/lit/ - Literature

I did. Fantastic program. I would recommend it to everyone. I thought the program itself was fascinating, though I was frustrated a lot of the time because how much math and science there was - I'm just not good at that stuff. In terms of classics and Western canon you read pretty much everything, with a few gaps here and there. It's incredibly tight and well thought out though.

Also go to the Santa Fe campus. Annapolis is a joke.

>>6829638
Oh and if you're thinking about doing the grad program: just don't. The undergraduates are who they really care about, and the graduate students are mostly seen as just fucking up an otherwise good opportunity for young people.

>>6829638
I heard that the Santa Fe campus was the joke, what is it about Annapolis you don't like?

>>6829638
Is the math and science based heavily on prior knowledge? Can someone with little mathematical knowledge understand the program?

>>6829664
Annapolis is a college town and the campus is located in a pretty populated area next to the naval academy. Good if you want a frat party experience, but that kind of experience is pretty at odds with how I feel St. John's works fundamentally.

The Santa Fe campus is located on top of a mountain ridge looking over the city. It's notoriously difficult to get into town, which is bad for people who want to work/live off campus, but which is fantastic for a more intimate student life. People are much closer in Santa Fe. The desert/mountain environment is also incredible for hiking and stargazing, and just kind of tops off this fantastic experience of delving into the primary texts. Reading Plato and Aristotle on the side of a mountain, in crisp desert air, with every single constellation crystal clear above you...pretty magical I'd say.

I guess I'd say go to Annapolis if you consider yourself an East coaster or whatever. They're pretty stuck up, wealthy yacht club, party party people, whereas Santa Fe is more hippy/punk with tons of cool people from the Pacific Northwest and the Bay Area. Just a lot more laid back and focused on transcendence, I'd say.

Annapolis students also have to dress up for their classes, which only makes them seem more stuck up. I went to class in pajamas.

>>6829671
St. John's is built around fighting the idea of prerequisite knowledge. That said, you will need to know basic algebra by the end of sophomore year so that you can do calculus junior year. There is also a ton of geometry which deals less with prior knowledge and more with reason. That's pretty much it. The program helps you through the rest.

Here's the breakdown for Math/Lab:

Freshman Year:
Biology. VERY tongue in cheek exploration of basic anatomy, botany, working off texts like Aristotle and Goethe. They just want you to get your hands dirty in the lab and think about how science defines a living being.
Atomic Theory. After biology you start reading Lavoisier and Boscovich. Very little calculation done, just figuring out equations for atomic mass and things like that, exploring calories.
Euclid and Astronomy. Foundational geometry for the first semester. No numbers. Second semester you read Ptolemy's Almagest and have to do a few planetary motion calculations, but it's plug and chug practically.

Sophomore Year:
No lab. Music class instead.
Apollonius and Astronomy. You finish the astronomy you started freshman year reading Kepler, Copernicus, and such. You finally get to know that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. Awesome. Same plug and chug as freshman year. Then you start doing conic geometry. Pain in the ass, but if you're good at spatial reasoning you will have the hang of it.

Junior Year:
Lab is back with a vengeance. You better be ready to do some Maxwell and electrocute yourself. Math and Lab are closely related this year as they both teach you differential calculus: the math element grounded in Newton's body problems, the lab element in electrodynamics. You are also reading Kant at the same time in seminar. This is called the Unholy Trinity: Newton, Maxwell, Kant. Say goodbye to your weekends and hello to fractions.

Senior Year:
Lab continues to be hard for a while. First semester is on thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Not much harder than Maxwell if you know your calculus. If you don't, well, good luck bud. Second semester eases up with evolutionary theory, and the most math you do there are some simple genetics equations. No biochemistry, thank god.
Math starts off hard with relativity theory. There's this little book of Einstein equations you work with for a solid 10 weeks. Once again, a nightmare if you're not good at calculus. Get that shit down when you're supposed to Junior year. Then it moves back to geometry with non-Euclidean stuff. The gist of senior year is destroying everything you held dear in the classical systems. It's pretty heavy.

I have seen people with little mathematical knowledge do really well, even grow to love math and go out of their way to pursue more knowledge of it. All in all the program and the professors know this segment is hard, and they want to hold your hand through it. Do it. Do it early. Do it when you're supposed to. Otherwise it'll be pretty dreadful.

>>6829771
Thanks, this is really helpful. Do you have any other useful information or anecdotes? Anything would be appreciated.

>>6829671
You can have a great experience with no prior knowledge if you're willing to do prep work and some independent thinking.

The best classmate I had in sophomore math (Appolonius, pretty difficult geometry), was a self-confessed "non-math" person (although a great deal of the program is geared toward breaking down stupid, self-limiting labels like that), and he was great to talk to in class. He had alot of foundational insights about the process of proof and the reality of mathematical objects.

>>6829701
>They're pretty stuck up, wealthy yacht club, party party people...

>Annapolis students also have to dress up for their classes, which only makes them seem more stuck up.

This is just... not true and stupid. That last thing is FACTUALY untrue; there's no dress code. The majority of students are on some sort of financial aid. It's about 50% women.

Yeah, there's nothing particularly frat-ish about Annapolis. In fact, the parties are kinda lame and all of them have to be school supervised.

>>6829638
>>6829771
How hard is it to get in?

>>6829797
I could write a book with how many anecdotes I have from that place. I will tell you this, which I consider the most important thing to keep in mind when the program gets tough:

St. John's campuses each have about 400 people total on them, with maybe 40? professors. What goes over a lot of people's heads, because SJC is their first college and they don't know what the alternative is, is that this is an incredible ratio. The professors WILL make time for you, and you can build extremely close relationships with them relative to other colleges. Use this opportunity. Take them out to lunch. They'll never say no. They don't research or publish, they're full time professors; they're there for YOU. Don't waste that opportunity.

>>6829797

The math and science program is geared, primarily, around preparing the students to understand the historical shift to modernity on all fronts and not be caught up short in the one area when some moderns like to locate to define the shift: the hard sciences. Jacob Klein wrote a book called Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra which was very influential in the design of the math and lab program, especially Junior math and lab.

All classes are discussion seminars. In math, this usually means student-led demonstrations or proofs followed by discussion. This is why you don't have to be a math whiz to appreciate the material or the discussion- the discussion is student lead and you can be as technical or general as you want as you think out loud with your classmates about the texts in question.

>>6829813
Not hard at all. Funny story, there was a guy whose entrance essay started with the sentence, "I hate to read."

He got in. Didn't graduate, but got in.

Acceptance rate is extremely high. Like 90%
But the drop rate is also extremely high. 40%

>>6829813
Acceptance rate is 80%.

Normally I would call that an embarrassing secret, but the rhetoric of the administration maintains that the applicants are "highly self-selecting."

>>6829840
Drop out rate is in line with the national average: 33%

>>6829845
But is way more devastating for classes of 70-100 people, right?

>>6829847

Same as anywhere. It's only devastating when a friend or a good classmate has to leave for bullshit reasons like finances or pitiable ones like stress or doubt.

But a lot of the people who drop out shouldn't have been there in the first place, and I was never sorry to see them go. They'll be happier at a different school, or taking a few years to mature.

>>6829864
As a fellow Johnnie, can I ask why you're on /lit/? This place drives me crazy.

>>6830019
For my part, I got bored last winter break, and had already been lurking on /mu/ for a year. Checked /it/ out, knew what I was coming into, saw all the irksome threads on Machiavelli and Nietzsche. I only really pay attention to the Plato and Aristotle threads. Very aggravating for the most part, but sometimes good conversations have come out of discussions about how to interpret Plato.

>>6829613
>discussion based masters degrees in liberal arts or eastern classic

>>6829840
>>6829841
Bingo. I almost fell for the SJC meme, but luckily my mother (who was a college professor herself and knew about the school) was apoplectic.

Just go to Baylor and do their Great Texts program, it's the exact same thing.

>>6829638
How do people pay for it? I'm seriously considering going but it is astronomically expensive.

>>6830326

>>6830348
Lot of financial aid help, and a lot of taking out loans. If you have serious concerns about your postgrad career, than it might be better not to bother tbh. If you feel like you have a love for learning, then by all means go. There's truly little else like the program, and while you could certainly find many other places that do elements of the program with far more attention, you're unlikely to find an education as broad as the one you can get from SJC.

>>6830385

Yeah, that's the thing that holds me back. I can't justify to myself getting a great education only to get ground into dust by the economics of my situation when I'm a post-graduate. I'm not particularly interested in becoming a professor because the job market is so cut-throat at the moment. It's really sad. This is probably the only place I'd be able to really learn math.

>>6829701
tbh both campuses sound like they're full of pretentious fedoras who didn't have the grades for a real university

>>6830402
I totally get that. Maybe weigh your options; send e-mails to the school's administration about your position and what sort of resources they have available. Don't write it off completely, but see if there are any other places that offer the kind of education you'd like more affordably. If at the end of all of that, you find that there are better options, then go for that.

And you could still apply and choose not to attend.

>>6830429
Psh, that would've been a more entertaining experience.

>>6829812
>The best classmate I had in sophomore math (Appolonius, pretty difficult geometry), was a self-confessed "non-math" person (although a great deal of the program is geared toward breaking down stupid, self-limiting labels like that), and he was great to talk to in class. He had alot of foundational insights about the process of proof and the reality of mathematical objects.
>>6829835
>This is why you don't have to be a math whiz to appreciate the material or the discussion- the discussion is student lead and you can be as technical or general as you want as you think out loud with your classmates about the texts in question.
This is probably why no employer will ever take a degree from St. John's seriously. How can you guys claim to understand mathematical concepts without knowing if you're able to solve problems that directly involve them? It's math, it's entirely technical. If you can't do calculus then don't discuss "the reality" of mathematics.

Would-be philosophers and writers sticking their noses into scientific concepts they don't understand in a pathetic attempt to sound smart is incredibly annoying for actual scientists and mathematicians. If you're curious about a concept then make an effort to actually learn what you're talking about.

>>6830477
>tips fedora

>>6830477
Actual scientists and mathematicians who don't know where their math and science come from?

i read the book jon... would u fuck my pickle penis asshole...

>>6830803
wat

>>6830477
First of all, it is extremely technical at St Johns. We don't just think about the abstract concepts of math and science, we actually chart the developments of math since Euclid, and we are expected to be able to demonstrate every single proposition we read, by every mathematician, including Newton and Einstein, without looking at our books. We solve many problems every day, but the difference is that we focus on the foundational problems, rather than mindless repetitions of applied problems, so our understanding is much deeper and more expansive than someone who simply copypastas the formulas they memorized in a book. We memorize the formulas too, we just first discuss and analyze them from a variety of perspectives and track their applications in the great developments of other disciplines, such as physics, biology, political philosophy, and economics. Some students can certainly float by without a deep technical grasp of the material, but every employer will be able to tell by a quick glance at their transcripts if that was the case. But the great thing about St Johns is that even the floaters, the ones who never developed technical mastery, often came to the conversation with perspectives none of us had ever considered. So in my experience every student has been helpful in every course, in a variety of different ways. Which is why students without a single skill set are still admitted.

St Johns has students admitted to graduate programs in math every year. This year one was admitted to Columbia's PhD program in pure mathematics. But unlike all her future peers, she has not only an expansive technical toolset, but also one of the broadest liberal educations you can find these days. Ie., not a robot.

>>6831297
This.

And it should be noted that the anon at >>6830477 in their haste to polemicize the matter ignored another poster's explicit discussion at >>6829835 of the intent and focus of the lab and math portions of the program. When your inquiry is focused to some extent upon trying to make sense of why modern physics has turned out the way it is, and why it's so intricately tied to the sorts of mathematics that it is, it become awfully less important to know how to apply the chain rule than to know what the chain rule is and how Leibniz developed it.

>>6829701
Yeah, I don't know what your idea of fratty is, but a bunch of dirty hipsters smoking cigarettes, drinking cheap vodka, and talking about philosophy isn't really my idea of stuck up frat kids. I didn't go there, but a good friend did, so I went to a lot of their parties. It was cool how sincerely interested most of them were in their classes. But it's hard to be in such a small group for four years. You get pretty sick of each other by the end.

I've considered applying, it looks like a really interesting program.

The only problem I have is I want to eventually do an aftergrad study of mathematics, and it seems like St. John's focuses too much on the history of mathematics. Do you ever actually get into any modern fields of mathematical study, or is it all historical?
Are there classes on set theory or combinatorics? It seems like their math classes are "hard for liberal arts students" but not 100% math focused either.

>>6831909
It probably wouldn't be what you're looking for. We do deal with set theory during Junior year, but I'd imagine not in as extensive a way as you might desire. The most modern stuff we touch is Gödel, Hilbert, Einstein, and we do spend some significant time with them, but at the expense of more modern work.

Which is fine; the program's not trying to train mathematicians or scientists per se. But likely not what would best suit you.

>>6832033
Sounds about like what I expected. Thanks for the reply.

>>6831909
Just to add on to >>6832033,
Class of mine who went on to do graduate studies in math or the hard sciences usually made up the deficit by knocking out pre-reqs over the summers after their junior and senior years.

>>6830019
Good question. Partly because its the summer and War and Peace can only take up so much time. Mostly just because I've been coming to 4chan for years now and its just a habit.

Also because I kinda don't mind being driven crazy right now. The relentless bullshit and amoral meanness on 4chan is a nice change of pace from reality.

>>6830339

Great Texts Grad checking in.

great program but waste of money unless you're going academic career or lawyer

Back in HS (so, what, 16 years ago?) I applied and didn't get in. I lacked the self-knowledge to realize it was the best outcome.

The idea of "returning to the texts" and deriving all knowledge from this is attractive to kids (every generation, after all, thinks they've invented fucking) but "Plato says X, what do you think about this?" is nowhere near as valuable as "Plato says X, but Aristotle said Y, and (someone else 1000 years later) said Z, what do you think about this?" is inherently more valuable.

I considered St. Johns. I ultimately went with Juniata, it was half the cost and had a decent reputation. Then, I transferred to state.

It is possible to gain important insights if one practices the "rebel" attitude described by Sperber (more accurately described by a different author circa 1990? I forget the name.). Anyway, the rebel type doesn't just copy information verbatim, but learns what he feels is important to learn, even if this means bombing the test.

I think I've successfully resisted the pedantic tendencies of western education. I picked the answer the teacher didn't want, he asks are atoms the smallest unit, and I know for a fact that he expects 'true,' but put false, even though this will guarantee a lower grade.

I mean when the prof doesn't have complete information to work with, they tend to find a resting point (good enough) which is often a bald faced lie. Introductory information is often a pedagogical santa claus, by the time you get to grad school they tell you they shot him a long time ago, sorry and thanks for wasting all that time.

What always attracted me to the Great Books program was the premise that they would teach the roots of science and thought, so for someone like me due to OCD or whatever who demands as much detail as possible, I might have actually felt something like motivation.

>>6831909
Go to a real college if that is your goal.

>>6834759
But isn't the latter only well informed if its engaged with the texts themselves first? Saying "Plato was an idealist and Aristotle was a realist and Hume was a radical skeptic" doesn't show you anything like the arguments that lead to their supposed positions, and ignores subtleties of how these authors wrote, like the rhetorical dimensions of Hume's philosophical works, or how Aristotle's qualifications are important to seeing what he implies but isn't bold enough to come out and say, or how the dramatic elements of the dialogues shed light on how to take some of his arguments.

>>6834229
Favorite professors? I loved Miner, Henry, and Moore.