Primarily *Spanish* Private Schools in San Juan

Perpetuo Socorro is in Miramar and is a good school that is completely in Spanish until the forth grade (or so - don’t recall exactly) and then shifts to bilingual. A lot of the most well known Puerto Ricans patronize PS, such as Fortuño’s kids.

Colegio Puertoriqueno de Ninas in SJ is good (there’s also a campus in Caguas) but I felt PS was better when my kids attended there about a decade ago.

Thanks for the feedback.

Are these private schools competitive when it comes to admissions? I mean, assuming you apply and can pay, etc, are there more applicants than seats? I'm coming from an environment where people will use a lottery style system to get into certain "good" schools.

I'm particularly interested in Perpetuo, since you have experience there.

Also, is it a prerequisite to be baptized/Catholic? I know that many of these schools are explicitly religious and that's fine. However, my daughter hasn't been baptized. I've seen some schools (like academia san ignacio) list certificado de bautismo as one of the requested application items. We are not religious but come from Catholic families.

My pleasure, Fedfam.

1. I don't recall if an admissions test was required. I don't think so, at least not for elementary school. Admissions wasn't particularly competitive. It was more a matter of whether the class year had space or not. As several hundred thousand people have left since I lived in PR, at least the fight over available spaces must have diminished.

I know PS didn't use a lottery. For the private schools in PR that I have knowledge of, the system is officially first-come-first-serve (at least at the elementary level, which is what I was interested in at the time). But in reality (and this goes for the whole island no matter what the activity and no matter who the sponsor is (i.e., private or governmental), whatever the system is officially, unofficially it's the "El que tiene padrino se bautiza" system. I've posted on this cultural concept several times on this site and the old-timers are well used to seeing me mention it. What this system means is that whoever has a contact (a godfather) will get the space/benefit at the expense of whoever does not, even if that means blatantly jumping the queue or denying the first in line with outrageous claims that the spots were already filled by those who (never) queued up earlier. This system is the root of almost everything that is wrong in PR.

2. I don't recall Catholic baptism (or any baptism) being required by PS at the time we applied. Maybe they asked for an explanation but I don't remember that being an issue.

fedfam wrote:

Thanks for the feedback.

Are these private schools competitive when it comes to admissions? I mean, assuming you apply and can pay, etc, are there more applicants than seats? I'm coming from an environment where people will use a lottery style system to get into certain "good" schools.

I'm particularly interested in Perpetuo, since you have experience there.

Also, is it a prerequisite to be baptized/Catholic? I know that many of these schools are explicitly religious and that's fine. However, my daughter hasn't been baptized. I've seen some schools (like academia san ignacio) list certificado de bautismo as one of the requested application items. We are not religious but come from Catholic families.

I expected as much regarding "connections." I used to live in the Dominican Republic and it was the same way there (often referred to as having "una cuña").

We'll just have to apply and hope things work out when we arrive. We still have quite a while, which frustrating because I know we can't do much for schools and housing until we actually arrive.

Since Perpetuo is in Miramar...

Would it be fairly easy to commute between the Miramar or Condado area and Hato Rey Norte? I've read a lot of warnings about traffic. Hoping to keep work/school/home as close together as possible.

When I first got to PR I commuted to Hato Rey from Condado via the bus and Tren Urbano to attend language school. Very easy and was much better than dealing with traffic and parking. Not sure what the state of the Tren Urbano is now, but you may want to check it out.

Yes, traffic wouldn't be too bad from Condado. This would be the best commute (other than from OSJ).

The north side of Hato Rey may not be ideal but it could be a lot worse. It depends on if you can avoid most of the bottlenecks.

fedfam wrote:

Since Perpetuo is in Miramar...

Would it be fairly easy to commute between the Miramar or Condado area and Hato Rey Norte? I've read a lot of warnings about traffic. Hoping to keep work/school/home as close together as possible.