Two years ago, I was in the same position as you are now — looking for a Catholic college that was actually Catholic.
As others have mentioned, there’s not much out there. Hell would literally have tor freeze over before I sent my kid to Fordham or ANY Jesuit college. Notre Dame was out, too.
We applied to several schools that appeared in The Newman Guide (Ave Maria, Steubenville, Belmont Abbey, Mount St. Mary, and Christendom), as well as several other secular schools. Our boy got in everywhere, and everybody offered scholarships, except for Christendom. They don’t have a bunch of money to hand out, but the academics are solid, and there is NO QUESTION that they uphold authentic Catholic teaching. In addition, their tuition is much lower than most colleges, so the fact that we did not qualify for aid didn’t hurt that much. (We wouldn’t have gotten aid from anywhere, anyway.)
So even though Billy won merit $$$ from the larger schools, their starting tuitions were higher and it all worked out the same in the end. We went with Christendom.
Good luck to you and your daughter. It’s tough finding somewhere that doesn’t actively work against all the teachings you’ve tried to impart to your children. Look carefully. Don’t forget to look for information in odd places: If you want to see what the social (party) life is like at a school, check out what the students are posting on YouTube, for example. A little stroll through that website can be quite the eye-opener.
Again, good luck.
Regards,
Thank you for taking the time to reply in detail and all the advice is excellent and will be taken seriously on our daughter’s search.
I recall they arranged to have religious services for their students and opened it up for those attending CPAC.