I am from New Jersey, and I am interested in going to a Great Books school for college. I want to go a school similar to St. John’s and UChicago; however, St. John’s is incredibly small, and UChicago is too far for me. I really like the core curriculum of St. John’s, but my only criticism is that they have not implemented Latin–I want to study Classics. Recently, I visited Saint Anselm up in New Hampshire. The students, campus, and Great Books program were all awesome, but I want to have more options. I forgot to mention that I would like to stay on the east coast. I have no preference for the North or the South; as I stated before, I just want it to be in driving distance from NJ. Thanks.
I would also like to note that I visited Holy Cross and enjoyed it, but they do not have a Great Books program 
you have 2 conflicting preferences- wanting a great books program and wanting to stay within driving distance from NJ.
something is going to have to give, because very few colleges offer great books programs.
U Chicago has the best great books program, but is very hard to get into.
The list isn’t terribly small according to this link, but I appreciate your feedback. I was considering UChicago for a long time, but I have decided that it is too far from home for me and that the social life is kind of, for lack of better words, shabby.
http://astro.temple.edu/~szelnick/actc/ListofGreatBooksPrograms2.htm
St. John’s has a robust tradition of Study Groups to cover anything the Program doesn’t. Some of them are pretty intense, on par with academic classes. I believe they have Latin ones.
UChicago doesn’t have a great books program anymore, though we have core classes that are clearly inspired by it - especially Philosophical Perspectives (for Hum) and Classics (for Sosc). They focus heavily on the western canon and go roughly in order, though you’ll be going through everything in a year instead of over four years. The classics major is, however, very very good.
What about Columbia? They are a great-books-like program, like UChicago, and are on the east coast close to you. You just aren’t going to have that many options if you’re limiting yourself to pure great books programs on the east coast - there are only a small handful of them. Some larger universities have special great books programs in them. Eastern Carolina University has [one[/url], as does [url=<a href=“http://greatbooks.mercer.edu/%5DMercer”>http://greatbooks.mercer.edu/]Mercer University](http://www.ecu.edu/greatbooks/). Then there are some smaller programs within larger universities that are like the great books - Yale has [Directed Studies](http://directedstudies.yale.edu/), for example.
If you think UChicago’s social life is shabby you’re not going to have a fun time at St. John’s lol. I go to UChicago and one of my best high school friends goes to St. Johns - St. Johns social life is like the weirdest parts of UChicago magnified by 100.
St. John’s is the only 4-year Great Books program that I know of, although great books comprise a major part of core curricula at schools like U. Chicago and Columbia. There are a number of schools that offer programs that focus on great books (e.g., Wash U.'s Texts and Traditions, Yale’s Directed Studies, Princeton’s Humanities Sequence, Emory’s Voluntary Core).
Many of the religious schools (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, St. Mary’s) have Great Books programs, although their Classics programs might not be as large.
Here’s a list of 25 schools with established programs:
http://www.bestcollegereviews.org/features/best-great-book-programs/
This one includes Latin and Greek:
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, NH): All students take a six-hour humanities course through the four years. Much of the learning is based on the Great Books. Students also are required to study Latin or Greek.
I did not know that about St. John’s … Thank you! Do you know anything about St. Michael’s College in Vermont?
I haven’t heard of it - most of the Great Books Programs are tiny and heavily localized. I grew up in Maryland so I know about St. John’s, and most student I met there were from Maryland (though of course there were people who were from further afield). You have a list of Great Books schools, your best bet for finding stuff out about them is the schools themselves - contact their admissions office and say you have some questions you would like to know the answer to, preferably by a current student. I know at UChicago students working in the admissions office are forwarded questions from prospective students all the time.
That said, I know a lot about what life is like at UChicago. Your thread is a bit odd - you posted on the UChicago forum but you say you aren’t even considering it anymore? And you’re dismissing it because you’ve heard the social life isn’t great, which is a fair criticism, I guess - except Great Books schools are known for having an even more ascetic outlook than us. I don’t even known if I’d consider UChicago “farther” than a school in Burlington from New Jersey - it’s a longer drive, but you can get pretty cheap tickets to fly here from the east coast because Chicago is a connection hubs for flights to smaller airports in the Midwest. I think a 7+ hour drive from New Jersey is pretty considerable, some of the more rural schools end up being farther in practice than urban schools, even if they’re physically closer.
Anyways, the South Side also has another Great Books program - [Shimer College](http://www.shimer.edu/). They’ve been having enrollment and financial troubles lately, however, and they’re pretty unique, even among Great Books Colleges. They run themselves like the Athenian ideal of a democracy.
I would check out Jesuit colleges to see what they have to offer. Another option would be to search for good Classics departments and see if you can put together a Great Books curriculum for yourself. Schools with more open curricula might even permit you to design a Great Books major. Of course that would not get you the same sense of shared camaraderie that you would get at St. John’s where everybody is doing the same course.
I also suggest that you check out Columbia because the Core would provide at least a Great Books foundation that would be shared by your fellow students.
I think of U of Chicago as intellectually eclectic, not shabby, but it’s the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
I am very interested in putting together a Great Books curriculum for me so thanks for the idea and your feedback about the Core at Columbia. There is not question that UChicago is a place that fosters free-thinking … I meant “shabby” in terms of the social life. With that being said, I had no idea that the social life at St. John’s is, as HydeShark said, “St. Johns social life is like the weirdest parts of UChicago magnified by 100.”
Baylor has a Great Books program but nowhere near NJ.
The social (and cultural) life is only as shabby as you allow it to be, with a major city within easy reach of the CTA (all College students get an unlimited pass for a quarterly fee) as well as a bevy of groups focused on any art you can name, several excellent museums in the area, and a visible (but not dominant) fraternity scene. Plus any number of fun campus traditions and (depending on your dorm) fairly close-knit houses.
That’s my $0.02.
HydeSnark- My daughter is considering St. John’s. What do you mean about St. John’s social life?
@ColumbiaCol84 Over the week or so I spent living with my friend in St. John’s, their social life struck me as very similar to UChicago’s, if the essence of UChicago was concentrated and made even more intense. It takes a special kind of person to want to go through the Great Books Program and that person’s idea of fun generally involves heavily intellectual conversation and acting really really really nerdy.
Just like UChicago, there are parties. Also just like UChicago, they won’t shut up about Aristotle, even when they’re drunk.
I think if you want a Great Books Program and think UChicago’s social life is “shabby”, you fundamentally have no idea what UChicago’s social life is like.
I want to underline something HydeSnark said above: The University of Chicago core curriculum is not now, nor has it ever really been, a “great books” program like that at St. John’s. St. John’s is really an attempt to define and to read the Western canon. Chicago gives you some of that canon’s greatest hits, but there is lots in the Chicago canon that I don’t think they read at St. John’s, including quite a bit of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault.
@JHS The same can be said of Columbia’s Core. However, that’s not to say you couldn’t find courses at Chicago that will cover much of the same material as SJC’ Great Books reading list but it won’t be the same approach.
@HydeSnark I once attended a party at UC and people were referring to Aristotle. Turned out it was the name of the dog that lived in the house. That was the only time I heard his name mentioned
That’s true. It’s also true that Robert Maynard Hutchins, an important president of the University of Chicago and a promoter of the Core, wanted the Core to be a “Great Books” program, but the faculty back then pushed back and refused to do that, instead designing a core curriculum that reflected contemporary perspectives (of the time), and the faculty ever since has insisted on making the Core more or other than a tour of the fundamental works of the Western canon, including ignoring the canon entirely for teaching math and science.
There’s little question that some of the Core courses are more Great Books-y than others. @HydeSnark mentions Philosophical Perspectives, but the same could be said of Human Being and Citizen (whose reading list, as I understand it, centers around Genesis, The Iliad, Plato & Aristotle, St. Augustine, Dante, and Milton), Greece and Rome, or Classics of Social and Political Thought. Even if you take your Hum and Sosc courses from that list, it’s still only 5 or 6 units out of the 15-unit Core (not counting the language requirement) and a 42-unit graduation requirement. And while all University of Chicago students read a lot of the same texts in their Core classes, only a portion read them in the sort of chronological order and ontogenicl approach that would characterize a Great Books program.
@exlibris97 I would maintain that the dog’s name speaks volumes.
@JHS This may be a recent development, but Milton doesn’t seem to be a staple of HBC anymore.
We read the other texts/authors you mentioned, but I gather professors have more latitude in their choice of readings during the third quarter. As a result, some sections read Milton, others read Frederick Douglass, and one of my professors added Primo Levi’s If this is a man.