Honestly the school is not a joke. My daughter is a first year student and it is definitely not an easy school where rich kids go to hide. If you take the time to learn about it, the first year students at Bard have to go to college an entire month early to complete what is called Language and Thinking…every student in the first year class (about 500) must go to classes, read books, write papers, etc. before the rest of the students arrive (attendance is taken, participation required). The classes during L&T are small (about 13 students) and the professors are excellent. Every class reads the same material and follows the same lesson plan. This will inspire conversation among peers (I would guess). Then again in January students return a month early for the Citizen Science program which is another month geared toward science (same situation, attendance required). So, their first year they go an extra 2 months.
Here are some other reasons Bard is a great school:
**At Bard, students must “moderate” into their major their sophomore year (declare a major, explain why they are choosing it, gain recommendations, etc.).
**The professors take attendance, and the classes are very small. There are 13 students in my daughter’s English Lit class. She has not been in any classes over 20 students. Based on her first semester, the professors gave my daughter excellent and constructive feedback on her papers and class performance. In addition, I’ve looked up the credentials of all of my daughter’s professors, and they have impressive degrees, but more importantly, they love teaching.
**Students get to review their professors.
**Professors also serve as advisors to the students. Each student is assigned a professor to be their advisor. Love this.
So far my daughter’s favorite part of the school are the professors and small class sizes. For Thanksgiving she was invited to the Dean’s house. She was also invited to her professor/advisor’s house for friendsgiving the day before.
The school is extremely liberal. And I don’t mean, we accept everyone for who they are kind of liberal, so if you child is a republican or conservative they will be in the minority (mine is not a republican nor conservative).
My daughter chose the school because they offered her a great financial deal. She took every high school AP class she could, had a 4.0 and was ranked 1st in her high school. Bard’s price came in $5K a year lower than Smith (who also offered her a merit scholarship as well as an early write). They came in $10K below Colgate. She likes it because it is liberal, there is not a huge focus on sports, there IS a large focus on music/arts, and there is NO greek life. She said there are a lot of students who smoke, and do drugs, however, there is not pressure on those who do not. My daughter has made very intellectual friends at this school and is having a great time.
I like the school because it is in the middle of nowhere. There is access to NYC but not really for day trips unless you take a cab to the train station (maybe a $30 ride). She has taken one field trip to NYC with her art history class. There are very regular shuttles to the small towns of Red Hook, and Tivoli which are not within walking distance. The shuttle takes students to Kingston twice a week for about 3 hours or so.
The housing is not pristine, but if the housing were pristine, they would not have been able to give us a huge scholarship, so I’m not going to complain!
I just want to add that a lot of kids at Bard are not rich. And, if they are they don’t flaunt it. The stats say that about 60% of bard kids are on some kind of financial aid.