Cristo Rey Fort Worth's Class of 2023 Is Taking Flight

It is difficult to make a visit to Cristo Rey Fort Worth College Prep and not be carried away by the results of its mission and the quality of people who go to school there.

“I literally went up to my mom before my senior year and I told her, ‘Thank you. Whatever I do to get to college, I don't want you to pay for a single thing. Even if I had to pay, I'm gonna do it out of my pocket,’” says Aaron Juarez, a member of the Class of 2023.

Neither Juarez nor Rennata Sandoval nor their families will have to come up with one cent.

Both were recipients of QuestBridge scholarships, which match high-achieving high school seniors from low-income backgrounds with four-year scholarships to top-tier colleges and universities across the country.

Juarez, the salutatorian of his class, received slightly more than $300,000. He will attend Rice University. Sandoval received $316,000 and will attend Boston College.

The two were among 17,900 QuestBridge applicants. QuestBridge selected 5,613 finalists to be considered for its National College Match Scholarship. This year, QuestBridge’s 48 college partners matched with 1,755 finalists, who are recognized as match scholarship recipients.

Those two are headliners of a great senior class made up of 40 students, the school’s second graduating class since opening in 2018. Graduation is Saturday at Will Rogers Auditorium.

In total, the class earned 324 college acceptances, including nine who have committed to attend school with full scholarships, among them valedictorian Miguel Castro who will be attending Texas A&M, and seven who received near full-ride packages.

Ninety-five percent of the class was accepted to a four-year university, up from 83% a year ago, the school says.

Collectively, the class earned $19 million in scholarships and grants.

“We really believe that there is a great amount of talented students in Fort Worth and Tarrant County and it's just about that access to opportunity and setting that level of expectation,” says Dani Ray Barton, Cristo Rey interim president. “Having a school of basically 96% first-generation when they're interviewing, we ask, ‘Do you want to go to college?’ Many say, ‘I feel like it's a dream’ or ‘I'd like to, but I don't really know how to get there because I have the first family.’ We tell them, here's where your plan starts. It's not gonna be a dream, it's gonna be reality. You gotta work hard and make a lot of sacrifices over the four years. But, look at the results.

“They’re willing to do it. We have willing students and really amazing parents.”

Cristo Rey came to Fort Worth at the invitation of Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth.

Cristo Rey’s work-study model involves local business and corporate partners, which cover about 50% of the tuition to the school through a sponsorship of students they select to come work for them one day a week throughout the school year. The students’ work at the companies that earn their tuition while gaining real-life experience.

According to Cristo Rey Fort Worth, the network partners with more than 3,200 businesses nationwide, including 70 and counting in Fort Worth.

The balance of tuition is paid through the school’s development efforts and the students’ families. Parents are required to pay something, though it’s based on a sliding scale. Families with higher incomes play more than those with lower incomes.

Everyone has skin in the game, as the cliché goes.

These seniors each applied to an average of 16 colleges each, according to Christina Jimenez, the director of college initiatives.

“What's unique is that these are lower income, first-generation [college] kids,” says Jimenez. “If you look at a similar demographic at other schools, you're not gonna get anywhere near as high of acceptances of students committing to college just because, for one, they don't get the kind of support that they get at our school, with the staff, but also just having the idea that they can do it, that they can go. That’s something that's instilled in them from the very beginning.

“And this is an expectation. Not just that it's possible, but we expect them to go.”

For Juarez, who worked for TPG, Rice is the fulfillment of a dream. He was in middle school when a cousin was attending Rice. “She knew that I was excelling at school and she told me about Rice and how I should look into it, even as a middle schooler,” Juarez recalls.

“What I love about Aaron is since the day we met him he’s been driven to continually push himself,” Barton says. “He could naturally be the four-point whatever [grade-point average] he is and score well, but he's continuing to push himself.

“Last week we were giving out senior awards. Aaron's a little more reserved than some other students. But when he got that math award, he looked for [his teacher] Mr. [Ivan] Kaate, found him in the audience, and gave him a hug.”

Juarez had been accepted and now had the funds to go to Rice, but he had never been there to visit. The weekend after learning he was a QuestBridge recipient, a few friends from school took him down there.

“They made him hold up a sign that said, ‘From QuestBridge to Rice,’ and took a picture,” Barton says. “When the class itself found out about these two getting that scholarship, you would have thought they had gotten it. That speaks a lot to the community but honestly also to the students and the culture that it's kind of that idea of all of us rising together. That’s what's really neat to see.”

Sandoval is an immigrant from Mexico. She moved to California at age 14 and then to Fort Worth during the pandemic in 2020. She enrolled at Cristo Rey as a sophomore.

Faculty member Chris Rauchet, Sandoval’s AP chemistry teacher, calls her as detailed, hard-working, and outgoing.

“She's very funny,” he says.

He tells me that Sandoval wasn’t fluent in English until two or three years ago. Her English was so good during our conversation beforehand that I didn’t even bother asking her about it. I just figured she grew up with it in Mexico.

Rauchet recalls Sandoval telling him of her first school experiences in California. The teachers would try to communicate with her in Spanish, but she dismissed them, asking them instead to teach her in English. “I need to learn English,” he remembers her saying.

Now, she’s going places. All of Cristo Rey is.

“I remember telling my mom, I was like, ‘Wherever I end up in college, you're not going to have to pay for a single thing. I don't care where I go, but I'll make sure that I pay for my own college and that I'm choosing the least expensive option,’” says Sandoval.

“I came here for a better education. And now I got a full ride and saying that makes me want to cry.”