Holy Names Academy is a Catholic college-preparatory all-girls high school on the east slope of Seattle's Capitol Hill, founded in 1880 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. It is the oldest continually operating school in Washington state and enrolls roughly 614 students in grades 9-12 with a 13:1 student-teacher ratio.
In Seattle's all-girls Catholic segment, Holy Names is the larger and more academically intensive option compared to Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bellevue (about half the size, K-12). Across the broader Catholic peer set — Seattle Preparatory School, Bishop Blanchet, O'Dea, Eastside Catholic — Holy Names ranks at or near the top by selective-college placement: it is #5 in WA by PolarisList HPM placements with 6 acceptances over 2022-2025. Reported indicators include a 100% four-year graduation rate, average SAT around 1310, and average GPA 3.81. The school has been named a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School four times and has appeared in The Washington Post's 'America's Most Challenging High Schools' rankings on multiple occasions.
The structural tradeoff parents weigh is the all-girls format itself, which Holy Names defends as a focus advantage and a leadership-development setting; the comparable co-ed Catholic alternative is Seattle Prep across the hill on Capitol Hill, generally regarded as the more selective Jesuit option but lacking the all-girls peer environment. The campus block on East Aloha is unusually compact for an enrollment of this size.
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