Bill S.
Yelp
There are many places that I would consider overrated. Chaminade is not one of them.
As a relatively recent graduate, I very much feel as if it prepared me for college. I dare say many of my college classes are easier than those I took at Chaminade. The workload was pretty bad, but again this prepared me well for college and gave me good study habits. I graduated here before they started offering their AP courses, but I'm assuming the academics are still top-notch. They were pretty strict with things like uniforms, cheating, and general classroom nuisance, but I really don't recall many egregiously unfair punishments handed out.
Most of my classmates were great and I'm still friends with many of them in college. I never really saw any bullying going on, and even those who I didn't like the most were better people than most at other schools.
In terms of the good morals stuff, yeah I'll say that part's a little overrated. They definitely teach you to be the best person possible, and I will say most of my classmates were good people. But some parents try to act like everyone who goes here is a saint or never does anything bad in their life. This just isn't true. A lot of drinking and drugs (mostly just weed) goes on here. Again most of even those who party and stuff are decent enough, it's just perhaps not the most "saintly" place ever like some parents will have you believe.
It's one of those places that you don't like, at the moment when you're going there because of the course load and how stressed you will be. But once you look back on it a couple of years into college, you'll see how good it was and how well it likely prepared you.