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Reach out to us for program details, enrollment inquiries, or any other information you need. Fill out the form below or contact us directly. Let's Get in Touch Contact Us info@reasonandrationality.com Phone: (415) 948-9625 Think you might have a popular question? Have questions? Check out our FAQ section for quick answers to common inquiries about our programs, enrollment, and more! Send Us a Message Reach out to us for program details, enrollment inquiries, or any other information you need. Fill out the form below or contact us directly. A member of our team will respond within 2-3 business days First name Last name Email Phone Your Message Send Message About Reason & Rationality Application Process Accommodations & Dining Other Who is Reason & Rationality for? High school students who love critical thinking and conversation, as well as high school students seeking to expand their capabilities - authentic curiosity, critical thinking and verbal dexterity - to get into an ideally suited college and to thrive there and beyond. Why Do High School Students Need Reason & Rationality? Crafting strong arguments and holding intellectual conversations that are interesting, persuasive and stay on track requires a combination of critical thinking, conversation techniques and a basic knowledge of the 20 Big Ideas in philosophy, economics and politics that serve as a foundation for many issues. What Problem Does Reason & Rationality Solve? With the many distractions and demands on high school students and families, high school students rarely get the opportunity to practice fluid, to-the-point conversations in a social but formal setting. Students need those skills in order to grasp opportunities that appear in life. What Makes Reason & Rationality Different from Competitor Offerings? We are designed from the ground up for joyful, authentic inquiry. Our classes are concentrated dives into the most important ideas -- from justice and democracy to game theory and the nature of consciousness -- led by Ph.D. students and graduates from top philosophy programs. Our faculty don’t vanish after class; you’ll find them in the lounge at midnight still debating with students. The result is a rare atmosphere where sharp reasoning, open-minded dialogue, and genuine friendships thrive. To make it all work, Reason & Rationality instructors are picked from the most dynamic and energetic young scholars who love connecting with their younger peers and audiences. What is the meaning of Convivial? Convivial (adjective): Marked by good company and cheerful conversation. What will life be like for students after they attend Reason & Rationality? Students will have the skills, knowledge and confidence to speak up more in class with well crafted arguments gaining the attention of teachers and improving their GPA. Students will be well prepared to engage in stimulating intellectual discussions with college interviewers and adeptly handle tricky questions. How should students prepare for the Summer Program? The Summer Program is about fun and conversation, so students are not required to do substantial work in advance. We will email links to some short videos and readings a few weeks before the program, which will help students get in the mindset to maximize their learning from the very beginning of the Program. After each days' activities, students will be assigned short readings to prepare for the next day. FAQ

The Reason & Rationality 2025 Convivium is open to students currently in grades 8 - 12. Please fill out the application form. Application Form and Deposit Primary Parent /Guardian Contact First Name* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Last Name * Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Email* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Phone * Primary Parent / Guardian Mailing Address * Student 1's First Name* Student 1's Last Name* Student 1's Email Address* Student 1's Phone Number* Student 1's Year of Graduation* Student 1's Gender* Name, City, & State of High School Attended* (If you want to apply for more than one student/sibling, please continue to submit this application form for your first student, make the deposit payment, and then email us at info@reasonandrationality.com for your second student.) How Did You Hear About Us?* Teacher College Counselor Friend or Family Member Google Social Media Email Other Select One of the Following Options. Note: Preference given to Full Two-Week Program applicants. Are you interested in the full two-week session, or a single week session? Full Two-Week Session One-Week Session I confirm that I am the Student's parent or legal guardian. By checking the box, I give permission for my child to be photographed or recorded during Reason & Rationality’s Summer Program, and that photos, videos, or recordings may be used for program materials or promotion, now and in the future. * I confirm that I am the Student's parent or legal guardian. I acknowledge that Reason & Rationality allows students to leave campus during free time and that students are responsible for their own conduct while off campus. I also give permission for the Student to participate in weekend activities that may include unsupervised swimming, canoeing, and other water sports at a lake or swimming pool. I understand and accept the inherent risks of such activities. * I confirm that I am the Student's parent or legal guardian. By checking the box, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Student Handbook . * Deposit will be promptly returned if your application is not accepted. $1,000 Deposit Amount Submit Application and Pay Deposit

We are pleased to introduce the Reason & Rationality 2026 Convivium summer program at Princeton Theological Seminary (June 7-19) and (June 21 - July 2). Reason & Rationality Advanced Program - Princeton 2026 Apply to Advanced Program The Reason & Rationality "Advanced Program" is a 2-week intensive for students who are prepared to utilize the concepts and critical thinking tools learned in the Foundation Program to tackle 20 more complex philosophical, economic and ethical issues with deep critical thinking. The Advanced Program is exclusively for returning Reason & Rationality students. For Summer 2026, Advanced topics include the "meaning of life," the objectivity and subjectivity of value, the existence of free will, and current ethical and political debates. Session 1 - Week 1: June 7 - 13, 2026 Session 1 - Week 2: June 14 - 20, 2026 Session 2 - Week 1: June 21 - 27, 2026 Session 2 - Week 2: June 27 - July 2, 2026 Hear Student Reflections: Hear Instructor Reflections: Program Schedule Tuition and Pricing The program fee of $6,900 covers all classes, activities, housing, and meals for the full two-week program ($4,600 for a single week). A $1,000 deposit is due at the time of application and will be promptly refunded if the application is not accepted; the remaining balance is due by March 15, 2026. Reason & Rationality will refund the full deposit and any tuition payments if a withdrawal request is made prior to March 15, 2026. Program fees will increase on March 15, 2026; however, applications submitted with deposit before March 15 will be honored at the current rate, even if supporting materials (such as teacher recommendations) are received afterward. If your student requires financial aid, please contact us at info@reasonandrationality.com . Questions About Reason & Rationality's Vision for Conversation-Based Education? Check out the frequently asked questions on our website or reach out to Reason & Rationality at info@reasonandrationality.com .

The Reason & Rationality 2025 Convivium is open to students currently in grades 8 - 12. Please fill out the application form. Reason & Rationality Complete Application and Pay Deposit Below The Reason & Rationality 2026 Summer Program is open to students currently in grades 8 - 12. Admission is limited because of the small student-instructor ratio. Please complete and submit the application form below. Reason & Rationality welcomes intellectually curious high school students from all schools and backgrounds, from the USA and internationally. In Summer 2025, some of our students came from schools including: Andover (Phillips Academy), MA • Astra Nova School, CA • Branson School, CA • The Brearley School, NY • The Bullis School, MD • The Chapin School, NY • The Collegiate School, VA • Deerfield Academy, MA • Foxborough Regional Charter School, MA • Germantown Academy, PA • The Hun School of Princeton, NJ • Jackson Hole High School, WY • Lick-Wilmerding High School, CA • Los Gatos High School, CA • Magnificat High School, OH • The Nueva School, CA • Northridge Prep, IL • Oakwood Friends School, NY • Palo Alto School, CA • Park Tudor School, IN • Princeton Day School, NJ • Round Rock High School, TX • Rye Country Day School, NY • St Christopher’s School, Bahrain • Stanford Online High School, CA • Stanton College Preparatory School, FL • Stevenson School, CA • The Stony Brook School, NY • The Taft School, CT • Viewpoint School, CA • Waterford School, UT. Summer 2026 Tuition and Pricing: Tuition for Early Bird Enrollment (prior to Nov 15, 2025) is $6900 for the full program (room and board included). Normal price is $7900. If you have financial need, please contact us about a $1,000 discount. All applicants must submit a $1,000 deposit, which will be returned if your application is not accepted. Session I: Princeton Theological Seminary - June 7th through June 19th Session 2: Princeton Theological Seminary - June 21st through July 2nd Student's First name* Student's Last name* Students Email* Phone Number* Gender* Year of Graduation* Home Mailing Address* Name, City & State of High School Attended* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact First Name* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Last Name * Primary Parent /Guardian Mailing Address* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Email* Primary Parent /Guardian Contact Phone * How Did You Hear About Us?* Teacher College Counselor Friend or Family Member Google Social Media Email Other Select One of the Following Options. Note: Preference given to Full Two-Week Program applicants. Are you interested in the full two-week session, or a single week session? Full Two-Week Session One-Week Session I am the parent or legal guardian of the student applicant. I have read and agree to the Student Handbook and the Talent Release Form . By checking this box, I confirm that my agreement is legally binding and that this checkbox serves as my electronic signature. Deposit will be promptly returned if your application is not accepted. $1,000 Deposit Amount Submit Application and Pay Deposit

Talent Release Form I hereby authorize the Producer to record and edit into the Project and related materials my name, likeness, image, voice, and participation in and performance on videotape, audiotape, film, photograph, or any other physical or digital medium for use in the above Project or parts thereof. I agree that the Project may be edited and otherwise altered at the sole discretion of the Producer and used in whole or in part for any and all broadcasting, non-broadcasting, audio/visual, or exhibition purposes in any manner or media, in perpetuity, throughout the world. I hereby certify that I am over 18 years of age and am competent to contract in my own name insofar as the above is concerned, or that I am the parent or legal guardian authorized to sign on behalf of a person under the age of 18. I have read the foregoing release before affixing my signature below and warrant that I fully understand the contents thereof. I understand that this release is perpetual, that I may not revoke it, and that it is binding on me and my heirs and assigns. Talent Name Phone Number Email Select an Address Producer Name Production Company Name Phone Number Email Address Address Project Name Recording Location Recording Date Talent Signature Clear Select a date Print Name Parent/Guardian Signature Clear Select a date * required Print Name Send Thanks for submitting!

We are pleased to introduce the Reason & Rationality Institute 2026 Middle School Summer Program at The Pingry School in New Jersey Reason & Rationality Institute @ Pingry An Overnight Academic Summer Program Residential · Gr ades 7–8 · New Jersey Hosted at The Pingry School | July 26 – August 1, 2026 Reason & Rationality Institute is a week-long residential program at The Pingry School in New Jersey. In small seminars led by Ph.D. faculty, students discover and apply the foundational ideas of PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) by trying to explain the strange things that grownups do. Why does a teacher punish the whole class for one student's mistake? Working it through, students gain the words for concepts they knew but never articulated. By the end of the week, dinner conversation at home will never be the same. Students who come through Reason & Rationality leave more confident in their own judgment, more at ease in serious intellectual company, and more familiar with a way of thinking that will serve them through high school, college, and beyond. For many, it is the first time an academic setting has felt built for them. Academic Leadership : Reason & Rationality is directed by Peter Bach-y-Rita (BA Princeton, JD Stanford, PhD MIT). Faculty include doctoral-level philosophers from Princeton, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Oxford. Location : The Pingry School’s residential Pottersville New Jersey campus, offering students a structured introduction to residential academic life in a beautiful setting. Program Details: Each day includes at least four hours of rigorous, discussion-based learning, followed by group activities such as the Pottersville ropes course. Evenings include games and structured social activities connected to program themes. Students arrive on July 26 and depart on the morning of August 1, 2026 . Rising 7th and 8th grade students (as of Summer 2026) are eligible to apply. Interested families may contact Dean of Academics Peter Bach-y-Rita at info@reasonandrationality.com . For a short Zoom chat with Peter click on the following button: Zoom Calendar Hear Student Reflections: Hear Instructor Reflections: How is the Middle School Program Different from the High School Program? The high school program dives directly into the kinds of philosophical debates you would encounter at Princeton or other elite universities. It ranges widely over topics as diverse as whether humans have free will and moral responsibility to whether we owe obligations to future generations. The middle school program uses familiar situations from school and family life to uncover the foundational intuitions of economics, ethics, and political theory. Students will learn to spot patterns and see how laws, moral codes, and even market systems are often different ways of trying to fix the same problem. Whether its clothing and makeup in school or embryonic gene editing, there may not be an obvious right answer but there is an underlying logic. Middle school students also grapple with belief and authority: Who should we trust? What makes someone an expert? Why do groups sometimes come to believe things that no one would have defended alone? The middle school program will be limited to about 25 students in a 1:5 student-teacher ratio. (The high school program is about 50 students in a 1:10 ratio). Concepts covered include: Incentives · Trade-offs · Opportunity Cost · Equilibrium · Coordination Problems · Collective Action · Externalities · Moral Hazard · Institutional Design · Moral Reasoning · Signaling · Testimony and Expertise · Probabilistic Reasoning A Day at Reason & Rationality Institute 8:00 AM — Breakfast and Morning Meeting: Someone is already replaying a scene from Chicken Run and insisting it was a public goods problem, not a prisoners' dilemma. 9:00 – 11:00 AM — Morning Seminar: Making Up Your Mind — Experts: When should you trust an expert and when should you push back? From doctors to coaches to the confident kid in class who always has an answer, students work through cases where deference makes sense and cases where it doesn't. 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM — Lunch 12:30 – 2:30 PM — Afternoon Seminar: Fairness and the Veil of Ignorance: Is your school's grading system fair? What about the way sports teams are picked at recess? Students use examples from their own lives to discover that fairness is harder to define than it looks and encounter Rawls's veil of ignorance as a tool for thinking about it more clearly. 2:45 – 4:30 PM — Ropes Course : It turns out that designing a fair team challenge is harder than it sounds. The veil of ignorance gets a workout. 5:00 PM — Free Time 6:00 PM — Dinner 7:30 PM — Fermi Estimation Games: Teams compete to estimate things no one could possibly know. How many piano tuners are in Chicago? How many golf balls fit in this room? The point isn't the answer — it's learning to reason carefully under uncertainty rather than giving up or guessing randomly. Surprisingly fun and surprisingly hard. 9:30 PM — Wind Down Students who come through Reason & Rationality leave more confident speaking in groups, more willing to sit with a difficult question, and more capable of changing their minds without losing their footing. These are habits that show up in classroom participation, teacher recommendations, and the kind of student a young person becomes over the next several years. Most students arrive having encountered many subjects but few big ideas. Philosophy, Politics, and Economics gives them a coherent framework for thinking about choices, institutions, and values that has been used for over a century (first innovated by Oxford University) to prepare young people for intellectual and civic life, and that transfers to almost everything they will study afterward. Reason & Rationality teaches PPE through conversations that make it stick, using problems that students actually care about. Why Reason & Rationality Institute? Program Schedule Tuition and Pricing The program fee of $4,300 covers all classes, activities, housing, and meals for the week-long program. A $1,000 deposit is due at the time of application, which promptly will be refunded if the application is not accepted, with the remaining balance being due within seven (7) days of acceptance. Reason & Rationality will refund the full deposit and any tuition payments if request is made prior to April 22, 2026. Questions About Reason & Rationality's Vision for Conversation-Based Education? Check out the frequently asked questions on our website or reach out to Reason & Rationality at info@reasonandrationality.com .

Our instructors hail from world-renowned institutions like Princeton, Oxford, and MIT, bringing unmatched expertise and passion to every session. Reason & Rationality Videos Instructors Debate Whether We Have Souls In this live debate, universe-renowned eminent philosophers debate whether we have souls. Who wins: dualism or physicalism? (1:09:54) Most Epic Instructor Debate of All Time Watch our instructors debate: Does God exist? (1:17:11) How To Publish Academic YouTube Videos Head of Instruction Joe Schmid, Princeton University PhD student, talks about how he publishes academic YouTube videos for his 32,000 subscribers. (36:03) What Reason & Rationality is All About Noah McKay explains what Reason & Rationality is all about. (0:54) Sophia Wyatt on Forgiveness Hear what Reason & Rationality Teaching Fellow Sophia Wyatt has to say on the concept of forgiveness. (1:02) Civil Discourse Dean of Academics, Peter Bach-y-Rita, explains why philosophical rigor is the key to civil discourse. (1:27) Student Project Ep. 1 Student Claire Ziebart produced her own podcast after attendiong RNR. Here she leads a discussion about what we value the most: Would you give up your life for a perfect but fake one? (23:45) Student Project Ep. 2 Student Claire Ziebart produced her own podcast after attendiong RNR. Here Claire leads a discussion about whether some kinds of happiness can only be experienced if you have suffered. (22:54) Questions About Reason & Rationality's Vision for Conversation-Based Education? Check out the frequently asked questions on our website or reach out to Reason & Rationality at info@reasonandrationality.com . Ready to jump into critical thinking and conversation? Apply Now

Our classrooms are designed to inspire, featuring small, discussion-friendly setups that encourage active participation and collaboration. Reason & Rationality Classroom and Dorms Our classrooms are designed to inspire, featuring small, discussion-friendly setups that encourage active participation and collaboration. Each session takes place in a focused yet welcoming environment, ensuring every student feels heard and engaged. After a day of stimulating learning, students can relax and recharge in our comfortable dorms, which provide a safe and social space to unwind, connect with peers, and reflect on the day’s insights. Together, our classrooms and dorms create a balanced experience that supports both academic growth and personal connections. Apply Now! 2025 Summer Program Glimpse Into Classrooms and Dormitory Accommodations Princeton Theological Seminary Swarthmore College Ready to Take the Next Step? Apply Now!

We are pleased to introduce the Reason & Rationality 2026 Convivium summer program at Princeton Theological Seminary (June 7-19) and (June 21 - July 2). Reason & Rationality Foundation Program Princeton 2026 Reason & Rationality's Foundation Program immerses high school students in lively, small-group discussions around twenty core topics in philosophy, economics, politics, and decision-making. Apply Now Both sessions of the Foundation Program are held at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. Taught by Ph.D. students and young professors from Princeton, Harvard and other leading philosophy graduate programs, the two-week program emphasizes serious but playful intellectual conversation — testing ideas in real time, revising views with humility, and continuing discussions beyond the classroom, sometimes late into the evening. Some of our students go on to participate in Reason & Rationality podcasts and related projects, which you can explore on this website. Hear Student Reflections: Hear Instructor Reflections: Program Details Students who, as of Summer 2026, are entering 9th grade through those who have just graduated from high school are eligible to apply. While preference will be given to those applying to the full 2-week session, you will also find an option to apply for a single week. Session 1 - Week 1: June 7 - 13, 2026 (waitlist only) Session 1 - Week 2: June 14 - 20, 2026 Session 1 - Both Weeks Session 2 - Week 1: June 21 - 27, 2026 (waitlist only) Session 2 - Week 2: June 27 - July 2, 2026 (waitlist only) Session 2 - Both Weeks (13 spots left - 1/30) Families interested in joining a waitlist should email: info@reasonandrationality.com Oral Exam Contest: Students who attend the full 2-week program are eligible to participate in an Oral Exam Contest on the second to last day of classes. Led by members of our Princeton-based teaching team, the Oral Exam Contest follows the same oral examination methods used in Princeton undergraduate courses. Participation involves a small additional tuition charge. Apply Now Foundation Program 2026 Sample Schedule Week One Week Two Tuition and Pricing The program fee of $6,900 covers all classes, activities, housing, and meals for the full two-week program ($4,600 for a single week). A $1,000 deposit is due at the time of application, which promptly will be refunded if the application is not accepted, with the remaining balance being due within seven (7) days of acceptance. Reason & Rationality will refund the full deposit and any tuition payments if request is made prior to April 22, 2026. Program fees will increase in Spring 2026. If your student needs financial aid, please contact us at: info@reasonandrationality.com. Questions About Reason & Rationality's Vision for Conversation-Based Education? Check out the frequently asked questions on our website or reach out to Reason & Rationality at info@reasonandrationality.com .

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