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Quick Facts

  • 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. 
  • SVS 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.
  • 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.
  • Currently, 71 students are enrolled at SVS. Students represent different Orthodox Church jurisdictions and come from many countries around the globe. 
  • The SVS curriculum stands upon three pillars, all of which are inclusive of pastoral and practical ministry and priestly life: pastoral education, liturgical practice, and academic study. "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 the Holy Scriptures."  The V. Rev. Dr. John Behr, Dean
  • Annual tuition at SVS is $10,000 per year. Costs of room and board vary for single students and married families.
  • Over the past five years, SVS has awarded an average of $263,000 annually in scholarship monies to students.
  • SVS provides dormitory facilities for single men and women, and 38 apartment units and suites for married students and their families. 
  • 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.
  • Most faculty members reside on campus, thus building community life and offering accessibility to students.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The majority of alumni graduating in the MDiv program at SVS are ordained to the priesthood.
  • Four current Orthodox patriarchs worldwide have received honorary doctoral degrees from St Vladimir's.
  • SVS has a spacious library that holds over 140,000 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.
  • The state-of-the-art technology of the library and Koha open source system aid researchers worldwide interested in the Orthodox Christian faith.
  • 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 through the seminary Web page: www.svots.edu.
  • St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (SVS Press) has published more than 400 titles since its inception in the early 1960s, and is the largest publisher in the world of English-language materials on the Orthodox Christian faith: biblical studies, liturgical studies, patristics, iconography and iconology, church history, Christian biography, hagiography, spirituality, and Christian ethics. SVS Press contributes 9% annually to the operating budget of the seminary.
  • 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 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. 
  • Our first annual report, The SVS Vine, may be downloaded in PDF format on our Web site (click here to download ).
  • 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.
  • SVS 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.
  • SVS interacts in major ways with other Orthodox Christian and non-Orthodox seminaries, including: the student-driven Orthodox Inter-seminary Movement (OISM); an annual student exchange with Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary; a student and faculty exchange program with St. Nersess Armenian Seminary; an inter-Orthodox library consortium, including 3rd-world seminaries; alumni serving as faculty and staff at St. Herman's Seminary (OCA), St. Tikhon's Seminary (OCA), Holy Trinity Seminary (ROCOR), St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary (GOA), to name a few; the New York Metro Inter-Seminary Dialogue; a re-established relationship with Nashotah House, a conservative Episcopal seminary, where many Orthodox Christian priests trained prior to 1938; participation in collegial events, such as the annual basketball game with sister school, St. Tikhon's Seminary.