Accepted Students

WELCOME ACCEPTED STUDENTS

Now that you've made your decision to come to Bard, what's next?

There are forms that need to be filled out which are on our Form and Resources webpage and on that same page there is a file on FAQs for Incoming Students which also includes information on where can you bank; can you have a car on campus; when should you arrive on campus; do you need to bring your own computer; what is the best way to travel to Bard, to what to bring with you to Bard. And if this doesn’t answer all your questions, you can email: firstyear@bard.edu


Following is a preview of what to expect leading up to your arrival!

EARLY JUNE:

You will be mailed information about your email address, the required summer readings for the Language & Thinking Program, and the mathematics diagnostic. For International Students: This will come via email to the email address you gave us when applying to Bard. In early June, please check that email address for an electronic packet from Bethany Nohlgren, Dean of Students.

EARLY JULY:

You will receive an email from Bard (at your new @bard.edu address!) with your housing and roommate information.

LATE JULY:

You will receive an email through your @bard.edu email with detailed information about the check in process on arrival date August 11, 2012.

As a courtesy if you wish to mail boxes of personal items to campus prior to your arrival you are welcome to do so. Please try to have the packages arrive sometime during the first week of August, 2012. Due to limited spacing we can not guarantee storage space of your belongs before the first week of August.  We strongly encourage you to select a shipment method that offers you the ability to track the delivery process of your package(s).  You should mail packages to:

STUDENT NAME  “Incoming First Year Student”


AUGUST:

August 11th, you arrive at Bard! All freshman students are expected to arrive on campus between 10am-2pm Eastern Standard Time on August 11, 2012.

August 13-29 you will participate in the Language & Thinking Program This is s pass/fail program and is required for matriculation into the College. You are expected to attend all class sessions, complete all assignments, and participate fully in class sessions.

Students will meet with an academic advisor and register for courses during Matriculation Days, which take place during the last week of the Language & Thinking Program.


College Bookstore. Sign Up for info!

   

 

Did you know...

• Why Bard students make good hires.



• What past Bard graduates are doing.



• Where Bardians have worked and attended graduate school post-Bard.
  

News and Events at Bard!

Featuring:

    •    Director of Theater Programs and Professor of Theater at Bard, Gideon Lester, talks about the future of Bard's theater department in an interview with Joey Sims, co-editor-in-chief for Bard College's Free Press--Bard's student-run newspaper.

    •    BARD: Slow Water, Clean Water & Learning Across Borders (video). Bard's partnership with the Institute for Nature and Society in Oaxaca, Mexico, illustrates how learning across borders can be both local and transnational.

    •    Bard's Associate Professor of Biology, Felicia Keesing was on NPR radio in "Taking A Walk on New York's Wildside." "Dr. Felicia Keesing is an associate professor of biology at Bard College, and she investigated the relationship between the loss of biodiversity and the increase of disease transmission, the subject of a study she co-authored in Nature and 2010."


OPEN LETTER FROM BARD COLLEGE'S WATSON FELLOW,
DANIELA ANDERSON '12

Dear Professor Botstein,

I just received your letter in my campus mailbox, thank you. I feel very honored to have been nominated a Watson Fellow; the project will change my life in many ways, I am sure. However, I feel that the unique education I have received at Bard over the past four years is even deeper-reaching. I wanted to take this opportunity to express how amazed I have been and continue to be with the level of commitment my professors demonstrate each semester. The process of the Watson application itself was testament to their devotion to students. I got to see my professors from disparate departments come together as a Watson committee, constructing a picture of who I am beyond how they know me in music, science, or philosophy, and helping me develop a compelling project.

The richness of the education is seated in our professors' passion for the knowledge and skills they impart as well as their enthusiasm for us as students and people. For example, today in Matt Deady's physics lab on magnetic flux and induction, I made some comment about the magnetic levitation train in Japan. Instead of brushing the comment aside and plowing through the lesson plan, Matt thought for a few seconds and then launched into a detailed and fascinating discussion on the forces that underlie maglev trains in Japan.  

In my cancer research senior project, professors have come to Bard on weekends and nights to help me operate the qPCR machine. Mike Tibbetts, who isn't even on my SP board came to Bard twice on weekends spending several hours each time with me to make sure everything was setup correctly. Philip Johns has also been there after hours. In addition to committing his schedule (and every minute of it) to the students in his classes, Philip has organized a very productive and supportive biology senior project group that meets with him twice a week together and individually.

My piano teacher, Blair McMillen, is so passionate about my musical development that he will add in extra mini lessons during the week if I have questions or need additional guidance. In preparation for a concert last year, Blair met with me three times for full lessons in one week. He has created a vibrant community of pianists by insisting his students attend biweekly master classes in which we play our pieces to each other, hear feedback from Blair, and offer thoughts about our playing to each other.

Paul Marienthal, through all his leadership development efforts, long conversations, deep reflections, and sincere concern for his TLS students, has given me the confidence to stand on a stage and convince an audience that what I have to say matters. This is huge.
I could continue to demonstrate the depth and fullness of my education here at Bard, but I gather you get the point by now. You should be very proud of this remarkable school. I urge you to continue to fill Bard with professors such as these who sacrifice to make education their commitment to the world, and inspire  students to find and make their own commitments to the world.

Next year I will work in clinics in Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Thailand, and Brazil as Watson Fellow AND as a Bard graduate, and that will make all the difference.

Sincerely,
Daniela Anderson



CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ACCEPTED STUDENTS
from the PRESIDENT


Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would like to congratulate each and every one of you on your admission to Bard. The college admissions process is, as you all know, a trying experience, made more difficult by an absence of transparency about why candidates are accepted or rejected and the dearth of truly reliable information about what colleges are like and what they have to offer. But now that the process is over, you can focus on what you would like to explore and accomplish in college and assess the match between yourself and the institutions at which you now have the opportunity to study.

Each institution properly takes pride in itself. Therefore, insofar as there are differences among colleges and universities, we would like to be as candid as possible so you can assess the contrasts as well as the similarities between the choices you have.
Bard stands for a clear set of principles. First, we believe that the traditions of learning are crucial to the conduct of our lives, both as private persons and citizens. Second, we believe that the link between learning and life depends on our capacity to care deeply about the life of the mind and to develop a lifelong affection for what serious inquiry and learning give us. Cultivating the link between the heart and the brain is the object of all teaching. True joy, as the Roman philosopher Seneca put it, is a “serious thing” (Res severa verum gaudum), and requires disciplined cultivation. Third we believe that we must find ways to contribute, through education, to the well being of others, through the arts, the social sciences, literature and science and mathematics.

These three principles inform the Bard curriculum in the first year. The course of study includes the three week Language and Thinking Workshop in August, the First Year Seminar, a year long course based on core texts in philosophy, politics, literature and science, and Citizen Science, the three week January Workshop devoted to strengthening scientific literacy. Both the Language and Thinking and Citizen Science Workshops, although required, are not graded, and are designed to spark interest and curiosity, not dampen them.
The Bard curriculum, from the first year to the last, is based on issues and problems, not departments. Our programs of concentration are frequently multi-disciplinary, even though they depend on rigorous courses in the appropriate disciplines. At the same time, we seek to adjust to individual student interests and ambitions. In addition to small classes and tutorials, every Bard student has the benefit of Moderation, which takes place at the end of the Sophomore year and is the way in which our students choose and define what at other colleges is understood as their “major”. And every student completes a Senior Project, a year-long piece of work designed and executed by the student.  Every student at Bard counts.

Bard is quite different on account of the historic role the visual and performing arts play. They are an integral part of the college, one of four academic divisions. Every physics, literature or economics student gets a chance to work in the arts, actively in the studio, just as every painter, video artist, filmmaker, writer, musician and dancer gets to study experimental science.

Bard is distinctive as well on account of its work in areas of public concern nationally and internationally. Bard has the largest prison education program in the country, the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) in which close to 300 incarcerated men and women study for the AA and BA degree. Bard designed and now operates three pioneering public high school early colleges, one in Manhattan, one in Queens and one in Newark.  Bard has a charter school and teacher training program in the Central Valley of California, in Delano, and an Early College Center in New Orleans, both of which serve the respective local and regional communities. Bard has the leading residential early college, Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington Massachusetts.

Owing to its commitment to improve education not only in the nation but abroad Bard has campuses in Berlin (The European College of Liberal Arts), St. Petersburg (The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science, Smolny, of the State University of St. Petersburg), Bishkek (The American University of Central Asia) and the West Bank (The Bard-Al Quds University College and Graduate Program). Bard is also home to the Levy Economic Institute, a major research center and has a network of graduate programs offering MA and Ph.D. degrees in New York City and Annandale, in the arts, art history, curatorial studies, teacher training and environmental policy. And in the summer Bard takes advantage of its magnificent Fisher Center designed by Frank Gehry and produces SummerScape, an arts festival that draws its audience from all over the world.

All these initiatives provide opportunities for undergraduates and contribute to the campus life in Annandale. They each work in tandem with Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, which provides service opportunities and internships.  Indeed, at the core of Bard are its faculty and students. We are proud of Bard’s renowned teacher-scholars, artists and public intellectuals who are on the faculty, and our diverse, talented, imaginative and ambitious students from all over the world.

On behalf of the entire Bard community, I welcome you to the college. It is a place where learning comes first.

Congratulations again!

Leon Botstein
President  

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