Hey, I am an FUS alumna with two younger sisters who still attend.
I had an absolutely fantastic time at FUS. I am a more traditional person in general, so I didn’t really do a lot of the more charismatic stuff. The school has what is called “dynamic orthodoxy”… it is extremely orthodox and faithful to the Church’s teaching, but it does it in such a great way- you can really tell that the kids there take their faith seriously, as does the school.
There is perpetual Adoration, multiple daily Masses, confessions everynight (with lines out the door!), lots of groups to get involved with for spirituality, ministry, fellowship, you name it. The academics are on par with other univerisities, plus they offer great majors like Humanities and Catholic Culture and an awesome Theology program.
I majored in biology and minored in chemistry and found it challenging. I have a friend who was in the bio program with me who graduated summa cum laude and now is in med school and told me he was actually surprised how well prepared he was for med school with his Steubie background.
As for more traditional practices, there is a group who carpools to a Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday morning. I never went, but I have a friend who would go. There are also multiple parishes in town with a more traditional leaning, and all very faithful to the Church and supportive of the school. I personally went to St. Peter’s chuch in downtown Steubenville regularly- I was even married there and had my first son baptized there. It is a beautiful old gothic style church with an awesome priest and they use beautiful traditional organ music for the liturgy.
Steubenville definitely has charismatic roots, but there are a lot of more traditional students there now, so you can’t say it’s a charismatic school anymore. There are still charismatic events, like Born in the Spirit retreats, Festivals of Praise, and the like, but the day-to-day life of the school is just normal Catholic stuff. The Masses are normal Masses, the kids are very nice kids (well, you always get some"bad" ones, where ever you go)
Overall, I loved my experiences at FUS, and I miss it a lot. Dorm life was fun and there were rarely problems (other than just not getting along with your roomie), people are great and very helpful, the academics were challenging and fun, and the spirituality was so rewarding. I highly recommend FUS to any high schooler and parents of high schoolers.
lol, but i really don’t know anything more about it. It does seem to be one of the ones that is still quite Catholic…
I’ve already had an interview w/ my admissions counselor, and I submitted my application earlier this month. I plan to visit the campus this spring before making a final decision.
