About

Why Mission College Prep?

Mission College Prep creates a culture of care and accountability in partnership with families to form women and men of scholarship, inspiration, and leadership in service to deeper life with God and deeper life with one another.

 

Mission College Prep is a Catholic college preparatory high school for young men and women in the Diocese of Monterey. We are located on the central coast of California in the town of San Luis Obispo, which is mid-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Approximately half of our 300 students come from three area Catholic grammar schools, while our other students come from 26 other schools locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Mission College Preparatory Catholic High School is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the Western Catholic Educational Association (WCEA). Education is addressed to formation of the whole human person and oriented to excellence in academics, athletics, the arts, and spirituality.

Our academic program is intended to provide an inspiring formative education, set within a nurturing environment that facilitates our students’ exploration and discovery of their best and truest selves, thereby equipping them to be successful in their future academic, professional, civic, religious, and family lives.

Mission College Prep offers 70 college prep courses approved and certified by the University of California, meeting “a-g” core and elective requirements. MCP offers 7 Honors courses and 12 Advanced Placement classes. In addition, MCP offers 11 courses based in leadership, drama, physical education, health, and Catholic Theology. Our elective offerings have been expanded based on student interest to include video production, electronic robotics, digital photography, art, creative writing, music, and drama. MCP runs a block schedule where students take up to 4 classes per day, for 80 minutes per class.

Our faculty work to inspire students within the academic program by providing them with a range of course offerings that appeal to their varied skills and interests. The faculty and staff consist of 41 full-time and 5 part-time men and women, many who hold advanced degrees. Over 60% of the faculty has over 18 years of teaching experience. The average class size is 22. Mission students are supported through many mechanisms of care, yet held accountable for their performance. We work to support students in being successful in rigorous college preparatory, honors, and advanced placement courses. As well, we work to create students who are scholars in that they understand the value of inquiry and knowledge and are fervent in their pursuit of both.

Campus Ministry operates on the assumption that the young person’s emerging faith demands more than classroom religious instruction. Activities such as community Eucharistic celebrations, retreats, service projects in tune with local and global needs, small group prayer services, and parish involvement are all necessary to address the student’s growing faith responsibilities.

As members of the Mission College Prep community, we are called to live according to a pattern of love and service modeled by Jesus Christ. As followers of Christ, we believe that we are all brothers and sisters and that much of the injustice in the world would be extinguished if more people acted on this principle. We try to model this calling in two different types of service.

First, students are required to serve the Mission College Prep community. We find students have a better sense of ownership and belonging when they take an active role in helping care for Mission College Prep and its activities. When students start seeing their friends, classmates, and teachers as brothers and sisters through service to the school, it becomes much easier to make the philosophical jump to wanting to serve the larger community.

Second, students are required to reach out past the borders of our school to our city, our state, our country, and our world to apply the idea that everyone is our sister and brother. Over the course of four years, all students will be called to service with younger children, with the elderly and developmentally challenged and with agencies that make a preferential option for the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

At MCP participation in the life of the community is the norm and programming is a tool that facilitates the inculcation of leadership. Educating for leadership celebrates individual successes as being dependent upon the successes of every other member of the community. As a result, student leadership groups such as Associated Student Body, Student Alliance, Royal Ambassadors, Campus Ministry, Peer Mediation, and others, plan and implement all of our student activities.

MCP students create a vital school environment by participating in a wide range of activities, rounding out their academic pursuits. Our clubs are student driven; that is, they are created, developed, and run by students. The Associated Student Body (ASB) motto, coined in 2003, perhaps expresses our culture of participation best: “For the students, by the students.” Our community frequently celebrates our student performances in athletics, graphic art, music and drama, and students plan, coordinate, and produce these events: from technical production in theatre to setting up video media for assemblies; from scripting rallies and producing the program for our Christmas Classic Basketball Tournament to producing live video announcements each morning. Our students learn to orchestrate every step of the process.

Athletics is an essential tool for developing student leadership, as participation in athletics teaches responsibility and sportsmanship through the notion that the best gift we can ever offer our opponents is the gift of intense competition. We currently have 18 Varsity Teams, 9 Junior Varsity Teams, 2 Freshmen Teams and Cheer. 60% of our students participated in at least 1 sport last year and 20% of our student athletes earned scholar-athlete distinction, as recognized by the California Interscholastic Federation.

Mission Prep Athletics has prided itself on a tradition of excellence on and off the field and court, and has accumulated 49 CIF Championships in both the Southern and Central Sections.