Rohan Sandhu, who entered the Catholic Church at Easter, credits his faith formation and conversion directly to his years of study at the Avalon School in Wheaton, which he attended since kindergarten and graduated from on May 22.
“Avalon itself taught me what it means to be a Catholic, not as much in the classes, but in the people, I was surrounded by, growing up in the environment of Avalon…people who taught me what it really meant to live in a Catholic community,” he wrote in an email interview with the Catholic Standard.
Sandhu recalls his gratitude for the education he received, the tight-knit school community, which he considers his second home, and the teachers who gave him a greater appreciation of his favorite subjects, calculus and physics.
“As I leave Avalon, (my thoughts) are a mix of sadness and joy, because I'm leaving the place where I've grown up and my life is changing completely, but I'm happy that I'll still be close by,” writes Sandhu, who will study civil engineering this fall at the University of Maryland in College Park. “I've always liked science and math, and I want to see them applied to the world.”
A native of Silver Spring, Sandhu, 17, resides in Germantown with his parents, Jay and Rajdeep, and his older brother, Sudeep, who graduated from Avalon in 2025. At Easter, he was baptized at Holy Redeemer Parish in Kensington, and he looks forward to being involved with the Catholic Student Center at the University of Maryland.
As he prepared for his commencement from the only school he’s ever attended, earning him the “Avalon lifer” title in the school community, Sandhu recalls his favorite traditions – the annual spring Gala and the Capture-the-Flag festival days, “because they show two different sides of the school, the Gala being an outward show of gratitude for the parents and the festival days being fierce competition,” wrote Sandhu, who had the honor of serving as captain of Calvert House in his senior year.
The school’s student body is divided into a system of four houses – Calvert, Carroll, Stewart and Washington – names drawn from those important historical figures in the founding of the Maryland colony and designed to foster a sense of chivalry, competition and noble spirit among the boys.
Sandhu played varsity soccer all four years of high school, served as president of the Automotive Club and is a member of the Communion and Liberation (CL) high school youth group, Gioventù Studentesca (GS) founded by the late-Father Luigi Giussani in Milan, Italy in 1954.
On the next chapter of his life, Sandhu writes that Avalon’s school motto, Duc In Altum (Put out into the deep) and St. John Paul II’s famous reflection on the Bible verse: “Those words invite us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm, and to look to the future with confidence,” hold special meaning for him.
“Duc In Altum affects me by making me want to experience new things if they are completely foreign to me, like college, by making me just go in and try to be the best I can by ‘putting out into the deep,’” he said.
