O'Dea is the Pacific Northwest's only all-boys Catholic college-preparatory high school, occupying a brick campus on First Hill near Seattle's cathedral district. Founded in 1923 by Bishop Edward J. O'Dea and staffed since by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, the school enrolls roughly 470 students in grades 9-12 with a 14:1 student-teacher ratio. Tuition runs around $22,900, and the school reports about 83 percent of graduates enrolling at four-year colleges.
In published Seattle-area Catholic-school rankings, O'Dea is grouped with Seattle Preparatory School (Capitol Hill, co-ed, Jesuit), Bishop Blanchet (Crown Hill, co-ed, archdiocesan), and Bellarmine Preparatory in Tacoma — alongside Holy Names Academy as the all-girls counterpart. Among them, O'Dea is the most explicitly mission-driven option, with the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers tradition shaping daily life, theology requirements, and a service-learning program tied to local Catholic charities. Diversity has been a stated priority since the 1923 founding, and the student body remains one of the more racially and socioeconomically diverse in the Catholic peer set.
The Fighting Irish are among the most decorated athletic programs in Washington private schools. Football has won multiple WIAA state championships, and boys basketball has captured Class 3A state titles in 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2019. Together with the Christian Brothers ethos, athletics shape O'Dea's public identity at least as much as academics — the recurring tradeoff parents weigh against more academically rigorous Catholic options like Seattle Prep.
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