a sure fire stud 8th grader walks into any catholic school regardless of grades
You are wrong about that.
If, for example, nobody with composite placement test scores lower than the 80th percentile is getting accepted into Iggy, they MIGHT bend the rules for a stud in the 70th percentile, but they simply do not have the academic programming resources to accommodate kids from all academic achievement levels. It would make no sense for them to bring in a kid in the 40th percentile who would struggle mightily and wash out in a year or two. They don't want to set kids up to fail.