Your ideas for college?

[outtamyshell]

We are scheduling a college visit at St John's College. This school is a dream. Now, I'm looking for the best way to make an extra $40-$50k/year working part-time so that I can afford to send dd there. Anyone got any ideas? If anyone can find a way it's the hive mind, right?



Oh, to have a dream... At the very least she's going to sit in on some classes before Senior year so she can get a better vision of how she wants to finish up her high school years.

[Michelle in AL]

Outtamyshell, Please excuse me since I'm not answering your question. Have you done a search of the boards for St. John's College? I seem to remember that as the school that is pretty much drug infested. I wasn't sure if you were aware of that.

I just did a search though and can't find anything. Uughh.

[HollyinNNV]

Outtamyshell, Please excuse me since I'm not answering your question. Have you done a search of the boards for St. John's College? I seem to remember that as the school that is pretty much drug infested. I wasn't sure if you were aware of that.

I just did a search though and can't find anything. Uughh.

This is the thread, I think.....
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69688&highlight=drugs+college

[Ria]

Outtamyshell, Please excuse me since I'm not answering your question. Have you done a search of the boards for St. John's College? I seem to remember that as the school that is pretty much drug infested. I wasn't sure if you were aware of that.

I just did a search though and can't find anything. Uughh.

Yes, it has real problems that way. I remember the threads as well. You can google it, and you'll get a good idea. To me, it sounds nice in theory, but after having read about it I would never consider sending a child there.

Ria

[Michelle in AL]

You may want to consider honor's colleges. Each individual college has it's own version of an honor's program, some are more classical than others. I searched all the honor's colleges in my area to get a feel for what they offer. Like I said they were different, but some were definitely more classical.

[outtamyshell]

Thanks for the replies. It's good for us to go into this with our eyes wide open to the problems they have there. I sure wish it was easier to search for liberal arts and honors colleges.

I'm really surprised to hear that they don't provide any credits if you don't graduate. That makes a huge difference! I read that they record your grades to be made available if you ask for them. I assumed that meant you at least would leave with a transcript.

I guess there's no such thing as a dream school afterall.

[Michelle in AL]

Here's a book on Amazon about Honor's colleges http://www.amazon.com/Honor-Programs-Colleges-Petersons-Honors/dp/0768921414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238553518&sr=8-1
I just looked in the index to see colleges near us. Then I went to the individual college website and clicked on honor's program. Most colleges list the honor's courses. This may give you a better feel for what they offer.

[Brenda in MA]

a liberal arts college that has a strong core curriculum, you might check out this guide:

Choosing the Right College from ISI, available here:

http://www.isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html

I was able to borrow this guide from my local library, but do note that there is an updated version coming out this summer.

HTH,
Brenda

[Eliana]

Thanks for the replies. It's good for us to go into this with our eyes wide open to the problems they have there. I sure wish it was easier to search for liberal arts and honors colleges.

I'm really surprised to hear that they don't provide any credits if you don't graduate. That makes a huge difference! I read that they record your grades to be made available if you ask for them. I assumed that meant you at least would leave with a transcript.

I guess there's no such thing as a dream school afterall.

You *do* get transferable credits even if you do not graduate.

St John's has issues, but I wouldn't automatically rule it out. I got a lot out of it... and I know of several students who have gone more recently and had fabulous experiences. Also, the two campuses have *very* different atmospheres - don't judge one by the other! When you visit, spend a lot of time hanging out on campus - and be sure to have both weekday and weekend time!

Yes, there was a lot of drinking, but I'm not convinced that it was more than happened at the state universities in towns I've lived in... it's just a smaller setting, and I was very sheltered before I went. ...but holding to my own values and choices was never a problem; everyone I knew was respectful of my choices, and I tried to give them the same respect.


...all that said, it is not somewhere I think my kids are likely to go.

Here is a post I made on this thread (http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8288&highlight=St+Johns):

I've been trying to frame a constructive response to this, and am having difficulty.

My parents both graduated from SJC, I attended for less than 2 years, and a student of my mother's (and close friend of the family) graduated from the Santa Fe campus.

I have no neutral reactions to anything about SJC.

My parents' experience there was just short of idyllic and the education they received was phenomenal... and before I ever went there it had been a profound part of my own education.

Perhaps my Dad would have been an incredible person to chat with... but I think his tendencies to quote Kant or Hegel or modern poets or random Greek philosophers (in Greek) can be traced to his years at SJC. ... and his skills as a discussion partner were certainly honed there.

My mother would certainly have been an idealist anyway, but her life as a passionate intellectual really took off at SJC. (And isn't it cool that I can say that my mother's senior thesis defended Don Quixote's sanity?) She found both her voice and support for her belief in learning for its own sake.


I had a lot of 'firsts' at SJC:

One of our seminar's on the Illiad was so transcendent, so incredible an experience that a group of us stood outside together afterward reeling... one said that if this was all she got out of her 4 years there it would be worth it ... another said that anti-drug campaigns should start promoting the mind-altering high you could get from a literary discussion.

I'd never been anywhere (other than my own home) where people would be moved to tears, to anger, to passionate outbursts over excerpts from Plutarch.

...where school dances were exclusively waltzing and swing dance

...where croquet was the school sport (with crew as a close second).

I opted out of dissecting chick embryos and hatched 4 baby chicks instead (Hektor, Achilleus, Odysseus, and Aeneas, if you must know.)

On weekends I had to thread my way around passed out drunks to get from the cafeteria back to my dorm.

I was s*xually assaulted and received less than no support from the school, on any level.

Although we read Great Books, the academic standards were far lower than in my parents' day - some tutors required no writing at all, for seminar or for language tutorial. (Rumor has it that the SF campus has higher standards, but still nothing like in the golden era when most of the tutors were the products of incredible European classical educations.)

Although people who hated science in high school loved SJC science, those of us who loved science were driven batty by the program (which changes regularly - the premise is fabulous and some of the readings are amazing, but, last I heard, they really hadn't gotten it 'right' yet - though the junior and senior years are supposed to be much better.)

I think don rags are a wonderful way of doing feedback, but if they aren't going to show grades to the students at the time, they really shouldn't be giving them at all. (My mother saw her grades for the first time when she was preparing to apply to graduate school and wanted to know how high she could aim.)


When the main learning tool is group discussion, you are very dependent on the quality of your group. I had an incredible group, but the flavor of the Febbies who joined us the next year (Febbies start their freshman year with the second semester and go through the summer, then join the rest of the class in the fall of the next year.) were such a cynical group, and disparaged anyone who spoke from passion and or conviction - being an idealist (and a religious person to boot) made my reactions very suspect in their eyes - it was a very depressing experience and one of the main reasons I left the school.

For me the atmosphere was a shock - but I was so innocent that I think that would have been true at most colleges.

I made the really stupid mistake of choosing a school without an Orthodox Jewish presence at all - I went to High Holiday Services at the Naval Academy chapel, it was very weird. I was so confident in my own spiritual grounding that I discounted the need for a community.

Until the influx of the cynics (and even then the hostility was only to my views in seminar, not my personal choices), I did not find SJC to be at all hostile to my religious observances or perspectives - no one tried to pressure me into drinking, substance use, or promiscuity, though all these things were very dramatically present.

My mother's student had a magical four years at Santa Fe. He went from being a stereotypical forgetful scientist type to an articulate, charismatic young man. He blossomed at SJC; it was the best place he could ever have gone to.


All of us had *very* positive experiences with financial aid, though I don't know what their policies are now.

If you are looking for a Xtian environment for your child, SJC isn't it.
But, despite all my criticisms of it, it has something I don't think the other Great Books programs have(*), something very special. I think it is the residual impact of the great tutors who helped start the program and their amazing successors. (I'm not being completely fair, there are still a few of the great tutors left there, and I had did have the amazing priviledge of having a Language tutorial with one of them - WOW!!) My time there immeasurably enriched me on many levels, and even the things that don't work as they could/should have a lot of value...

If you have any other questions I could help you with, let me know!

Eliana


*At one point I spoke, in some depth, with representatives of a couple of Great Books or Great Books-like schools, and although they had enthusiasm and great reading lists, they didn't have seasoning, or depth, or real experience, it was hard to see how they could help guide incredible discussion, how they could make Seminars, for example, not just a discussion but a life-altering learning experience.