<p>I recommend, since you can’t visit, that you email the chairman of the department at Bard in the area of science you’re interested in and ask him about the breadth of the program and the opportunities for research, study at Roosevelt, summer internships etc. Find out if there will be enough courses in your area of interest at the level you seek.</p>
<p>Know that Bard is rural and isolated - Columbia is the opposite. Will that matter to you? Do you want a big school, or a small one? Bigger classes, smaller classes? (I don’t actually know anything about the size of classes at Columbia’s SEAS.)</p>
<p>Will you be going to graduate school in the US or in Europe? You might find it easier to get into a European university with a degree from a more well known institution - whether or not it’s warranted. Another question to ask the Bard department chair about - graduate school placement.</p>
<p>One thing you will have at Bard is full exposure to the other disciplines and your friends will probably be interested in all sorts of things. I don’t know how segregated SEAS students are from those in Columbia College. I would guess they are going to be more narrowly focused than students who choose to attend a more general liberal arts program. My other guess is that the Bard students could be more interested in pursuing the sciences for the pure love of science, rather than as a pre-professional training program towards ultimate employment. But, again, I’ve never known any students at SEAS so I could be completely off-base. Bard students, though, do tend to be passionate about learning because they love it and it gives them pleasure - it’s what draws them to the college in the first place.</p>