some way that let the Bully completely off the hook. Their guidance counseling services are mediocre at best and are completely untrained for an actual student emergency more often than not making the situation even worse than it already was. I remember an incident where a student was found out to have suicidal thoughts and the first action that the school took was essentially notifying the entire student body that the kid was suicidal and then proceeded to isolate him in an empty office room for hours with nobody to talk to, completely unacceptable. To add on top of this, the school forced the parents of the kid to leave work early to come to the school to be interrogated. They yelled and screamed at the parent forcing the mother to cry. They literally did everything you aren't supposed to do in case of a suicidal student.

The greatness of the MSJ Guidance Counseling Services can be shown once again on how they treat students with drug problems. This is incredibly low for a school that encourages "Christian values" as they tell students that its ok to come to the guidance office for drug related problems, but as soon as you admit to having a problem they immediately kick you out of the school. It is very apperant that MSJ is more interested in maintaining their reputation than the actual well being of the student body. This goes back to the terrible management/administration the school provides.

Overall, MSJ is an overpriced school that is absolutely mediocre in every category. Yes the teachers and academics are good, but that is only one part of what a High School offers. I'd advise just going to a public school. The same idiots that would flunk out of school in a public school would flunk out just as much as in MSJ. It just so happens that more intelligent and motivated people gravitate towards MSJ. This gives the impression that MSJ increases the success of a student that would otherwise fail in a public school when in fact the reason why MSJ has so many successful students is because successful people like to surround themselves with other motivated and successful people and MSJ offers a place for this to happen. Idiots will still fail and nerds will still go to college. The only difference is the failers have to wear a buttoned down shirt and tie. This skews the data since the same people that succeeded at MSJ would have equally succeeded at a regular public school.

I understand this isnt a very nice review, but this is what I was shown.

I don't advise donating to the school until significant management changes are made and I think everybody from my class era knows what I'm talking about.