RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA : For These Grads, School Won’t Stop

When the 261 members of Santa Margarita Catholic High School’s Class of 1992 receive their diplomas during commencement exercises Saturday, the chances are good that it will not be their last graduation ceremony.

Next fall, 90% of the school’s graduating seniors will enter four-year universities and the rest will enroll in community colleges, said Judy Hellmich, senior counselor.

This is an improvement upon last year’s graduating class--the school’s first--from which 78% of the students went to four-year universities and the rest to community colleges.

“We are a strong college prep school and education is our priority,” Hellmich said. “The kids know it, and the parents know it.”

Among the universities that this year’s seniors will attend are Harvard, Duke, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Notre Dame, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of San Diego and West Point.

“When we started school here, we were told that Santa Margarita was a prep high school and that if you don’t go to college, this might not be the place for you,” said class valedictorian Chris McDonald, 18, who will attend UCLA under full scholarship next school year.

Kevin Rice, 17, credits his teachers, counselors and fellow students with the extra push he needed to be accepted into his dream school, Brown University in Providence, R.I.

“I was oblivious when I came here as a freshman,” he said. “I hadn’t even thought about where I wanted to go to college. But when you go to school here, your awareness is really sparked because you have kids talking about going to school on the East Coast. It’s competitive here and everyone pushes each other, but it’s also like a family.”

Frandy Moiso, 18, is one of 40 students in her graduating class to earn a perfect grade-point average of 4.0 or higher and will attend Stanford University.

“I was very motivated here,” Moiso said. “It’s so easy to go into the counseling office and have them really work with you. They help you with the applications, send out your transcripts and remind you about due dates so that you’re really on top of everything.”

Jennifer Aguilar, 18, couldn’t afford to apply to any Ivy League schools or other prestigious universities. But the Mission Viejo resident said college wasn’t even in her future plans when she transferred to Santa Margarita at the beginning of her junior year.

“I really didn’t think I was going to go,” said Aguilar, who plans to attend Saddleback College for two years before transferring to Boston College. “I had some family problems, and education wasn’t really that important to me. I’m a person who needs to be pushed, and when I came here, they said, ‘You can do this. You’re special.’ This school makes you responsible. You have to know what you’re doing and be responsible.”