St. Ignatius College Preparatory
St. Ignatius College Preparatory, colloquially referred to by Bay Area locals as SI, is a private, Catholic preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition, serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 1855. Located in the 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.
For other uses, see Saint Ignatius College (disambiguation).St. Ignatius College Preparatory
St. Ignatius High School
Private Catholic Non-profit Coeducational college-prep education institution
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
(For the Greater Glory of God)
1855
Rev. Anthony Maraschi, SJ
Rev. Edward A. Reese, SJ
Peter J. Siggins
Michelle Nevin Levine
9 - 12
1,505[1] (2021-2022)
Urban
Red & blue
Wildcats
The Quill (literary)
Genesis (alumni)
Inside SI
The Ignatian
$73 million (2017) [2]
$32,950 (2024-2025)[3]
History[edit]
St. Ignatius was founded as a one-room schoolhouse on Market Street by 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.[4]
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 from 1906 to 1929.[4]
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.[5]
Though founded as an all-boys school, SI became coeducational in 1989 and is now home to over 1,500 male and female students. The school celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2005.[4]
St. Ignatius offers 4 accelerated, 27 honors, and 14 Advanced Placement classes.[1]
1,505 high school and 75 middle school students were enrolled in 2022-2023, with the student to teacher ratio being 16 to 1.[1][6]
The current diversity in 2022-2023 is:[1]