<p>Wow gang, thank you… this type of logistical information is right up my alley. The things people don’t think about (like how to even get to the city, which is a pretty long train ride away) can make a big difference in that “boots on the ground experience.” @glassharmonica – did your niece do much music while at Bard? Was it one of her academic majors? I’m trying to remember without opening up yet another browser tab, whether Bard has a BA in music as well… just for curiosity’s sake, for now.</p>
<p>Bard College has a terrific music program separate from the conservatory although there is a lot of crossover in the musicology and composition faculty. The performance professors are the main difference but there are some wonderful musicians teaching in the college itself. Conservatory students take lots of music classes in the college music dept. But the college students don’t take classes in the conservatory. </p>
<p>My niece is a sophomore there now, and yes she is doing music at Bard. I’m trying to remember her academic majors (I think it’s music and something like psychology, but that could be last year’s news.) Yes, I know several kids who took a BA in music at Bard. One is now at Georgetown law. Anyway, from what I hear Bard’s courses are very challenging and writing intensive, and it’s a great education for the right kind of kid. (I imagine someone who hated writing essays would be miserable there.) </p>
<p>I couldn’t resist this one:)
<a href=“Bard College Named Nation's No. 1 Dinner Party School”>http://www.theonion.com/articles/bard-college-named-nations-no-1-dinner-party-schoo,19032/</a></p>
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<p>Haven’t had a good laugh in awhile, thanks.</p>
<p>Oh, that is one of my favorite Onion pieces!! One of the best…</p>
<p>@SpiritManager, what about Bard makes it top all the lists in “most liberal campuses”. I see it up there with Reed all the time. Granted, I have been to neither campus and hail from the conservative South and SW. What makes it top these lists? Anyone else feel free to chime in on this. </p>
<p>Bard tends to hire public intellectuals for professors who are on the progressive end of the spectrum. But it is not a didactic PC environment, and does encourage multiple points of view and reasoned thought. One is expected to be able to defend one’s opinion in a truly educated manner. The student body does lean left - although in recent years the significant percentage of international students, Posse students, athletes, and conservatory students all provide a balance to the stereotype of a past Bard student. But it is definitely an open-minded New England campus with a strong appreciation of the arts, and with a significant LGBT community, as well.</p>
<p>At the risk of sounding like a total ignoramus, what’s a Posse student?</p>
<p>Ah - Posse <a href=“http://www.possefoundation.org/”>http://www.possefoundation.org/</a> is a program directed mainly for economically challenged students with leadership abilities. It is focused in urban areas and is partnered with colleges where the students then attend in a ‘posse.’ Bard is partnered with Atlanta.</p>
<p>"The Posse Foundation has identified, recruited and trained 5,574 public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential to become Posse Scholars. Since 1989, these students—many of whom might have been overlooked by traditional college selection processes—have been receiving four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships from Posse’s partner institutions of higher education.
"Posse is one of the most comprehensive and renowned college access and youth leadership development programs in the United States. In fact, President Barack Obama said in an interview in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “One of this year’s MacArthur awardees—the ‘genius’ awards—is an innovator named Deborah Bial. She proposed a model to identify promising students from…urban backgrounds using an alternative set of qualities as predictors of success in college. …The students that are selected form a ‘Posse’ and are provided with extra supports, and end up graduating from selective colleges with a very high success rate.” </p>
<p>Ah, okay! Now it filters through the deep recesses of my brain. Thank you!</p>
<p>One aspect of Bard is that, while students in the college (don’t know about the conservatory) do receive traditional A-B-C grades, they also are given a narrative about their performance in class as part of their grade. Most classes are very small - I believe D2’s smallest (not independent study or thesis) class had four students (they took field trips in the prof’s car!) and her largest had about 20. You can’t hide. Reading primary texts and writing, lots of writing, is a key feature of the curriculum. The senior project is serious and demanding; it’s a true intellectual challenge.</p>
<p>My D was concerned about some of the things she had read about Bard online when she enrolled and was fully prepared to transfer, but as it turned out, Bard students covered the whole range of “types,” although it probably has more granola emo trust fund babies than jocks, preppies or Republicans. There’s a real tolerance for everyone there, though. Her take is that Bard has become much more mainstream in the past ten years but that the internet has not yet caught up with that trend.</p>
<p>DS hasn’t needed to use it yet, but they have the zip car at Bard rent a for day. seems like decent option students who may not travel regularly!.</p>
<p>From what I know of Bard, it was never quite as crazy as the People’s Republic of Berkeley, I may be pretty liberal, but that place was from out there someplace (I hear it isn’t that way much any more). I have heard all the crap about how liberal some schools are, hippy dippy, etc, and usually to be honest it often is the right wing cranks who fill up talk radio and such who think anything to the left of Bob Jones university or Fallwell U is socialist central (funniest one I heard was some idiot, commenting on a U of Chicago economics professor saying the current widening gap between the rich and everyone else was troubling, and he called the school and its economics department “socialists”…U of Chicago is to Socialism what I am to fundamentalist Christian, worlds apart). If Bard is liberal I suspect it is more they won’t tolerate what some schools do in terms of allowing students to rag on other students, make them feel uncomfortable, etc, but I doubt it is out there on the granola head spectrum these days. </p>
<p>Considering that I’ve lived in Berkeley for 40 years, consider my perspective properly skewed when it comes to what is ‘liberal.’ 
</p>
<p>Well, I am in the People’s Republic of Cambridge!</p>
<p>Just read that Bard College and its partnership with Longy is starting a post-graduate training orchestra in in NYC in the manner of The New World Symphony - awarding an MM and paying stipends for performances. <a href=“Bard College and New York Philharmonic in New Ventures - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/arts/music/bard-college-and-new-york-philharmonic-in-new-ventures.html</a></p>
<p>Very interesting. These new ventures, Bard/Longy and NY Philharmonic, might be worth a separate thread :)</p>
<p>Love the point about symmetry: a school acting like an orchestra and an orchestra acting like a school.</p>