I attended St John's University in the spring and fall of 1999. Unfortunately after a not very well spent year, I decided to get transferred and moved out of there. But St. John's image, bathed in its own magnitude and pomp would not be affected by my departure, in fact, the school wasn't even sure if I had left or not.

A Catholic group called the Vincentian Community founded the school in 1870, and since then, SJU has been one of the leading Universities for the Catholics. The school is proud of having a campus and yet, of being a urban school, and their most priced value of course, it's the fact that (as they so much like to say) are able to enjoy New York City beauty, and still enjoy the quiet, beautiful and peaceful campus of SJU.
It's true that SJU campus is nice, it's incredibly located in the middle of Queens and pretty close to the main avenue that entirely cuts through Queens called Jamaica Avenue. It provides the campus with the contrast of Queens's agitation with the study atmosphere of the campus. The campus has very elegant but old buildings and once in there, you really feel important or at least like you've traveled back in time to the period of King Arthur and the Round Table, looking at some of their architecture that really looks like castles, or something else brought way back from the Middle Ages period.

I always thought that the school has a decent amount of parking places, although I would not drive to school, so I can't really comment on this, but the overall feeling among other students was that parking really sucked hard. And if you consider the fact that traffic in Queens can be quite chaotic, I kind of have to see their point. You don't want to drive 30 minutes to class and have to look for a parking spot for another 15 minutes. Point taken…
The campus has also a decent football field, which is also used for the soccer team, a very small baseball field (kind like tossed in the corner of the campus) and of course, their famous basketball center. And that's it. Remember that we're talking about a campus in NY, so that is really it, no more, no less, that's all there's to see at SJU campus.

This is also all that's nice about the school. The only thing worth of praise (not counting the basketball team). All the rest is a huge, big mess, and basically a shallow façade for some people that enjoy bragging about being enrolled at SJU. "Oh, you must be very rich or very intelligent, or even both, right?" Dead Wrong (at least for the second part)!!!

SJU faculty has among their motto to tell everyone that Queens is a wonderful place, a beautiful, clean and polite city, that prices are much less expensive than Manhattan's and that the community is very friendly. The truth is a complete 180 degrees from that. Queens, having lived there for quite a long time, pretty much is not what you would call a friendly city. It's the most diverse community in the world, with more than 180 cultures living door to door; you think that's cool? People just pretty much hate each other; Muslins hate the Jews, which in turn hate the Indians (saying out loud that they stink and should not ride in the bus with them) that as a consequence hate the Latinos. And talking about the Latinos, the black community is not very friendly with them and vice versa. Whites just pretty much despite all of them, except for the Italians, which have their own niche and don’t mingle outside that for nothing in the world. So there you have it. In the time pre- September 11th, this was the friendly community around SJU campus that you would have to deal with every single day.

The city is also incredibly dirty, and sometimes it can be quite depressing, it feels like you're in one of those Batman movies (just add the police cars and the ambulances/fire trucks sirens and you'll get the picture).
If you're coming from a place where people are used to greet each other included unknowns, you'll be in shock. No one say "Hi" or even "Thank You" or "Welcome" or normal stuff like this to anyone. And the worst is that sellers, merchants and even SJU employees can be pretty impolite to you at any given time.
I'm not going to mention living costs and population safety here because otherwise, someone who skipped the first couple of paragraphs and went right into these lines could think I'm talking about Afghanistan or something…. so you imagine what I'm talking about, but for Christ's sake, do not go for a walk in Queens after midnight!!!!!

Back to talking about the school, employees there are simply unprepared and it seems that the busy life of Manhattan affects them somehow. Their disorder and lack of knowledge of a great many things is really amazing. Once I got in there, the registrar office and the people that were supposed to help me, simply were never available and when I finally got a hold of them, they pretty much just handed me a whole bunch of brochures (that I already had) and sent me on my way. I finally found everything I wanted to know about the school (where is this or that building, the cafeteria, the computer lab, etc…) wondering like a lost soul around campus.

Then one day it came to pass, that I had to pay my tuition. The events that followed are today comical to me, but at the time, I was really angry, and humiliated.
SJU administration gets a pretty big room in the middle of the campus for the tuition payment purposes. You may walk in there whenever you are ready to pay. I thought I was ready, and I walked in there. Inside, they had huge lines going on, and after waiting for about 15-30 minutes to pay my tuition; I found out that what I had in mind could not be performed. While applying for the admission, someone informed me that I had an "installment payment plan" option available for me. As I was next in line, I pulled up my checkbook, and were ready to pay my what, U$350-400,00 for that month, when the lady in the line told me (I'll never forget) - "It's U$ 3,500.00 (Three Thousand and five hundred dollars). As I almost passed out, I noticed that a girl, just ahead of me, was having the exact same problem, so I managed to stand on my feet (worried also about not blocking the 5000 people in line in the back). So I said to her, as bravely as I could…can I pay something less than that? Say, U$500.00 dollars? Her answer was classic, something to tell my grandkids about…it went like this…. "Don't you have at least U$3,000.00 (three thousand) now???? HEHEHE…. just hilarious, now, that I'm far and away of that mess, but at the time, I felt cheated, humiliated and deceived. I managed to get out of the line and paid my tuition some other time, but that gave me the idea of how faculty and SJU are really concerned about their students. It's more or less like, find (by yourself) your way to us, but make sure you bring you wallet.

So the moral of the story is, SJU is not a school for everyone, (specially if you're out of state), you have to either have some sort of grant, sponsorship or something, or you won't be able to afford it, plain and simple, and remember, I'm not taking I consideration Queen's living costs which are also ridiculously high (just so you get the picture a studio apartment is impossible to find for less than U$800.00 dollars a month, and I did say studio apartment, in case you think I though write but wrote wrong.)

Well, and how about the world-class programs and the technology??? I don't know about the other programs, but if you want a perfect 4.0 GPA or a 5-minute-study-before-the-test-and-get-an-"A" type of course, you'll better get into Biology. That was ridiculously easy for me. And I'm not a straight "A" student, I struggle a lot with my grades, and I'm the kind that have to study a lot to get "B"'s and stuff. But not at St Johns. I finished all my basic classes there, Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, etc…. and my GPA was 3.7 at the end of the year. I had A's in almost everything (yes, included Calculus I and II), and all it took me to do that was to study about 1-3 hours before the exams to get it. The truth is that my tests were ridiculously easy, they were ALL in the "fill in the blanks" and "choose the right answer (a, b, c, d or none of the above)" type of questions. I simply NEVER had to write any answers at all, in any of my tests. And if you know what I'm talking about, that increases the chance of anyone achieving a better grade. The academic Professors at St. John's may all be distinguished scholars, with about 90% of them holding doctoral or equivalent degrees in their field. In addition, the school's low 18:1 student-to-faculty ratio may ensure that you will enjoy the personal attention you deserve, but the truth is that St Johns is an easy "A" school. So I would really recommend you going there, if you need to increase that GPA…

SJU Library is pretty cool tough, it has about 4 floors of books and you'll be able to study there whenever you want, or read any book or magazine you may think of. That is, if you can cope with the upsetting noise inside. Yes, the library is very noisy, and they even have an annoying checking out point that made me late many times to my classes. What ever happened to those code bars detectors they have at stores and stuff??? They also have a nice cafeteria, but the thing is that food is too expensive, so most of the students eat outside campus, something that brings a certain kind of uselessness to the place. The school has not enough computer labs and the after class life in campus is as dead as a pencil is. They are, on top of that, very well confused about their own paperwork, and their norms and rules. When I finally transferred, I had to fill out some applications to be sent to my new school. Needless to say that even after paying a small fee for the service I had to pay for it again, because the papers never got in my new school in the first place, which is just so typical of SJU and their administrative mess. Oh, and while I was living in my new address (the one I gave the school upon my application form) in Queens, they kept sending me information to my old address throughout the whole year, pretty nice uh??? Are they unorganized or what?


But the best of SJU, without a doubt is its diverse students. More than 18,000 students are enrolled at their campus (SJU counts every single office they have throughout NY and in their ROME campus to achieve that number, by the way…) -- 14,200 of them are undergraduates. A very diverse and dedicated group, SJU students represents 38 states and 148 foreign countries. At their three New York City campuses, students so enjoy the cultural and commercial resources of America's greatest metropolis. Whether working on Wall Street, brainstorming with a Madison Avenue ad agency, or volunteering (things they brag about that may happen while attending SJU, but that the whole planet Earth and the universe knows that is very unlikely to happen to an undergraduate) you will be able to apply your classroom training in the real world.

Finally, the bottom point is, if you do not care, about studying in NYC, if you do not care, about flashing out your bachelor's degree while saying "It's from SJU…" if you do not care about social status and superfluous tricks like this, you DO NOT NEED SJU. Go after a real university with real challenges that will really make you think, study and interact with book, computers, extra-curricular activities and the sorts. If you care about your education more than you care for basketball, if you care that you should be paying for something that you're really getting other than paying for a name façade and the possible status that it might provide you with in the future, you really should look for another university. And if you add the fact that we're talking about Queens, about an urban, small campus, and about Catholic school, you'll have more than enough reasons to try checking other universities out. Maybe some of the reasons why the famous Princeton Review never ranks SJU among their best universities list. And I totally second that.


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