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Strake Jesuit is a Catholic, four-year college preparatory school for young men grades 9-12. The school was founded in 1960 by the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus, a religious order of priests and brothers, also known as the Jesuits. The Jesuits bring over four and half centuries of tradition and commitment to academic excellence. Located in southwest Houston, the school physically resembles a small college with its various buildings spread around its fifty-two-acre campus. This provides the school community with numerous outdoor grassy spaces and shaded areas for gathering and personal enjoyment. The current student population numbers just over 1,100. Faculty, staff, and administration total over 110 yielding a student-to-teacher ratio of 10:1. Also, fifty-seven percent of the faculty have advanced degrees in their areas. Ninety-one percent of the student body participates in extracurricular activities directed by numerous schools school faculty members. The student body–with forty-five percent of minorities–and the staff reflect Houston's diverse character. To ease the tuition burden for their families, approximately 15% of the student population receives assistance from a financial aid budget of $1.8 million. The first day a student steps foot on campus, he begins actively working with his teachers, coaches, and counselors to practice the ideals of Jesuit education – to become a Man for Others. We often talk about being a Man for Others at Strake Jesuit because it is part of Jesuit education's rich spiritual and intellectual tradition. For nearly 500 years, Jesuits have been teaching, coaching, and forming students to be loving, religious, committed to doing justice, intellectually competent, physically fit, and open to growth. And in Houston, we have been faithfully dedicated to that mission at Strake Jesuit since 1960. Our students commit to intellectual growth, and they learn to lead by being engaged in our school community and beyond. They also experience the joy and responsibility of serving others by completing a minimum of 155 service hours during their time at Strake Jesuit. Whether in the classroom or together on retreat at our Retreat and Leadership Center, competing on one of our athletic teams, our outstanding debate team, or in our accomplished music programs, our students are cultivating values and learning skills that we believe will prepare them not only for college but for life. The Strake Jesuit graduate is approaching the threshold of young adulthood. Leaving the childhood behind has involved anxiety and embarrassment and taking fearful first steps into sexual identity, independence, first love, or first job. It has also involved physical, emotional, and mental development that brought out strengths, abilities, and characteristics adults and peers began to appreciate. During the four years before graduation, he began to realize he could do some things well, sometimes very well, like playing basketball, acting, writing, doing math, fixing or driving cars, making music, or making money. There have also been failures and disappointments. Even these, however, have helped the student to move toward maturity. Fluctuating between highs and lows of fear and confidence, love and loneliness, confusion, and success, the Strake Jesuit student at graduation has negotiated during these years many of the difficulties of adolescence. On the other hand, the graduate has not reached the maturity of the college senior. During his senior year of high school, he is especially beginning to awaken to complexity to discover many puzzling things about the adult world. He does not understand why adults break their promises, how the economy "works," or why there are wars, or what power is and how it ought to be used. Yet he is old enough to begin framing the questions. And so, as some of the inner turmoil of the past few years begins to settle, he looks out on the adult world with a sense of wonder, anxious to enter that world, yet still unable to make sense of it. He is more and more confident among his peers. He can more easily read the clues of the youth culture of which he is a part. Furthermore, he is independent enough to choose his response. As for the adult world, he is still a "threshold person," cautiously entering adulthood. View full school