"It should be clear that [St. John's] is a place only for those who read and who are interested in ideas and fundamental questions."
-Loren Pope

• Founded in 1696 as King William's School; chartered in 1784 as St. John's College.
• New Program in Liberal Education introduced in 1937 as an all-required program in Liberal Arts, based on seminal works of Western Civilization.
• Second campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded in 1962.

• "Books, books, and more books is what you'll get at St. John's," notes The Fiske Guide, which also observes that the college "attracts smart, intellectual, and nonconformist students who like to talk (and argue) about books."
• A study by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, adjusting for institutional size and number of degrees granted, found that St. John's is among the most productive sources of future PhDs. About 70% of St. John's alumni pursue their formal education beyond the baccalaureate degree at some point in their careers.
• St. John’s College is a member of the Davis United World College Scholars Program, a consortium of 88 US colleges and universities that are committed to building cross-cultural understanding across their campuses and around the globe by enrolling graduates from the United World Colleges.
• The Princeton Review reports that "St. John's has one of the most personal admissions processes in the country."

• 100% of faculty teach undergraduates.
• No teaching assistants
• All classes are discussion-based; no lecture courses; no textbooks.

• 70% of students live on campus.
• Extensive intramural sports program.
• Extracurricular arts program is free to students.
• Second campus option; students may transfer between the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses.

• What makes for a successful college graduate? According to most conventional measures, St. John’s alumni excel in their careers, from law to medicine, from academia to Wall Street, from politics to the military, from information technology to fashion design, from manufacture to farming, from nuclear physics to film making. Having all followed the same curriculum at the college, they fan out after graduation into virtually all fields, attending top graduate and professional schools, racking up achievements, pursuing their goals.
• Despite their success, however, St. John’s alumni do not tend to talk primarily about their specific careers when they’re asked about the effect of their education on their lives:
• "St. John’s prepared me to become a quick learner, to think on my feet, and, most importantly, to know when I didn’t know something. Every day, I rely on the foundation in philosophical inquiry that I found at St. John’s."--Senior Manager of Strategic Planning and Research, American Honda Motor Company (class of 1980).
• "There are days when having been to St. John’s almost seems like an unfair advantage compared to my colleagues. I mean, if I can figure out the Maxwell Equations, or muddle through the Principia Mathematica, how hard can it be to have the confidence that I can figure out some policy issue?"--Diplomat, US Department of State, Iraq (class of 1988)
• "It's extraordinary that ideas I encountered over 40 years ago at St. John’s are still so vital to my life and work. Perhaps that’s the promise of Great Books and a Great Books education: that its value to you will increase, rather than decrease, over time."--Screenwriter and Director (class of 1964)

• Middle 50% SAT scores: Critical Reading 640-730; Math 570-680
• 30 students with National Merit Honors
• Of those reporting rank, 20% were in the top 10% of their high school class; 27% were in the top 20%.