St. John's College, U.S.

St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. Since 1937, it has followed an unusual curriculum, the Great Books Program, based on discussion of works from the Western phi... more

St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. Since 1937, it has followed an unusual curriculum, the Great Books Program, based on discussion of works from the Western philosophic, scientific and literary canon; this program is probably what the school is best known for. The school grants only one bachelor's degree, in Liberal Arts. Two masters degrees are currently available through the college's Graduate Institute—one in Liberal Arts, which is a modified version of the undergraduate curriculum (differing mostly in that the graduate students do not take a language and are not restricted to a set sequence of courses), and a parallel course of studies in Eastern Classics, which applies most of the features of... less