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Founded in 1860, Bard College. is a Private college. Located in New York, which is a city setting in New York, the campus itself is Town. The campus is home to 1,970 full time undergraduate students, and 334 full time graduate students.
The Bard College Academic calendar runs on a Semester basis. In the school year the student to faculty ratio was 10:1. There are 203 full time instructional teachers. Degrees awarded at Bard College include: Bachelor's Degree, Masters Degree, Post-master's certificate, Doctor's degree.
Admissions at are considered Selective, with ,16% of all applicants being admitted.
In the school year, of the students who applied to the school, only 10 of those who were admitted eventually ended up enrolling.
99% of incoming freshmen are in the top half of their high school class. 95% were in the top quarter, and 62% were in the top tenth. You can apply online.
We asked, and students answered these important questions about student life at Bard College.
57 Students rated on-campus housing 3.1 stars. 11 % gave the school a 5.0.
47 Students rated off-campus housing 3.1 stars. 0 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated campus food 2.5 stars. 7 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated campus facilities 3.6 stars. 15 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated class size 4.3 stars. 56 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated school activities 3.6 stars. 27 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated local services 3.4 stars. 19 % gave the school a 5.0.
59 Students rated academics 3.9 stars. 47 % gave the school a 5.0.
15 Students rated Bard College
Bard College isn't a bad school. The academics are above average and I've learned to become a politically active member of civil society. We're encouraged to get involved and support local organizations which I love doing. The small-town atmosphere is most likely homely and welcoming to most, but not really my thing (I'm a city girl at heart). To anyone looking to get involved in social activism or enhance your artistic abilities, this is the place. If you really enjoy school-led glow stick parties, this is also the place. The professors here really care about the individual students and intellectual conversations are prevalent. I've definitely grown a lot since coming here.
My daughter was a very excited freshman in September 2015. Two weeks into the Language and Thinking Program, which is an introduction to the liberal arts and sciences with a particular focus on writing, she started feeling sick. Her fever shot up high, and she felt like she couldn't go to classes. We recommended her to go to student health services to feel better. She had gone five times and was misdiagnosed five times as having the flu, a cold, strep throat, tired and homesick! A week and a half had gone by, with numerous phone calls from her complaining of not feeling well. We live on the other side of the country in California, so we tried to get her to a real doctor in town near Bard. That was seeming impossible to figure out, because Bard is VERY SECLUDED. We couldn't find a doctor to treat her. I flew out to New York and traveled to the Hudson River Valley of upstate New York to figure out how to help my daughter. When I saw her, she looked like she had lost 20 lbs. and was definitely dehydrated. No one was helping her get food or water. I demanded she get a blood test and the results said she had mononucleosis. The school BARD, did not care for my daughter, the student health services did not care for my daughter. I took my daughter out of school as the finance department demanded that we pay 70% of the remaining semester! My daughter had only been there a couople of weeks, and most of the time there, she was in bed - sick! The president of the school, Leon Botstein, started emailing us demanding to be paid. BARD IS THE WORST!
Bard College is probably the best place I have ever been. I suffer from several severe mental illnesses, and I have never felt as accommodated and supported as I do here. The academics are amazing, the classes are small, the teachers are available, and the campus is gorgeous! The students are kind and driven for the most part. This is where I feel truly at home.
Bard College never strays from its motto -- "A Place to Think." Every concept, every activity, every thought you have on this campus will be deconstructed, analyzed through a Marxist or Faustian lens, and made applicable to some obscure academic theory. Your classes will be full of dyed-hair, pierced-and-tattooed self-proclaimed intellectuals, a surprising number of student athletes, liberals with flaming words, stereotyped stoners, and a good majority of just normal-dormal everyday people. Classes will typically be seminar-style, everyone sitting around a table and essentially having a conversation about reading material. Prepare for a LOT of reading and writing, and if math isn't your strong suit, fear not; you will hardly be expected to know anything above a fourth grade level (unless of course you're a STEM major). Class discussions about privilege and politics and art and theory will follow you into the library, the bathrooms, the cafeteria, the dorms. Word about the dorms -- as a first year, you will either luck out and be placed in a relatively new, air-conditioned building or a dilapidated white-brick-wall structure from the 1970s or maybe even a trailer park. The process is totally random, but either way, it will be an experience. If you have never seen drugs in use before, don't worry -- it's practically impossible to spend a day without sniffing the sweet smell of marijuana wafting out from somewhere. If you haven't experimented with your sexuality either, you will have many people here willing to help out. There will be something to do every weekend, usually a show at SMOG, the shed-like music venue sandwiched between the soccer and baseball fields. Don't expect big rager parties. Most will take place in dorm rooms, dorm basements, occasionally off-campus at some upperclassman's house, but what they lack in size or splendor they make up for in consistency. Cafeteria food will be manageable. Some days you will feast like a king, some days you will make do with cereal or a sandwich, and some days you will get food poisoning from the oysters they serve. The library is alright, you'll probably find what you need. The gym is fantastic, an absolutely state-of-the-art institution. You will meet a lot of interesting characters here, people you'll be telling your grandkids about: "There was a kid who rode a unicycle to class everyday!" "There was teen movie star with his own string of Netflix specials!" Some of them will be really cool and genuine, friends you will keep for life, and some of them will be phony bullies with the emotional maturity of a twelve year old and gigantic trust funds they hide with cheap-looking street wear. The stereotype is true -- most of them will smoke cigarettes. Bard is a PWI, a predominantly white institution, and though they try to be inclusive, many efforts fall flat and tensions continue. Often times, it remains up to the students to resolve conflicts. Overall, Bard is what you make of it, and for many people, it's just not the right place. There's actually a higher-than-normal chance you'll transfer out. It is really in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by a few villages accessible by shuttle or car, and has many quirks and flaws that become apparent after you've lived here for a while. Our school spirit is really almost non-existent. But at the same time, if this is the right place for you, it is truly a place like no other, a place that's impossible to explain to outsiders, that holds a very special magic understandable only to those that have lived there themselves. Really consider if this place works for you, and if it does, do not hesitate to come on over.
The fall 2020 acceptance rate for Bard College is 56%. That means, out of _____ applications received in 2020 , _____ students were offered admission. The number of males who applied was _____ vs the number of females which was _____.
Visit the school, try and find out what the school's values are, what the school's philosophy is, don't base your decision off of who gives you the most aid. Find out what the classes are like, what books teachers ask you to read and what the professors are like. Also, make sure you like the look of your campus, you dont want to feel it's dirty or too noisy. Your campus is your home for the next four years you should love it.
intellectual, academically driven, east coast culture, well traveled, worldly, well read, liberal.
Yes, most of the students are those kids you knew in high school who never really fit in. Chances are, if you're at all "mainstream" you'll have a hard time finding your place here. There really are all types of people here though, it's just difficult to find them. You pretty much are only friends with the people you live with. It's hard to socialize outside your dorm, especially when the weather gets bad. For such a small school, it seems even smaller since there are so many little cliques. And no, not everyone is a pothead. But at times it can really seem like it. A LOT of kids at Bard smoke pot. There's not a lot of pressure to do it, but chances are you won't go the whole four years here without at least trying it.
Classes are tiny. If you're a freshman, you'll have a hard time getting into any. Bard does offer a lot of courses, as you may see in their course book, but the catch is that they're not all offered every semester. So one semester there may be a class you want to take but can't get into, but there's no guarantee that class will be there next semester. Plus, Bard has this thing called moderation. You can't just major in whatever you want, you have to take classes in it, and usually in your sophomore or junior year you are evaluated by a moderation panel and they decide whether or not you are "worthy" of that major. And no, I know they tell you you can make your own major but that's just not true. It's very difficult to make your own major and extremely rare. Even double majoring is difficult because there's not much time to moderate into both fields, and doing two different senior projects is hell. What most people end up doing is majoring in interdisciplinary studies so they can combine two different fields that they're interested in. Bard makes all first year students take a First Year Seminar class which is pretty much just an Intro to Philosophy class. You have to read works of Plato, Nietzsche, Mary Shelley, Blake, Rousseau, Locke, and pretty much any other philosopher you've ever heard of. The readings can be interesting but you're not given much time to read them since it's such a broad overview. And there are a few papers required for the course as well. There are two different sets of academic requirements: Those classes you need to graduate and those classes you need to moderate. For more information on distribution requirements go to http://www.bard.edu/academics/curriculum/
All Bard kids are hipsters who sit in their room doing coke while listening to old Pavement B-Sides and counting their parents' money.
The best thing at Bard is the weekend breakfast. It's served till 2pm and they bring out the waffle maker! Although it's difficult to make a waffle because there's only one waffle maker and the line is usually very long. The reason breakfast is so wonderful is because, as most Bard students will tell you, food at Kline, the main dining hall, SUCKS. Most students try to go to Manor, the nicer dining hall, or eat off campus (which can get expensive really fast). Bard is really small. Very small. In fact, there's only one place on campus to go to socialize besides the dorms, and thats the Campus Center. The Campus Center has a game room which is pretty much just a tv and two arcade games next to a change machine. There's a computer lab, a vending machine, a pool table, and an on-campus eatery called Down The Road. On the weekends clubs rent out the dining halls for parties, and there are usually performances on the weekends, but beyond that there's not a huge social scene. Even at the parties and performances, one rarely ever socializes with people they don't already know. So even though there aren't many students, there are always people you haven't met. Also, Bard offers a lot of lectures, and open-mic night which is where students can pretty much just put on an improv talent show every week. When you tell someone you go to Bard, the reactions are pretty mixed depending on where the person is from. They either say "What's that?", "Oh, Barnard!", "I hear that school's full of creeps," or "Ooo! Bard! Congratulations!" The "college town" is called Red Hook which isn't actually the same town that Bard is in, but it's the closest town there is. It has a CVS, a couple diners, a cute little Bagel Shoppe, and Hannafords. If you go to Bard, you've gone on at least one late night trip to Hannafords which is the 24 hour grocery store near by. As for bigger stores like Target and WalMart, the closest place that has those is Kingston, which is impossible to get to without taking the shuttle or having a car. Bard is rural. They're not kidding about that. There are things that could possibly be walking distance but only if you feel like taking a VERY long walk. IT IS VERY USEFUL TO HAVE A CAR AT BARD. The campus is pretty spread out, and it's not likely that someone on south campus is going to feel like trekking up to north campus for class when the weather is really bad (and it will be really bad, and classes are rarely cancelled). Also, if you ever want to go to the city or out of town for the weekend, there aren't any shuttles to the train stations so you have to take a car. You won't be happy at Bard for very long without a car, or at least someone who has a car. There is no school spirit. People go to sporting events but usually just about a handful, and they're usually girlfriends of the players. Bard has it's own nude magazine called "The Moderator." Every year The Moderator has a party to celebrate it's release and these parties are clothing optional. I hear they used to get pretty crazy, but recently they changed the rules so that the party can't go passed 10, so this year it ended up as just kind of a scantilly clad cheese and crackers party.
Bard College Step performance at the Spring ASO Blowout 2007
Bard doesn't encourage competition, but it provides opportunities to inspire yourself.
What I love about Bard is how small and personal of an atmosphere it offers. There are only about 400 people in my class. When I need help or guidance, or want to make something happen, I can easily find someone who'll listen to me and trust that I'll get a response. The anonymity of a large state university doesn't exist here; everyone is a lot more accountable for their education. Having the luxury of such a small student body comes with the expectation that you will take command of your education and take it seriously.
We house the American symphony and have the youngest person to become a college president
not competive, beatuiful campus
not very diverse politically, ethnically, or socio-economically.
Conservative Republicans
People's inability to see beyond their own circumstances in order to better understand the ways in which another person was raised or grew up, or the situation that another person finds themself in that may differ from one's own. A lot of people are too wrapped up in their own lives and beliefs to begin to understand those of other people.
liberal crazies
I wish I had known that it's ok not to know what you want to study right off the bat.
The small classes, the fantastic teachers, the exciting classes, the creativity and intelligence of all the students here, the beautiful campus, the wonderful academics, the great opportunities. It's a great school. X-men was created here and Steely Dan.
Bard students are typically labeled as hipsters who smoke weed all the time. The two small towns arounds us (Redhook and Tivoli) like to call Bard students "Fairies in the forest" (not a compliment). The definition of a hipster is someone who follows trends. We wear clothes with holes, high waisted shorts, smoke cigarettes and drink out of mason jars. I don't see the rest of the world doing that. Another stereotype of Bard students is that we're known for being very intellectual. We like having thought provoking conversations outside of class. We take time to talk with our professors outside of class about current world events that relate to their discipline. I can promise you that you'll never have a dull conversation.
58%
female
42%
male
Total Undergrad Enrollment
Total Grad Students
Out-Of-State
In-State
International
Student Organizations
Fraternities
Sororities
On-Campus Housing
of students living on campus
All students must apply yearly for financial aid. This process starts with the FAFSA. Though financial aid deadlines vary by school, it is a good idea to apply as soon as possible. For the upcoming school year, you can apply as early as October 1 for the FAFSA. Additional school aid will be dependent on the FAFSA results.
66% of students attending Bard College receive some sort of financial aid. 21% were awarded federal grants. While 48% received federal loans. Many students do also need to apply for additional private student loans.
Tuition and fees(Out of state)
Books and Supplies
Room and Board
Total On Campus
We use student reviews and the most current publicly available data on our school pages. As such, we don't typically remove or edit college information. Sources for school statistics and data include the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Portions of college data include copyrighted material, which is reproduced on this website by permission of Wintergreen Orchard House, a division of Carnegie Communications. © 2009-2016 by Wintergreen Orchard House. All rights reserved.
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