Observations from students and parents reveal that St. Clement's fosters a welcoming environment with a wide range of extracurricular activities catering to diverse interests, ensuring that students can deeply engage in what they are passionate about.
Co-curricular-wise: I was Student Council president; I did debating and public speaking, so I traveled a lot for that; I was on the badminton team for two years; I was on the softball team for a year, I think—just a lot of activities. Oh, I was in Jazz Band—that was fun. There’s just a lot going on. They are really flexible in the sense that, if you’re like, 'I have these things that I want to do,' they will 100% support you. Like, they won’t let you sacrifice your academic career to play jazz—unless you’re really good at it—but they definitely give you room and accommodations to explore your hobbies and what you’re interested in, because they recognize that it’s not all about grades.
I would say enrol at the school if you have a lot of things that you are interested in, if you are a proactive person and you have the ability to take advantage of the things that St. Clement’s offers. You could theoretically go to St. Clement’s and just attend class and go home every day, and that would be it—that’s a waste. If you, however, are incredibly proactive and you want to go to a school that gives you the opportunity to, I don’t know, maybe start something or participate in a bunch of different things, or there’s something that you really excel at and you want the flexibility to excel at that—go with St. Clement’s. There’s so many resources and they’re so supportive. If you can take advantage of St. Clement’s, the institution, you should go there.
You didn’t have to join a club you weren’t interested in. There’s always something that you could find that you were passionate about to get involved with. There were clubs open for everyone, along with all the different sports teams and extracurriculars. It wasn’t as if we all had to take the same path. Having so many different clubs and even ways the school can connect you to extracurricular opportunities, it was just having all of those options open. It helped everyone to be able to find what they were individually interested in.
Just by spending so much time together and having a small grade, I knew everyone in my grade. I knew their siblings and what classes they were in and what extracurriculars they did. At that point, I felt like we were all sisters, which is a little cliché, but it really felt like that, when I was graduating, I had 63 sisters, which was great. A lot of us graduating students have been together for 12 or six years at that point, and I think at that point we were more just like one big group of friends. You would have classes with a lot of different people, and so it would be nice. You would be able to talk to anyone in the hallway at that point.
The offering at the school is as broad as any of the bigger schools. So to the extent you have very different children, I think they may just gravitate towards different options within the school. My two girls who are at St. Clement’s are very different. They gravitate towards the same extracurriculars, but they’re very different learners, and both have found their place.
I’m on a four-year full-ride scholarship, and St. Clement’s is basically the entire reason that I got that. It’s a combination of the opportunities that St. Clement’s gives you and the flexibility they create to allow you to pursue them. They let me really build that repertoire of debating, public speaking, research. So then the award came in and I was like, ’Well, this is a no-brainer. I should go to U of T because this is great’, and I don’t think that would have happened if it hadn’t been for all of the support that St. Clement’s gave me.
