Many students considering St. John’s – and their families – may wonder how an education as unique as St. John’s can lead to good future outcomes in graduate education and the workplace. Surely, the education St. John’s gives is so unique that it can’t map onto the real world, right?

I like to call our major at St. John’s a “universal” one because it includes a dozen different subjects that every Johnnie studies. Johnnies study philosophy, literature, history, politics, religion, and more in the humanities, of course. We also learn two languages: Ancient Greek and French. It will come as no surprise that St. John’s may be the best preparation for students interested in studying these fields at the graduate level. We’re ranked #1 for the percentage of our alumni who get PhDs in the humanities and political science, and #15 for the percentage who are admitted to the top 14 law schools in the United States.

But a St. John’s education also provides one of the best preparations for students interested in all sorts of practical pathways, too.

The practical skills we learn are skills that can be immensely useful in the post-grad programs and future careers our graduates go on to pursue. So while we study so much in the humanities, we also study the natural sciences. Lab experience is the first among these to come to mind, of course, for practical skills. Many of our students go on to study and work in the sciences – including physics, medicine, psychology, astronomy, and biotechnology, among many examples.

Music may not seem to be so much of a practical skill, but it and mathematics are also both examples of fields in which St. John’s teaches technical knowledge. Every Johnnie studies both.

The way we study mathematics at St. John’s is one of the most misunderstood aspects of our universal major. I hear from students more interested in the humanities (think: philosophy, literature, history) that they aren’t sure why they should study math, and they aren’t sure they want to.

On the other hand, I hear from those with a strong interest in mathematics or science that they think they won’t be able to study those topics at St. John’s, or that St. John’s doesn’t provide a broad examination of those subject areas.

Both concerns strike at the heart of what the central point of our universal major at St. John’s really is. Not just a theoretical exercise, but a life-long well-rounded education. There is a reason why we don’t choose to specialize in one subject area when we become Johnnies. We don’t choose to study one subject or major, we come here to learn.

Knowledge is hard enough to break down into different areas. There are no real, hard walls between STEM and humanities, fine arts, or whatever other area you might think of. Different areas of knowledge blur and melt into each other, making it hard to fully and properly understand one without knowledge of the other.

Studying so broadly, and thinking across disciplines, Johnnies become prepared for the working world in the way no one else does. Students learn the skills needed to go on to careers and graduate-level studies in various forms of science and mathematics, law, medicine, music and visual arts. We have successful alumni in all these fields (and they get great reports from employers)!

We want our students to go on to become well-rounded adults who will succeed in their future vocations, whatever those may be. We want our students to understand things, but also be able to do things.

That’s why such a huge component of the St. John’s teaching style is hands-on (or heads-on) experimentation, whether a proper scientific experiment, a mathematical demonstration, an essay practicing persuasive writing or a thought experiment. We look at how key concepts and theories were developed across all these fields of study, and we recreate the process that developed them.

This teaches our students to think in a unique way, one that is deeply appreciated by future graduate-level teachers and employers alike. We don’t just teach Johnnies what to think, but how to think.

And it should be clear that knowing how to think is an asset in most every job. There is rarely a situation that will arise in a real-life scenario, in the workplace, in future education or anywhere else that will be an exact replica of a situation that you covered in school. It is far more useful to be able to take what you learned from those situations covered in school and apply it in other contexts, such as those real-life situations we are all faced with every day.

Being able to think – on your feet, creatively, adaptably – is perhaps the most useful and practical skill that St. John’s teaches. It’s also one of the skills employers say they most want to see. College graduates who can rattle off lists of facts and figures are – perhaps not a dime a dozen, but much more common than graduates with a good ability to think for themselves. Employers giving feedback on their Johnnie employees say things like that their “ability to adapt to the often-unpredictable pace and direction of political life was also apparent” and their “analysis helped us understand some of our own work in new ways”, pointing to how the Johnnie way of thinking is useful, valuable and valued in the workplace. You can check out our website to see more graduate outcomes and employer feedback for Johnnies. You can also check out our internship and fellowship opportunities to see how else we offer our students practical and hands-on experience by offering every student who wants a paid internship during their time at St. John’s one, whether funded by the internship itself or by us.

Our statistics don’t lie either, with 100% of Johnnies who applied to law school since 2012 accepted, 74% of graduates employed within six months of graduation, and the Princeton Review ranking our career services #25. How could we get those numbers if we teach no practical skills, after all?

It isn’t just the curriculum that prepares students for life after college. Princeton Review ranked our career services #25 in the country. This fall, we are launching a new initiative called Johnnie Pathways to organize our college resources in nine areas:

• Law & Government
• Writing, Arts & Media
• Business, Entrepreneurship & Leadership
• STEM, Data Science & Sustainability
• Public Health & Medicine
• International Relations, Public Policy & Service
• Psychology & the Mind
• Philosophy, Academia & Education
• Or customize your own pathway!

Our initiative to ensure future success for Johnnies will include funded internships as previously mentioned, funded summer classes, study abroad opportunities, connections with alumni across these fields, and graduate partnerships with many other institutions, among other things. As you can see, St. John’s is committed to ensuring our students’ future success through every method we can: teaching texts that underpin modern ideals such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and funding internships such as Sophia Frankel’s (class of ’25) work in the paper lab at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

St. John’s teaches skills that will be useful in future endeavors, not just facts that will be used. You can learn more facts at any time in your life. Learning the skills to underpin your use of those facts is far more useful in a far wider set of circumstances. The St. John’s education has been called “forward-thinking” and “future-proof” for a reason. Our graduates leave ready and prepared for the world ahead of them, whether that be for future education, for careers or just to embrace the world as it comes to them.