Trying to choose..

College Search & Selection
21

<p>I think you need more than just 2 choices for college. It’s very likely that SJC will be too expensive (require too much debt).</p>

<p>If you’re considering law school, then you need to avoid undergrad debt.</p>

<p>What is your GPA? What are your test scores (include SAT breakdown)?</p>

<p>*It is absolutely untrue to say that one could not learn the same things elsewhere that one would at SJC; most colleges offer everything SJC does plus a great deal more besides (including, at LACs, the intimacy). What makes SJC unusual is that everyone is learning pretty much the same thing, which is not the case at most colleges.</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Exactly! </p>

<p>BTW…Do you have a similar interest in The Classics as a major?</p>

<p>How much will your parents pay each year? </p>

<p>No school is worth a lot of debt.</p>

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<p>Oh sorry for not being clear I just realized that. I meant it as these are two of my top choices but I still have a lot of time(I’m a junior) and this is my pending college list.
SDSU(safety since their is a program at my school which gets me in for sure)
Purdue(high fit) since I still have engineering as a viable option and this school has a lot of options
UCSB(reach school) uc is easier to get in if your a California resident
Ohio state(high fit) again, lots of options
University of Arizona(perfect fit) and mainly because their ppel program(philosophy, politics, economics, law) in one degree
St. Johns college
Reed(ridiculous reach just in case of miracle)
I need more options for public schools with good liberal arts type curriculums.
SAT: 1920(retaking)
GPA: if I maintain my 4.3 now it will be 3.45 by the end of junior year(blew it sophomore year 2.6) suffering from depression but I have improved significantly(always been really smart I was just really lazy and never did homework). But yeah, fixed that.
Ap’s
Ap us history
Ap Spanish lang
Ap Lit
Next year,
Ap calc AB
Ap econ
Ap gov </p>

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23

<p>It would be unfortunate to hijack this thread with arguments about the merits of the Great Books approach vs. conventional American higher education … but given what’s been said above, I do feel the need to say something, since there don’t seem to be any actual Johnnies around.</p>

<p>There’s a popular anecdote about a conversation between William Howard Taft and Robert Maynard Hutchins (whose pioneering University of Chicago program is the basis of both SJC’s and Shimer’s curriculum), from Hutchins’ time as dean of the Yale law school, that goes something like this:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>IMO this is the essence of what both SJC and Shimer are about. A Great Books education is, above all, a training course in critical inquiry. It doesn’t make you an expert in the classics, or in philosophy or literature or even intellectual history (though it is a pretty solid grounding in that). What it does is make you an expert – insofar as “expert” is a useful word here – in understanding arbitrarily unfamiliar texts and ideas, breaking those ideas down, examining their unspoken assumptions, and communicating them to others. To be a Great Books graduate is to be able to make yourself at home in even the wildest provinces of the intellectual landscape. </p>

<p>(This is something at which mainstream American higher education has recently been failing even more catastrophically than in the past, as borne witness to by – for example – the findings of Academically Adrift.)</p>

<p>As for what such an education prepares you for; well, I’m a translator of Korean patents. I never learned a single thing about Korean or patents at Shimer, and only a little about translation, but I would never have been able to teach myself the skills I needed in order to do what I do well, if I didn’t have the toolset that a Shimer education gave me. I expect many Johnnies would say much the same thing.</p>

<p>(Anecdote via Robert Keohane, a professor of international relations at Princeton who is, incidentally, also an alumnus of Shimer’s [early entrance program](<a href=“http://www.shimer.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/earlyentrantprogram.cfm”>http://www.shimer.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/earlyentrantprogram.cfm&lt;/a&gt;).) </p>

<p>/threadjack (apologies to the OP; I will refrain from rising to any further bait.)</p>

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<p>No its fine I didn’t say it before but yeah I definitely needed more info about these great books educations thanks! If you have more knowledge to share please feel free to pm me.</p>

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<p>And everyone feel free to debate I learn a lot from it.</p>

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26

<p>

I would argue that’s the entire purpose of a liberal arts education, and any person solidly grounded in the liberal arts should be able to hop from one field to another, albeit sometimes not with the greatest of ease. I can think of many people who’ve dabbled in fields far from their own. One of my own professors was trained in Mesoamerican archaeology but taught herself genetics and now works on the genetic engineering of crops. Jared Diamond was trained in physiology but has contributed to geography, history, and other fields. The foremost expert on mummies has a PhD in philosophy. As a more personal example, I have training in the sciences but virtually none in history; I taught myself French and read about early modern Europe out of personal interest and recently published an article in a history journal about the political motivations for and diplomatic implications of early zoological gardens. Glancing through my online alumni directory, I found a religion major working as a manager of a recording studio, a political science major working as a director for US Airways, a psychology major working for UNC Press, and an English working as a botany research associate for the Smithsonian. </p>

<p>I am not really trying to “bait” anyone. I am simply wholly unconvinced that products of either college are all that more intellectually prepared than other college graduates who’ve chosen to develop a strong background in the liberal arts. The OP seems to be under the impression that SJC provides an education he couldn’t get elsewhere, something I vehemently disagree with, particularly given the financial factors at play here. I am sure SJC challenges its students, broadens their minds and horizons, teaches them to think critically, etc., and that’s great! Other colleges do so as well, however, and I think some of them would be worth consideration.</p>

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<p>Which are these considerable colleges your speaking of? I’m not dead set at all just looking for options thanks!</p>

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28

<p>*SDSU(safety since their is a program at my school which gets me in for sure)</p>

<p>Purdue(high fit) since I still have engineering as a viable option and this school has a lot of options </p>

<p>UCSB(reach school) uc is easier to get in if your a California resident</p>

<p>Ohio state(high fit) again, lots of options</p>

<p>University of Arizona(perfect fit) and mainly because their ppel program(philosophy, politics, economics, law) in one degree </p>

<p>St. Johns college</p>

<p>Reed(ridiculous reach just in case of miracle)</p>

<p>I need more options for public schools with good liberal arts type curriculums.</p>

<p>SAT: 1920(retaking)
GPA: if I maintain my 4.3 now it will be 3.45 by the end of junior year(blew it sophomore year 2.6) *</p>

<p>Those OOS publics will be quite expensive as well if you don’t get huge merit scholarships from them. You’ll need high stats for those. Purdue costs about $40k per year, and their scholarships aren’t often very large…often only about $8k per year.</p>

<p>You also need to educate yourself on financial end of paying for college. Loans aren’t the answer. You need to find out exactly how much your parents can pay each year. You mention that your parents didn’t go to college. I don’t know if that means that their income isn’t very high. If your parents’ income is good, but not high, as Californians they may have a hard time coming up with much. If you don’t have a college savings acct, then for every $6,000 they contribute, that’s $500 a month. For some families, coming up with an extra $500 a month (or more) for 4 years is impossible.</p>

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<p>Well my dad makes over 100,00 a year for the border patrol but I don’t know about my mom she makes at least 100 every weekday so I think a plan like that would be possible. It’s just that I’m kind of scared because I heard the middle class gets it the worst.</p>

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30

<p>When you’re looking at OOS publics, your family income doesn’t matter that much because OOS publics don’t often try to “meet need” and don’t want to give OOS students their very limited need-based aid. </p>

<p>OOS publics usually don’t have enough money to help all of their instate students (whose costs are LESS), so they can’t meet the need of OOS students whose costs are a lot more. </p>

<p>anyway…your parents have a good income, so you’re going to have a high EFC anyway. It sounds like your parents income is going to be about $120k per year…which means your EFC is going to be (roughly) about $35k or more. That **doesn’t **mean that if a school costs $50k, then the school will give you difference. A school may only give you a $5500 loan and gap you the other $10k…which means that you’re paying for the entire amount.</p>

<p>At CSS Profile schools, your “family contribution” could be higher. St. John’s is a CSS school.</p>

<p>*so I think a plan like that [paying $500 per month] would be possible. *</p>

<p>If your parents will pay $6k per year, that will be far below their EFC. That’s going to be a problem. </p>

<p>However, if your stats are high enough, then there are some schools that will give generous merit scholarships. But, the word “generous” is relative. If your family will only pay $6k per year, then a $15k per year scholarship at a school that costs $50k will not be enough. </p>

<p>Look at it this way…if your parents will pay $6k and you borrow the full student loan amount frosh year ($5500), then that will barely pay for room, board, fees, and books. If that school is Arizona, then you’d need at least a full tuition scholarship, so you and your parents can pay for room, board, books, fees, etc.</p>