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Quick Facts

  • St. Vladimir's interacts with other seminaries like Holy Cross and St. Nersess, and participates in the Orthodox Inter-seminary Movement  (OISM), the New York Metro Inter-Seminary Dialogue (ISD); and has signed a concordat with Nashotah House.  We have alumni serving at St. Herman's, St. Tikhon's, Holy Trinity, and St. Sergius seminaries.

  • St. Vladimir's faculty and students serve the Church by outreach to the faithful - presenting retreats, lectures, and seminars, and traveling as choral groups, to edify and uplift our brothers and sisters in Christ.

  • From 2002 to 2008, the OCA supplied SVS with an average donation of $27K annually, from national church appeals. However, in 2009, the national church will no longer assist SVS or other seminaries within its jurisdiction with funding.

  • St. Vladimir's began the practice of independent certified audits of its financial records in 1963; prior to that, all budgets were reviewed and approved by the members of the pan-Orthodox Board of Trustees.

  • The SVS endowment fund amounts to $14M, of which $9.3M is permanently restricted, and $4.5M is temporarily restricted. Of the remaining $225K available from the endowment for annual use, only 6% goes toward operating costs.

  • SVS Press has published more than 300 titles since its inception in the 1960s, and is currently the largest publisher of English-language materials on the Orthodox Christian faith: biblical studies, liturgical studies, patristics, church history, Christian biography, and Christian ethics. The press contributes 9% annually to the seminary.

  • SVS is a founding member of the New York Area Theological Library Association (NYATLA), and participates in the METRO system for inter-library loan; the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) is available to the public here.

  • The state-of-the-art technology of the library and Koha Integrated Library System assist researchers worldwide who are interested in the Orthodox Christian faith.

  • SVS has a spacious library that holds over 142,000 volumes, and several rare books, for example: an original manuscript of Rachmaninoff's Vespers; and the Ostrog Bible, published in 1583 and the first book printed in the cyrillic alphabet.

  • Four current Orthodox patriarchs worldwide have received honorary doctoral degrees from St Vladimir's.

  • The majority of alumni graduating from the Master of Divinity program at St. Vladimir's are ordained to the holy priesthood.

  • The Seminary's Board of Trustees is made up of bishops, clergy, and laity from several Orthodox Christian jurisdictions, and from the Oriental Orthodox churches.

  • SVS counts 40 Orthodox hierarchs, 900 priests and deacons, and 900 laity (both women and men), among its alumni. Among the hierarchy are one patriarch, archbishops, and bishops, and several metropolitans, including the current primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), His Beatitude JONAH (MDiv '85 & MTh '88).

  • SVS, located in the New York Metro area, nearby to several Orthodox Christian archdiocesan centers and to the largest concentration of Orthodox Christians in the United States.

  • Most full-time faculty members reside on campus, thus building community life and offering accessibility to students.

  • SVS, in its commitment to provide on-campus housing for married students, currently carries a $3.6M debt on the newly built Lakeside Student Apartments. Principal and interest payments on the Lakeside Apartments amount to approximately $307K annually.

  • SVS provides dormitory facilities for single men and women, and 38 apartment units and suites for married students and their families.

  • Over the past five years, St. Vladimir's Seminary has awarded an average of $263,000 annually in scholarship dollars to its students.

  • Annual tuition at SVS is $10,500 per year. Costs of room and board vary for single students and married families.

  • "St. Vladimir's seminarians are expected to undertake the task of the Fathers of the Church, viewing everything in the light of Jesus Christ and His gospel, as proclaimed by the Apostles, according to Holy Scripture." - The V. Rev. John Behr, Dean

  • Currently, 91 students are enrolled at SVS. Students represent different Orthodox Church jurisdictions and come from many countries around the globe.

  • Metropolitan Jonah, primate of the Orthodox Church in America, is the President and Chair of the Seminary's Board of Trustees; Metropolitan Philip, head of the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, is the Vice President and Vice Chair of the Seminary's Board of Trustees.

  • SVS offers the MDiv, MA, and ThM degrees and has been an accredited member of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) since 1973.

  • St. Vladimir's is incorporated in the State of New York as a non-profit organization, in accordance with section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States.

  • St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVS) is a graduate professional school chartered and approved by the Board of Regents for and on behalf of the Education Department of the State of New York.