<p>One of the schools mentioned in the ‘Schools That Change Lives’ and also in Kaplan’s ‘Unofficial… Guide to… Best Colleges,’ Evergreen in Washington, caught our attention because it is very unconventional. It offers something called ‘Coordinated Study/Interdisciplinary Curriculum’ which supposedly is really cutting edge and now many other schools are copying their model. But, I haven’t been able to find out which those other schools are. Does anyone know of other schools with a similar curriculum model? Supposedly this model works really well for highly intelligent & creative students who might not ‘fit the mold.’ It has many feature that sound interesting, such as allowing the student to design his/her own curriculum according to interest, focus on extensive evaluations rather than letter grades, several courses taught by the same prof, to a group of students, in an interdisciplinary way, etc. They are never in a class with more than about 25 students, even at freshman level, all classes are discussion/project based, and, most importantly, the interdisciplinary aspect really draws out the interest of the student so they tend to excel even in classes that might have have formerly been difficult.</p>
<li><p>Any other schools that offer this?</p></li>
<li><p>Has anyone had experience with Evergreen or similar schools? If so, I’d like to hear how it worked for you or your child.</p></li>
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<p>Schools that do not have core curricula requirements have very similar approaches to Evergreen, I'm think in particular of Brown, Vassar and Amherst. As well, at many schools, students can craft their own majors if the existing ones do not absolutely match their interests. I know it is possible to do so at Harvard.</p>
<p>The rest of the Evergreen features are harder to find, however, at other schools.</p>
<p>I hadn't heard of Vassar - will check that out. I think you're right about Evergreen having other qualities not found at other schools. Evergreen just sent me this list (in response to me asking if there were any others) and I've already checked all of these out except U of Washington, and closest of these was Hampshire.</p>
<pre><code>* New College of Florida (Letter/number grades are never used)
* Hampshire College (Letter/number grades are never used)
* Bennington College (Letter grades are available in addition to narrative evaluations upon request on a per course basis)
* Sarah Lawrence College (Letter grades are revealed to student upon request)
* Antioch College (Letter grades are revealed to student upon request)
* University of California, Santa Cruz (Narrative evaluations are given in addition to letter grades)
* Northeastern University School of Law (School of Law only, letter/number grades are never used)
* Oxford University (Short evaluations in addition to letter grades)
* St. John's College (Oral evaluations in addition to de-emphasized letter grades)
* Fairhaven College
* University of Washington's Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP major only, Narrative transcripts complete the Pass/Fail on the UW transcript)
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