<p>Hi! To admitted/prospective students or parents:</p>
<p>Why do you like Bard? Why did you apply?</p>
<p>I applied on a whim and am having trouble seeing myself there…I’m not into the hipster-artsy thing. I’d like to be among a student population diverse in interests and unabashedly interested in everything! (going against the first tenet of hispterism)</p>
<p>Hipster is sort of a weird term, but whatever the definition, it doesn’t mean people with limited interests. Here’s a list of the clubs at Bard: [Student</a> Clubs](<a href=“http://inside.bard.edu/campus/clubs/]Student”>http://inside.bard.edu/campus/clubs/). Seems to be plenty of interests there.</p>
<p>I applied because the academics seemed very strong, there seemed to be a tight on-campus community, and I am interested in the whole “artsy” thing. I think that there are plenty of relatively “normal” people at Bard, who are not studying art or music.</p>
<p>I also like the personal freedom combined with the rigor of the academics. </p>
<p>The part of NY its in is just beautiful as well, not that that should be a deciding factor.</p>
<p>I’d advise you to join the prospective and accepted students group on facebook (search “Bard College Class of 2016” it’s the ■■■■■■■■ group), and see if you think you’d fit in.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. I was referring to the fact that hipsters tend to be self-conscious about their interests…too concerned about what’s “cool”. I love art, and want to pursue theater extracurricularly. I just don’t want to be in a homogenous environment.</p>
<p>Do you, or anyone else know about Bard’s research opportunities (for non-science majors) and internship/career advising and preparation?</p>
<p>Let me guess…you’ve been reading a website that purports to tell you all about what it’s “really like at Bard” from an unfiltered student perspective? If so, you should be aware that the hipster thing is about 10 years out of date. There’s a diversity of people there, some hipsters yes, but lots of other kinds of people (many of whom don’t fit any of those stereotypes).</p>
<p>There’s a career services office that provides information and holds workshops on careers in various fields. Bard is less career-focused than a lot of other schools (I think this is a weakness) but supports student interests in internships. My D (a senior this year) is currently doing an internship in NY and had a couple of other options; she worked with the career services people in her search.</p>
<p>Their theater offerings are strong. Not sure about research opportunities, but D has presented her humanities work at a national undergraduate conference for two years running. The thing about Bard is that you can make the experience whatever you want it to be - if you are interested in pursuing research, you can make that happen.</p>
<p>Not trying to put too fine a gloss on it - Bard is not for everyone. But for someone who is interested in ideas for their own sake rather than as a stepping stone to a grade/career, it can be magical. Consider going to accepted students day and take a good look at the others present - see if there are too many hipsters for your taste among your potential classmates, check out the info sessions, tour the campus - and make an informed decision.</p>
<p>http://**************.com/bard-college/academics/</p>
<p>This is what I love most about Bard. They’re known for their top notch academics. Bard does seem like a hipster mecca but you can’t really judge until you visit. My guess is that hipsters or not, all Bardians are probably enthusiastic about arts and theater like you. I’m not exactly a hipster either but after my visit to Bard I really felt like I belonged at the school. Visit and talk to current students and alumni to get a true feel of Bard.</p>
<p>Do any current Bard students have a handle on the theater community and Bard and about the aerial acrobats (“circus”) community there? My daughter applied to some auditioned theater programs, but also to Bard specifically because she could study playwriting, the theater department has a good reputation (as far as we have have been told), and they apparently do have an aerials community. During our visit there (which was wonderful in many ways) it was not possible to talk to anyone involved in theater or circus arts. We will probably go back and visit again, but just reaching out for information.</p>
<p>Thanks for the insight stradmom. Some days Bard is my daughter’s top choice, although she always thinks it’s too close to home. I’m a little concerned with the work load, especially the reading work load as she’s dyslexic and reads very slowly but with amazing insight, and the level of competition between the kids. How competitive and erudite are the students?</p>
<p>amtc, I recognize you from the theater majors forum. Is your daughter who is considering Bard also the theater-kid? Do you have any insights on the theater culture/program there? (Stradmom, this is my D4, and she plays viola-- we PM’d about Bard a while back.)</p>
<p>Amazing how small the CC world is, isn’t it? :)</p>
<p>I can ask D2 about theater - many of her friends are very involved and I know she’s done some photography of the productions (and attended her share of cast parties), so she may have some insights. I’ll ask her about the circus, too.</p>
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<p>Competitive as in cut-throat? Not at all. Some programs there are competitive in that they can accommodate a limited number of students (photography is one of them) and students are cut at various points along the way, so that making it to moderation/senior project really does reflect a certain level of excellence.</p>
<p>Competitive as in high achieving and likely to succeed anywhere? Quite.</p>
<p>Erudite? Runs the gamut, but generally a higher level than I’ve seen at many other institutions.</p>
<p>amtc - my D does have a fair amount of reading but she’s a Literature/Photo double major, so that would be expected. Readings tend to be primary sources rather than textbooks, which makes them more interesting but also potentially more challenging. Insight and depth seem to be valued more than a superficial, broad interpretation.</p>
<p>I will say that D was also very concerned about Bard’s reputation and social life. She kept the door open for transferring when she enrolled, but soon found that she was able to build a social circle. And she now owns a couple of pairs of skinny jeans useful for blending in when necessary!</p>
<p>stradmom, does your daughter feel isolated with the rural location? That was another thing we were concerned about. Thanks!</p>
<p>Sorry glassharmonica - this is my “I hate theatre kids” daughter. Although she does amazing work with special effects make-up, having taken a class at School of Visual Arts last summer, so she might be interested in working with the performances in that respect.</p>
<p>Again, thanks stradmom for your insight.</p>
<p>glassharmonica, my D was just joking on the phone last night that the weekend’s “big event” was something called FarmFest…(apparently Bard is acquiring a farm?)…</p>
<p>Annandale-on-Hudson is a wonderful, scenic location. But no one with any connection to reality would call it metropolitan, and that can be a real problem for some people. D2 didn’t have a car until last summer (long story involving an internship, a senior photo project that never ended up being pursued and an early graduation gift), but instead relied on the Bard Shuttle.</p>
<p>The Shuttle is fine. It goes into Red Hook and Tivoli, and either it or some other form of public transportation gets you to a train station that will connect you with New York. Red Hook has a few stores and restaurants, a movie theater, several churches. Tivoli has restaurants, bars and a laundromat.</p>
<p>Now that she has a car, she feels a new freedom - what used to be a 4 hour ordeal to drop off a roll of film to be developed can be accomplished in 25 minutes. </p>
<p>There are Bard kids who go to the city every weekend. D2 isn’t a city person, but she’s been able to take the train to her internship (both Amtrak and Metro North are readily accessible).</p>
<p>Typical weekends for my D (YMMV) have been get-togethers with friends, hikes around the area, visiting Hudson Valley towns (she had a great time in Sleepy Hollow for Halloween and went to the Renaissance Faire this fall). There is a ski club, a canoeing group and other campus groups that offer activities - don’t miss the country fair at the beginning of the year! - and Bard brings in entertainment for various weekend events. There’s usually a film showing on campus and people go into Red Hook to the local movie theater also. People You’ve Heard Of appear on campus for lectures and whatnot - apparently Paul Simon was there the other day but didn’t make a stop on the fourth floor of the library where D2 was studying. She bumbled into a master class given by a violinist you’d have heard of if I could remember his name when she was wandering around trying to remember where she’d left her glasses.</p>
<p>The thing about the Bard campus is that it’s HUGE. We once calculated that the ratio of students:acreage was about 1.3:1. So it often looks empty when you drive through, but there are people in the student center or the cafeteria or at the concert or whatever.</p>
<p>Glassharmonica - Bard feels alot like a summer festival - year round. But New York City does have a huge influence on the school - in terms of the professors, the visitors as mentioned by Stradmom, the bands that come up and play, as well as opportunities to get into the city to attend performances/galleries of whichever art form the student might be interested in. My son this semester has borrowed his girlfriend’s car while she’s studying abroad - and, indeed, it’s a great sense of freedom to be able to pop over to Kingston to get his scores bound and mailed off, or to drive down to Metro North to bop into the city (he’s been about 4 times in the last month for meetings, performances, benefit concerts, whatnot. (This weekend he drove to Boston for a performance but that is much more unusual.)</p>
<p>As for the theater - from what I’ve viewed from afar - I’d say there’s a strong NYC connection & influence on the department. Not musical theater on Broadway - but serious, edgy, or pushing the envelope kind of theater.</p>
<p>As for aerial work in the circus. Hmm, if she’s seriously into circus arts, that might be a disappointment. I know they have something - but my guess it’s much more casual, creative and fun-loving, and less equipment oriented than something with trapezes or the like. (One of my son’s best friends is studying circus arts in Quebec City and I helped her look into liberal arts colleges that had circus arts and Bard was not one of the ones at the top of her list - none of which ended up being serious enough for her.)</p>
<p>I’d say if your daughter is serious about theater in an intellectual and probing way - she’ll find fabulous professors, and like-minded peers. And, if she likes to write, Bard is the best.</p>
<p>@glassharmonica, I recognize you from the MT forum! My son is a sophomore at Bard (and I graduated in '82). He says the theater, voice and music are phenomenal. And the Fisher Center…what can I say? Gorgeous. I wish there were MT there (for my D who is a junior), but alas, there is not. Isolation due to the rural campus is not really a problem at Bard. There is so much going on weekends (particularly in music and the arts), and many students hop on the train to go to NYC for jazz clubs, shows, etc. In addition, the workload is intense (Bard was rated one of the most rigorous colleges in the country), so kids really have to spend time at their studies. But, back to your question about theater…yes, it pushes the envelope, and it is extremely good. The arts at Bard are simply wonderful, and its proximity to NYC is great. PM me if you want to speak directly to my S…he knows kids in the theater department. They are on spring break as of Friday, though (much later than most schools).</p>
<p>Stradmom, My daughter tells me Farmfest was a blast. It was a busy weekend between that and performing in two pieces at the Dance Moderation Concert. She had a friend up from the City and was afraid she was going to really think it was a “hippy” school, but they had a great time. </p>
<p>As far as the rural location goes, my other daughter who went to Bennington was feeling jealous at how close to the City and unrural Bard is. So it’s all a matter of perspective. My daughter has a car, so that helps. The weekend before last, one of her dance classes took the train into NY to New York Live Arts to catch a performance their professor wanted them to see. She gets to the City about once a month.</p>
<p>Not even a slightly homogenous environment–in terms of interests at least. Believe it or not, hipsters ARE interested in a variety of things. In my friend groups, almost no one studies the same thing and if they do (e.g. two lit students), they’re usually studying different things anyway (e.g. American lit versus Brit lit). </p>
<p>But almost everyone is interested in what’s happening outside of what they’re studying. If you talked about something really interesting in class and thought about it and wanted to discuss it, everyone is game for that and comments on it based on what they know.</p>
<p>glassharmonica–I don’t know much about the theater department from a Bard perspective other than the one playwriting course I’m currently taking and that one of my closest friends in a directing major. But my parents are friends with a lot of theater people who have all spoken highly of the theater department. As for the circus, it exists and their events are some of the biggest of the semester. I’ll second SpiritManager and say that if your daughter is serious about this kind of stuff she might be disappointed. Most of these kids haven’t done this stuff before. However, if she’s just looking for fun as well as potentially enhancing the acrobatics or the Surrealist Circus, she’ll do just fine.</p>
<p>I also don’t feel isolated, but that being said, I grew up in the Hudson River valley, I’m only about an hour and a half from home, and going to NYC isn’t a big deal to me because I can just go there when I’m home. I find it hard to feel so isolated when the campus is so open and the parts of campus that people frequent are pretty densely populated. The school might have 600 acres, but the actual campus is only about 3 miles across at its widest point.</p>
<p>i was accepted into bard but im also having a bit of difficulty loving it.
i’m really picky but i really feel that i should be.
i feel like there isn’t much going on on-campus, i wouldn’t even mind being in a very rural area as long as there are different activities going on constantly.
i am “artsy” but more into film than theater, i have a lot of different interests which i hope i can explore in college.
i want to go for foreign language (japanese and arabic…maybe french as well), but i will absolutely be doing it with something else as well… but i’m not sure what yet (translations, international affairs, UN?, media).
another concern is besides Germany and Russia there isn’t really much study abroad.
After studying Japanese for 2 years at bard i can only go to a program that is 5 weeks long?? (i’m not sure if this is right, and i really hope it isn’t)
i wasn’t able to access the list of organizations and clubs on campus.
pretty much i love diversity and i love discussing everything…
i guess im not enormously concerned about finding people who i will get along with because i imagine through clubs i’ll be able to,mainly ISO.</p>
<p>Kitsuki14, believe it or not, there are a lot of things that go on on campus. Some weekends are more jam-packed than others and some are lulls, but usually, there are at least 2 or so places strictly on campus (and not talking about parties (there are plenty of those on and off campus every weekend, I’m talking about concert venues) a weekend night. There are also concerts off campus in the local bars and at house parties.</p>
<p>Film is huge at Bard, but is a very different community than theater. Every weekend there are screenings in Weiss Theater in the Campus Center or in the theater in Preston Hall. On top of which, there are student screenings that happen often for their own movies. Also a lot of the film classes at least sound awesome (my best friend who’s a film major is in a graphic novel class right now, which is great because he wants to be a graphic novelist and became a film major because the writing is similar).</p>
<p>Study abroad is much larger than you’d think. Beyond Russia and Germany, there’s Hungary, Palestine, China, within the states, and a few others that are strictly affiliated with Bard, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go to other programs. I know plenty of people who have gone to France. It’s not that you only spend 5 weeks abroad. Certain classes (e.g. intensive classes) require that you go to the native speaking country after the semester is over and THAT is for 5 weeks. If you’re legitimately studying abroad, that’s for a semester.</p>
<p>lilygraces,</p>
<p>thanks so much for your reply!</p>
<p>im not really a party person anyway but im hoping there will be a lot of club/organizational activities etc going on. i like lectures… haha
for the most part i would be focusing on studies anyway.
what about cultural events at bard? there seems to be a decent amount of diversity…(though i wonder if that’s just because the number of students is not huge?)</p>
<p>the film classes sound interesting,
im not sure what i want to go into (as i said above) so i’m hoping i can take a variety of classes, i dont know how open bard is about that?
what about international relations or political science at bard?</p>
<p>ya i figured i would probably look into programs on my own anyway.
though that makes me a bit nervous about credit transfer.
even though there is a lot of languages offered i don’t really know how good their programs are, but since the class sizes seem to be small i can probably just talk with the prof directly if im having trouble.</p>
<p>sorry if i seem overly pessimistic! i’m trying to give the schools i was accepted to a fair chance, but still a bit hung up on what i couldve done(which is pointless since its done already.)</p>
<p>i think i’m going to the admitted students day on the 14th,
though i feel very rushed into these visits because i only have a week off and all the IB and AP exams are coming up!</p>
<p>I think being pessimistic is good to a certain degree. As an accepted student, you really don’t know what you’re buying into. Beyond the parties I mentioned, there are what are called “lecture series.” This is done through a specific department and I believe there’s a theme that runs throughout the series. These are advertised via email and on posters throughout the school. Clubs also have a lot of events and a lot of clubs partner up for things. I’m in a gluten-free and vegan baking club (run by my former roommate) and we often bake for other clubs’ events and hang out during the event.</p>
<p>The SECOND biggest event of the year (after Spring Fling) is the International Student Organization show. The auditorium is PACKED for a variety show that shows the different cultures that have come to Bard–which are a lot. For a tiny school, I believe about 20% of the student population is foreign.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about international relations and political studies (as we call it here), but a lot of my friends are political studies majors and seem to really like what they’re learning, even though some advisors and professors put excessive stress on students sometimes (for example, for my friend’s moderation, he was asked to write a 10 page paper by his advisor for something everyone else had to write 5 pages on. Not a huge difference, but in a time-crunch, it’s tough).</p>
<p>Bard is open to a variety of classes if you know how to work it. It also depends on the major you choose. I’m lucky in that my major (lit/creative writing) doesn’t have a lot of requirements post-moderation so I have more freedom than say, a math major. But Bard is a liberal arts college which means you have to take a variety of courses (there are, I believe, 9 distributional requirements [don’t let that be daunting to you, it’s really quite easy to complete them. I finished 6 of them halfway through sophomore year, and have doubled up on most of them]). I’ve tried to fulfill these courses by taking classes I’m genuinely interested in. For instance, I’m fulfilling my humanities requirement by taking a class on Hinduism right now.</p>