The First Beginnings: the first two students of St. Xavier's College came from a group of six, who appeared for the University Matriculation examination in 1868 from St. Mary's Institution. So confident were their teachers about the intellectual attainments of the six students - all of them were successful - that they applied for the School's recognition in December, 1868, as a College in Arts. Fr. Joseph Antony Willy, the first Principal of St. Xavier's College from 1869 to 1873, and three other Jesuit Fathers actually began to lecture to the two students on January 7, 1869, just before the recognition of the Bombay University was granted on 30th January with retrospective effect from 1st January.

St. Xavier's College is not a mere building - all concrete and iron, stone and bricks and mortar. It is much more than a material and physical reality; it was created by the devotion and zeal, the self-sacrifice and generosity of men and women who gave their all for the best education of the youth of India. Faith and hope and love have gone into its making; discipline, scholarship and service are its adornments.

Worldly-mindedness, self-interest, and mercenary motives do not reign within St. Xavier's precincts but the serene spirit and dynamic industry of men and women, filled with the ardent desire to give India loyal, devoted and useful citizens.

St. Xavier's College makes a preferential option for the marginalised and it seeks to give an all-round formation, inculcating both human and spiritual values. St. Xavier's College is only a part of the vast educational efforts of the Jesuits in India and throughout the world. At present Jesuits run about 100 schools, 24 colleges, and innumerable non-formal and adult education centres in India, and all these form part of the effort of the Catholic Church to share in the vital task of education in our land.