TL;DR — Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus runs a deliberately small catalogue: kindergarten through Grade 10, three senior high strands, and three college degrees. Only one of those degrees, BS Social Work, ends in a board exam. CSCJ publishes its 200-peso testing fee and 1,000-peso downpayment but no tuition rate, and its scholarship page is one of the more detailed we have read.
The address, phone and level flags are on the Colegio Del Sagrado Corazon De Jesus profile, and other options are on the Iloilo City schools page and in our best private schools in Iloilo round-up.
A short catalogue, and that is the point
CSCJ is a Vincentian Catholic school — our directory record dates its founding to 1917 — and it has not chased breadth. Where a comparable school in Iloilo City might list a dozen degrees, CSCJ lists three, and they cluster around service work and hospitality. Whether that suits you depends entirely on whether your course is one of the three — if it is, you get a school that has been teaching it for a long time in a small setting; if it is not, there is nothing here to negotiate.
Basic education: Kindergarten, Lower Basic Education for Grades 1 to 6, Upper Basic Education for Grades 7 to 10.
Senior high school: ABM, HUMSS and STEM. No tech-voc or arts and design track.
Higher education:
- BS Social Work (BSSW)
- BS Hotel Management (BSHM), with majors in Culinary and Kitchen Management or Restaurant and Bar Management
- BS Tourism Management (BSTM)
- Sagrado Alternative Evening School (SAES) — BSHM majoring in Restaurant and Bar Management, delivered in the evening
Where each degree leads
BS Social Work is the licensed one. It ends in the social worker licensure exam under the Professional Regulation Commission, and the licence is what lets you hold the protected title and practise in the roles that require it — local government social welfare offices, DSWD programmes, hospitals, NGOs and child-placement work. It is also, in a school with a Vincentian mission and a community engagement office, the programme most aligned with what the institution actually is. Our BS Social Work guide and social worker board exam guide cover the route and what the exam involves.
The two hospitality degrees are unlicensed, which is normal for the field. What replaces the licence is your practicum record and the specific technical skills you can demonstrate. That makes the major choice inside BSHM the real decision:
- Culinary and Kitchen Management is back-of-house — food preparation, kitchen operations, menu planning, food safety. It leads to kitchen roles and, further out, to running one.
- Restaurant and Bar Management is front-of-house — service, beverage and bar operations, sales, hospitality entrepreneurship. It leads to floor management and outlet management.
Those are different careers, not two flavours of the same one, and switching later usually costs you a year. Our hotel and restaurant management guide is worth reading before you commit, because BSTM at the same school is a genuinely different degree aimed at travel, tours and destination work rather than at food service.
SAES is the piece most people miss. It delivers the restaurant and bar management major in the evening for working students and other learners with daytime commitments, at the same standard as the day programme according to the school. If you are already employed, that is a route that does not require you to quit your job. The thing to check about any evening programme is whether the practicum can also be scheduled around work.
Getting in: two gates, both with an interview
CSCJ runs a genuine screening process rather than a form-and-payment enrolment, and it is more involved at college level than at most small schools.
Basic education, new students and transferees:
- Apply for the entrance exam and psychological test with a completed enrolment form.
- Sit the test at the basic education guidance testing centre.
- Interview with the principal.
- Submit documents: original report card or Form 138 with complete grades and no deficiencies, original certificate of good moral character, two PSA or NSO birth certificates, a baptismal certificate photocopy, two 2x2 photos, a certificate of completion for Grade 10 entrants, and ESC or senior high voucher documents for grant holders.
College:
- Apply for the entrance exam and psychological test.
- Preliminary interview at the higher education office.
- Psychological assessment.
- Interview with the area chairperson.
- Submit documents: original report card or Form 138 with satisfactory deportment, PSA birth certificate photocopy, baptismal certificate photocopy, certificate of good moral character, two 2x2 photos, plus transcript of records and honorable dismissal for transferees.
Note the baptismal certificate on both lists. It appears as a document requirement rather than as an admission condition, but it is the kind of item that delays an application if you have not thought about it in advance.
Returning students have a shorter route: final report card, validated school ID, and the same downpayment.
The fees CSCJ does publish
This is unusual and worth crediting — most schools publish neither of these.
| Item | Published amount |
|---|---|
| Entrance exam and psychological test, both departments | PHP 200.00, non-refundable |
| Pre-enrollment downpayment, minimum | PHP 1,000.00, non-refundable, deducted from total fees |
No tuition rate is published for any level or programme. The 200 and the 1,000 are the only public figures. Call (033) 337 4654 and ask for a written assessment for your exact level, and ask separately what the college practicum and uniform costs are for the hospitality programmes, because those sit outside tuition.
Scholarships, in detail
CSCJ's scholarship page is one of the more specific we have seen from a school this size.
School-funded: full and half merit scholarships for first and second honours in basic education; entrance scholarships giving valedictorians 100 percent free tuition and salutatorians 50 percent, for one year in basic education or one semester in college; athletic scholarships in swimming, scaled by the awards you bring; President's Scholars for arts and theatre; SAES support for hospitality students from marginalised backgrounds; Seton scholarships bringing learners from nearby communities into regular classes; an indigenous peoples grant subsidising tuition and miscellaneous fees for members of the Ati community from Malay, Aklan; the Marillac grant, which pairs assistance with assigned work at the school; family discounts for employees' children at 100, 75 and 50 percent for the first, second and third child; and a personnel scholarship for employees' dependents.
External: DepEd GASTPE through FAPE; Education Service Contracting at 11,000 pesos for Grades 7 to 10 and 16,000 pesos for Grades 11 to 12; the DOLE Special Program for Employment of Students for learners aged 15 to 25; and CHED's Tulong Dunong, Tertiary Education Subsidy and congressional scholarships.
Two of those are worth acting on early. The entrance scholarship expires fast — one semester of free tuition for a college valedictorian is a single-semester benefit, not a four-year one, so budget for the rest. And the ESC amounts are per year and substantial against a private school bill; our senior high scholarships guide covers how to claim them.
The senior high gap worth naming
CSCJ offers ABM, HUMSS and STEM, and nothing else. There is no technical-vocational track, no arts and design track and no sports track.
That has a direct consequence for its own college pipeline. The school's two largest degrees are hospitality and tourism, and the natural senior high feeder for those is a tech-voc home economics strand, which CSCJ does not run. So a Grade 10 student who already knows they want BSHM at Sagrado has to take an academic strand first, most often HUMSS or ABM, and pick up the technical skills in college. That works, and it is worth knowing going in rather than discovering it.
The flip side is that three academic strands with no vocational option keeps the school's senior high aimed squarely at university entry, which is a legitimate and clear position. If you want a strand that trains a trade, this is not the school.
Who CSCJ suits
A family that wants a single Catholic school from kindergarten to a degree, in the city centre. The full ladder is here, the school has been running for over a century, and the scholarship scheme rewards staying — including family discounts that get materially better with a second and third child.
A student aiming at social work. This is the strongest match in the catalogue. A licensed programme, at a school whose entire institutional identity is Vincentian service work, with a community engagement office attached to it. That alignment is not marketing; it shapes where your fieldwork happens.
A working adult who wants a hospitality degree in the evening. SAES is a specific answer to a specific problem, and few schools in Iloilo City offer one.
Not a match if you want engineering, nursing, IT, education or business at degree level. None of those exist here, and no amount of liking the school changes that.
What to ask before you commit
- The full annual fee for your level, in writing, since none of it is online.
- For BSHM: which major has more students, and what the practicum placements have actually been.
- Whether the entrance scholarship applies to tuition only or to the whole assessment, and what happens in the semesters after it expires.
- For SAES: whether the practicum can be scheduled around full-time work.
- Whether your child's ESC or voucher grant is applied before or after the 1,000-peso downpayment.
Sources
- Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, Programs Offered — http://www.cscj.edu.ph/programs
- Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, Admission Policies (process, documents, PHP 200 test fee, PHP 1,000 downpayment) — http://www.cscj.edu.ph/admission-policies
- Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, Scholarship Programs (ESC amounts, entrance and family discounts) — http://www.cscj.edu.ph/scholarship
- Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus homepage and address — http://www.cscj.edu.ph/
