SJM is an even worse school than Pennignton describes. I attended SJM, as did my sister, mother, cousins, best friend, best friend's grandmother. Only the two SJM grads before 1960 liked it. It is very unfair to the students and treats students from more affluent families fair while treating everyone else badly. If your last name isn't Pardini, Frye, Ferdinandi, or anything like that then don't expect your child to be treated decently. And it is very true about the cheating.
One of the Pardini students admitted to me that he just memorized the tests from his cousins and siblings to get an "A". This is why he had time for sports and being very social. And even if you told the teachers I doubt it would have made a difference. My ex husband was from an affluent family. He told me that his Spanish one teacher just gave him a C even thought he could never pass his tests. He was even getting in trouble yet was was allowed to get away with more during detention because the teacher overseeing detention was buddy's with his childhood swim teacher.
I once skipped school just for fun and when I was caught the vice principle put me through a type of humiliating perp walk in front of my peers before she sat me in the office. I was seated next to a kid from an affluent family who skipped school to go skying. Yet the VP smiled at this skier, and politely asked him to wait. The guy admitted he'd ditched this before to go skying and it was his second time getting caught. I was sentenced to 7 detention sessions, two Saturday school sessions, & "spiritual counseling, Meanwhile that other guy got 2 detentions and that's it!
Oh and the "spiritual counseling". My family signed the form because the counselor made it seem that if they didn't sign that they must be hiding something. These sessions were unethical to say the least. The "counselor" asked me questions about if I'd had relations yet. I was deeply embarrassed. I guess because i skipped school to talk to a guy. She couldn't believe that at 14 my only goal was literally just to TALK to a teen boy in person without the supervision of an adult and that in fact was all we did. Then is "counselor" kept pushing me to say more even though at 14, I was so innocent it never dawned on my go past a kiss with a boy, especially a boy I just met and talked to twice. It was so humiliating. It's like she pegged me as this teen seductress . Probably because I wore eyeliner and lipstick, but that's no reason to peg a 14 years old as a "bad girl". The reality was that I had only known what I learned abut in sex ed and still had only a vague understanding of how the process went. But she kept bringing it up one way or another over and over and over again. She would ask if my menstrual cycles were regular and then would later ask I'd have one that month. It was medieval.
Then one of my teachers told this this "counselor" that instead of taking notes I wrote something about a teacher being cute. She took this as a plan and started asking me questions as if I was planing a seduction and then asked how the teacher behaved to me. Even when I made it clear that he had done nothing she kept pushing. I felt like I was endangering this man's job just for admiring him. What I'm saying is that this place was repressive that a typical teen girl wanting validation form a teen boy or having a crush on a teacher was made to seem perverted.
Now you're asking, "Then if its so bad why doesn't everyone just leave?" Students stay because the school make them feel guilty or fearful of leaving. The teachers and staff play mind games with the students telling them that no other school will prepare them for college, that kids from public schools often fail in college, that SJM's 11th grade work is about to the level of a college freshman, or that SJM graduates make better life choices and so have better lives as adults. In a nutshell, they communicate to you that if you leave your live will be in the sewer.
So please don't waste your money here. It will psychologically damage your children.