Welcome to Great Hearts Arete Prep, Serving Grades 6-12
Arete Prep serves middle school and high school students in grades 6-12, guiding them through a seven-year journey that begins with Homer’s Odyssey and culminates in a senior thesis defended before faculty and peers. Because we belong to the Great Hearts network, every lesson is ordered to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. We aim for excellence—aretê in the ancient Greek sense of virtue perfected.
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Virtual Tour
Begin your journey into the heart of classical education with just a click. Watch a virtual tour of Arete Prep where we foster virtuous scholars and deep thinkers. Witness firsthand how our teachers inspire a passion for lifelong learning, logic, and moral integrity. This isn't merely a tour of our school; it's a gateway to becoming part of a community dedicated to academic excellence and living the values of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Discover the unique spirit of Great Hearts—where every lesson shapes well-rounded, virtuous citizens.
Why Families Choose Arete Prep
Mission-Driven Excellence
Everything we do points back to the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Our well-rounded curriculum—literature, mathematics, science, fine arts, and humanities—invites students into the “Great Conversation” of the Western Tradition.
Personal Growth & High Expectations
From free full-day kindergarten through eleventh grade, Socratic dialogue sparks curiosity while clear routines foster both joy and order. Students meet high academic standards and are mentored by teachers who know and love them.
Character at the Core
Courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom guide daily life. The best schools shape hearts as well as minds, forming compassionate young citizens ready to serve their communities.
Academic life at Arete Prep is challenging, yet it begins with wonder.
Middle-school scholars internalize the grammar of every subject. They diagram sentences until syntax becomes second nature, trace Euclid’s first propositions with straightedge and compass to taste demonstrable truth. Literature selections—The Iliad, Beowulf, the speeches of Frederick Douglass—stretch imagination and moral insight, while algebra problems reveal the hidden structure inside numbers.
By high school, the curriculum widens into an honors sequence recognizable at the finest preparatory academies. Students spend two hours each day in Humane Letters, pairing primary-source history with authors from Virgil to Virginia Woolf; mathematics ascends through calculus or economics; laboratory sciences rely on original texts so modern experiments remain rooted in the great chain of discovery. Four continuous years of Latin or Spanish culminate in the ability to read Cicero unmediated or discuss Cervantes fluently. Graduates routinely post SAT scores hundreds of points above state averages, earn National Merit recognition, and secure scholarships to programs as varied as engineering at ASU’s Barrett Honors College and classics at Hillsdale. Yet faculty still name quieter triumphs first: the sophomore who refines a shaky proof until it rings true, or the senior who chooses candor over convenience on a lab report.
Yet Arete Prep refuses to measure success by transcripts alone.
The heart of the program is virtue education woven quietly into everything: the patience required to master a Euclidean proof, the courage to deliver an unflinching speech, the temperance that comes from balanced study and leisure, and the justice practiced when older students mentor sixth-graders through the House system.
A Welcoming Community for Every Family
Our campus on Baseline and Greenfield sits minutes from the US 60, making the academy accessible to families across Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Tempe, and the East Valley.
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Visit • Apply • Connect
Questions? Give us a call at (480) 222-4233
Start with the virtual tour, then schedule an on-campus tour where you can observe classes, chat with students, and meet faculty. If you share our belief that the best school is one that shapes both intellect and heart, you will find a home here among the Chargers. We look forward to welcoming your family into a tradition that stretches back to Socrates and forward to whatever brave new world our graduates will one day inherit.
With warmest regards,
Melanie Attridge,
Headmaster
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