You will never be rich enough to comfortably go to St. Johns

...

am i the only one seeing proust under math and natural science?

I see it, and boy did I cringe.

>Why even live?
So you can go to a good school.

Why don't you just study this shit on your own time and save a ton of money in the process

No teacher. No structure. No discussion, no atmosphere, ect.

>implying you can only read these authors if you go to St. Johns
>Implying you can't get this education for free at a library
English majors are shit anyway. Major in something practical, read and study lit as much as you want when you're making $80,000+.

>that much time wasted on le science
No one in STEM gives a damn about the history of natural science, they only care about making money, shutting their parents up, and posting on Reddit.

>writing essays you don't want to write
>dealing with professors who force their perspective/viewpoint/curriculum on you
>class discussions with people whose opinions you couldn't care less about. tfw you have to listen to shaniqa dindunuffin give her thoughts on a chapter. tfw professors nods and agrees because could care less
>atmosphere consisting mainly of students who would rather be in their dorms smoking weed.
>being forced to read books at a certain pace.

Yeah, those are pretty much all the ways a formal classroom promotes learning. Not sure what your point is.

60k/year? God that must be painful when you realize its not like the promo videos

If you need a teacher to force you to get an education then you're a child

>promotes learning
Just learn what you want to learn on your own. The resources are fucking out there. You don't go to college to "learn" anymore. You go to college in hopes of getting a good job with your degree, only STEM (with a few exceptions) is good for that. During my summers off, I read a lot more, explore topics I find interesting on my own, go out and socialize on my own, etc. And I feel like I've learned a lot more in just that one summer compared to all my years of college. When I go back to school, the coursework piles on and I can't do all that shit anymore.

It's not that you need a teacher to learn anything. It's that a subject-matter expert who's also an experienced teacher can build and lead a far more efficient and interesting curriculum than someone who knows nothing about the material can.

>"if I get in"
>"can't be sure I will"

Are you worried about getting into a school that accepts 85% of the people who send an application in?

Yes.

15% dont make it

It's statistically easier to get into Williams College than it is to get rejected from St. John's.

If you're that confident in your luck, user, why not go somewhere good, instead?

The material can be learned on your own. you don't need to follow their curriculum, you'll learn a lot more and a lot faster when you learn the way you want to learn. If you're passionate enough, you'll find a way. If you're not, well you shouldn't major in it anyway. If you really want their curriculum. Find their syllabus and follow it, without paying 40k a fucking year.

Thats cool

What school?

I sure hope you didn't go to college, because if you did you definitely wasted that time with your attitude.

but I am and I do.

Avogadro played a major role in developing atomic theory as well. It's not just his number that's important

I don't recall reading Proust

I'm in college right now. STEM related major. The degree is almost a must have in that field. Everything outside of that, just learn the skill set for the job you want, apply for an entry level position, gain exp, work up.

>If you're not, well you shouldn't major in it anyway
Well the thing is that some people perform better with external structure, schedule and pressure, it doesn't mean the subject is something they shouldn't major in anyway. People function and work in different ways. Some people thrive working alone, but actually quite a lot of people struggle with procrastination a LOT and the frame of a class help with that.

I mean, if studying on your own works for you, great, but you shouldn't get all high-horsed and judgmental if other people prefer to learn in a different way

Oh wow, we've got a big experienced undergrad here. In "everything else" that pays worth a damn, it almost doesn't matter what you studied in college if you get the right internships and interview well.

Consulting
Finance
Law
All of these are wide open to Classics majors so long as they have a good GPA from a good school. Can't do that without college though. Same for becoming a professional academic; you need a bachelors and then a PhD.

Nobody outside of STEM does anything of importance.

I can agree with that, but unless you're going for under 5 figures a year tuition, it's a huge investment, 90% of the time not a worthwhile one.

The St. John's curriculum should be taught in high school.

far too rigorous. there's a reason so many people drop out of St. John's. I could see a fraction of it potentially working, but the workload is far too great for any highschooler

I suppose the entire education system would have to be redone, but I think ideally a large portion of the western canon should be taught in high school.

Ah yes the money is a valid point

why even live if you unironically belive you need to pay a institution the amount of money necessary to create life long debt to do something you would do for free on your own. You already lost.

of importance to whom

most people don't give a shit about things that don't directly impact them and their select few interests

high schoolers would spark note the books and copy off each other, and learn little/nothing

can a literature major make you earn as much money as you spent on the uni?

if not, then it is honestly not worth it, i'd rather keep myself reading at home.

>can a literature major make you earn as much money as you spent on the uni?

take an educated guess

I got into St. Johns and was going to go because my parents are rich and they would have paid for it but I decided to go to a more prestigious "little ivy" liberal arts college instead. (Actually I had to cause I got in ED).

>tfw attending St. John's but attending a Little Ivy over the summer
feels good

If you wanted to do that, now potentially is the best time. People are somewhat educationally conservative with regards to a-levels being gimped so your desire to do something like that likely would resonate well, the education system in the UK is privatised en masse with academies.

>not going to Wyoming Catholic College instead so you can learn all that AND how to ride a horse and mountain climb

Different proust

I know a guy that went to St. John's. Nice guy, overall, but very pretentious and the biggest pseud I've ever met.

>too rigorous
lol no
It's extremely easy to tell.

It's not like high school exam markers reward any kind of originality, anyway. Change the system to reward that and there will be actual incentive to write on one's own ideas rather than a common topic than can be copied and reused by the whole class.

they wouldn't let you into st. johns b/c of your erectile dysfunction

the actor!?

I thought about applying here back in the day, but I'm really glad I didn't. If you want to do philosophy (my field, presumably applies to other fields as well) at a high level (as in, you want to go on to grad school or at least be able to understand current research), St. John's is not a good idea, even leaving financial considerations aside.
Go to a good state school if there's one in your state (hint: some state schools have really good philosophers, and students there are rarely interested, so you can go to their office hours and be the only one there, and you can chat with them about whatever topics you like, for however long. Super valuable.), otherwise go to the best private school you can get into and afford. If you want to do philosophy, philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp is a relevant ranking of how good the philosophy faculty is (though more relevant for grad school than undergrad--this doesn't include liberal arts schools without grad programs, for example, and doesn't pay attention to pedagogy).

Having experts on the topic around is important, for several reasons. They (1) are better able to direct you to what's important and relevant to what you're interested in, (2) have an idea of what interesting current research is, can teach you how to read and respond to journal articles, (3) are better able to help you write a good research paper, (4) guarantee more availability of upper level, perhaps graduate courses with sustained, detailed attention to single problem or text, rather than superficial exposure to a slew of classics (not that the superficial exposure to classics is worthless--it isn't, but it shouldn't be all you do), (5) can directly discuss their own work with you--this is helpful both in understanding the field and in learning how to have philosophical discussions--and (6) they can write letters of recommendation that mean something.

I don't mind the ambition to get through many of the 'great books', but if you want to develop your own thoughts, it can't be all you do. There was a group people at my undergrad who did this great books thing, all with this one lecturer who they worshiped. They flew through the classics, but rarely, as far as I could tell, gave sustained thought to any particular arguments or tried to develop and defend at any length views of their own, since there was always the next five great works to get on to reading. And they couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag. They could drop some pretentious lines about The Good Life and Contemplation, though. Now they're mostly in finance and consulting kind of jobs.

>things of importance
You can't even begin to explain why you think what you think you're going to do after graduation is "important" beyond some spooked-to-the-gills line about contributing to society. Maybe if you'd studied some history and philosophy you could start in on a compelling answer to that question, but alas, you were too busy making your mommy happy by building widgets.

I'm a prospective student for SJC. It's not as expensive as you'd think, St John's is very generous with aid, if you're making under 60k your tuition and board are cheaper than a public university. The material isn't outdated in that you're reading the building blocks of all theory and practice. You can always update yourself but understanding exactly how and why X works the way it does is something you can't just find in a state school. SJC is also very good for a prospective law student. SJC also has a very good career service division, and they offer a summer program where they pay for further training in order to become fully qualified for any type of position you want to pursue. You can read all of the material on your own but SJC offers the great books within an experience that's extremely fulfilling and more engaging than a state school. Most of the faculty have PhD's so you will be working with experts, they don't just hire BA's.

All I'm saying is that I think it's a good idea. You can easily get a job, and if you want to go to grad school you always have that opportunity (most go off to places like Oxford, Trinity College, Columbia, LSE, etc). SJC grads also score substantially higher than the average on LSAT and GRE.

If you have the opportunity, go.

Why didn't anyone tell me about this beautiful place earlier ;_;

Is that what the program does to a person?

I agree with you that most of the time it isn't worth it conceptually. HOWEVER, if the goal is a career, even if you can demonstrate that you are competent in the subject matter, many jobs will not hire unless you have that very expensive piece of paper.

Bc it's all just a show, sweet user

Fucking kek. You're all technicians of inherited systems, no better than the rest of us. If you were even remotely aware of this you'd at least have some semblance of worth. Please *please* kill yourself.