Immaculate Conception Academy

Gotta love their mission of enabling girls to become confident, well spoken and educated young women! ICA is part of the Dominican’s famed Cristo Rey schools where there spiritual mission is to make sure students succeed in spite of all other obstacles!
Tuition is paid by wealth benefactors and a nominal $ 3k payment by the family (which the student can earn through corporate job placements that the school provides). The dress code is corporate because when students aren’t in class they are at work in some great corporate jobs doing entry level work. The resume these young women have when graduating high school is better than most folks college internships!
If you work for a Silicon Valley Startup consider pushing your founder to contract with Immaculate Conception for an inexpensive student employee to help out around the office. The school will contract the job to 4 job share students, where you get a full day’s work out of the student, and their school work load is balanced so they attend school 4 days a week. You’ll be amazed to see the confidence blossom, you’ll get 4 great employees and the knowledge that you are helping to make America great again!

I also didn’t want to go to ICA. My mom wanted me to go, and I’m glad I did. Loved the teachers, loved my classmates. I was there 1990 – 1994. I didn’t like that the school lacked track as a sport and a swimming pool. I also wish they offered more foreign languages. When I was there, they really lacked an ethnic studies curriculum, but I think they’ve improved in that regard. I have to disagree with the comment about making us into secretaries. I never felt that way. I felt we were not only encouraged, but expected to take leadership roles and become attorneys, doctors, accountants, teachers, and politicians.

Maybe I attended WAY after it was such a «great» school…
Let me start by saying the teachers and MOST of the staff were amazing, no real complaints there, my main beef was with the principal.
The first year I attended, Sister Mary Catherine was the principal, and let me tell you, she was AMAZING. So genuine, always available for help when needed, personal or academic. Unfortunately, she left my sophomore year, and then came the current principal.
I will refrain from mentioning her name, I’m not vindictive, you’ll have to do your own detective work if you really want to know who it is.
This woman, who is a Sister as well, so I wont speak *too* ill of her, was almost the complete and total opposite of Sister Mary Catherine. She was SO unapproachable, ran the school like a boot camp (Hey, it’s a private, Catholic, and all-​girl school, there really was NO NEED for some of her crazy methods). There’s a border between keeping teenage girls in line, and shaping them into young women, and going completely off the deep end and overstepping the fine line, in which case, she did.
I have never known girls to be so catty than at this school; gossip, vandalism, sometimes even violence, where were the boundaries then? The Principal was never there to assist those in need, I know girls who turned to more approachable faculty and staff when they had issues, when clearly the issues needed to be dealt with by the principal, not the math or religion teacher.
I graduated, got my diploma, went on to college, so ICA delivered great classrooms, with really good teachers (I can’t remember ever hating a teacher, there were a couple I wasn’t fond of, but for the most part, I developed great relationships with them)-but that’s it.
I will NEVER send my daughter (s) there (if ever I have any), and definitely do not recommend or speak highly of ICA.

Great school. The teachers really care about their students and you get that one-​on-​one attention. The girls are all fairly nice and I made some of the best friends that I know I’ll keep in touch with for the rest of my life! Seriously!
It helped me grow tremendously and I would not have gone to any other school.

best experience of my life. seriously. met the bestestest friends ever, challenged myself, opened myself to new things, grew and matured. truly somewhere you want to send your daughter. best faculty/​staff, but yenno there are always the couple few that are «ehhh». great education, very personal and in your face approach about college. 100% of the senior class attends, and wins like at least 1 – 2 million $ in scholarships.
people truly care for the students here, and you really do have a community, a sisterhood, unlike mercy sf. :)

Okay, I will be biased about this one because I used to go to this high school! But what can I say? I had a great experience at this school – especially because it was a small school! You got the attention you deserved from the faculty and staff! They were so attentitive and caring! You didn’t feel the pressure from your peers because it was an all-​girl school. You could just be yourself and everybody had a place. ICA rocks! A hidden treasure on 24^th and Guerrero!