Hopson Cottage Blog

Nathan Madsen, Director of Conservatory Admission

Hooray!

Like many of my colleagues in the College’s Office of Admission, I have just wrapped up a very grueling travel schedule, visiting youth orchestras, arts high schools, and college fairs in MA, NY, PA, OH, MI, IL, TX, NV, CA, OR, WA, UT, and DC. After a few weeks on the road I really begin to miss a home-cooked meal, but I am compensated by the tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm towards Bard that I encounter in my travels.

I had the opportunity to meet many different kinds of people–not just oboists and violinists interested in the conservatory but also actors, authors, photographers, poets, painters, chemists, activists, debaters, thinkers, dreamers, filmmakers, musicologists, singers, jazzers, java programmers, and rockers. These encounters are of course valuable to prospective students, but I also come away changed by each experience. And so here follows a late-night rumination on my latest round of adventures.

I’m thinking an awful lot right now about all the people I’ve met and spoken to, and the process by which they take their life experience and turn it in to a college application.

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 Conor Brown ‘11

With the leaves turning outside, a current Bard student looks back on his summer experiences writing for a professional string quartet and recording and producing his first album:

Part I – The Deer Valley Music Festival 

I am in love with the sound of the string quartet. String quartets are, in my opinion, one of the most sublime things ever created by human beings. Needless to say, being invited by Joan Tower to write for the Vinca quartet, an up-and-coming professional quartet, and to get to work with them extensively for ten days as part of the Deer Valley Music Festival, was an event of unmatched, surreal awesomeness. Getting to sit right there – almost amongst the group – to hear the almost-inaudible hiss of the bows and the antiphonal interplay of the different instruments, both usually subdued by distance – what more can a human being, much less a composer, ask for?
 
Part II – The Recording Project

Recorded music has been an incredibly important part of my life. As a native of the mountains of Colorado, attending live concerts was a fairly infrequent event; consequently, a great deal of my musical growing-up was spent alone with a portable CD player and a good pair of headphones. To this day, that is often my preferred way to experience music. It makes sense, then, that I would be drawn to the art of recording.

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Nathan Madsen, Director of Conservatory Admission

It took Johannes Brahms, fearful of Beethoven’s shadow, twenty years to feel ready to write his first symphony. And as incredible an achievement as it is — the work is in fact immortal — what fascinates me just as much is that, after the first symphony’s much-anticipated premiere in November 1876, Brahms dashed out a complete second symphony the summer of the following year.

Twenty years for the first. Ten months for the second. The difference? Well, perhaps we can attribute this rush of inspiration to a very, very special lake.

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In college there are a lot of unseen expenses: late night pizza, extra art supplies, trips to the Met with your art history class, the list goes on. However one cost everyone does see coming is textbooks. Regardless of being a biologist with one giant tome or a lit major with fifteen small novels, everyone has textbooks they need for class.

Several years back Bard students thought about how students paid for books and they made a choice. They decided that as a community we should find a less expensive way of getting the books we need. A couple of students started asking for donations and created a club called the book exchange. The goal was to get students to trade in old books and take new ones that they needed for class. They created a point system to make it possible to trade books of different cost: the more expensive the books, the higher the point value. Because first year students are not able to trade in old text books, they begin with some credits so they can still take part in the book swapping system.

Now a permanent office space brimming with books, the book exchange still runs during the first and last two weeks of each semester. The first day of classes 100 students came and walked away with 260 free books. Even at the very low estimate of $10 a book that means Bard students saved $2,600 in one day! All this week the novel swapping will continue and students will save more money.

You can read more about the book exchange here. You can also email any questions to bookxchg@bard.edu.

-article contributed by Travis McGrath ‘11

August is upon us and in admissions that translates to revved up conversation among prospective students and their families.  One topic that many of you are asking lots of questions about is interviewing at Bard.  Remember that each school has its own set of expectations, making part of your college search process about clarifying the differences.

At Bard, interviews are not required but are offered to students who request them after applying.  An application signals to us that you have done all of the necessary research and have determined you are serious about applying to Bard College.  If you decide you want an interview, you will need to submit your application prior to or at the time of your interview.  Understand it is only the application itself that we require by the time of the interview.  Essays, letters of recommendation, and all other supporting documents can follow after your interview.

For those students who elect to interview, we highly recommend you come to our campus  to do so.  Our interviews are conducted  by members of the admissions committee, never student ambassadors.   We do not offer alumnae interviews or interviews by phone.  If you live far from the campus making a visit prohibitive, you can check Bard on the Road found on our admissions website.  This posting will enable you to see if a counselor is planning a visit to your area this fall at which point you can email the counselor to request an interview when he/she is in your area.  We make every effort to accommodate these requests.  If we are not coming to your area, however, know that you can always send information supplemental to the application to tell your story.

One last bit about interviews at Bard.  An interview is a conversation between you and a counselor on the admissions committee.  Our aim is learn some things about who you are now and what you aspire to in college.  Our expectation is that you will come with a clear understanding of our academic program but we are certainly interested in helping you deepen your understanding of Bard by answering any questions you might have. A good interview leaves both parties knowing significantly more than they did when it began!

To make an appointment for an interview email admission@bard.edu.

Anyone at Bard can tell you I love ultimate (ultimate frisbee that is). Aside from class it is a rare moment that I do not have a disc with me. Bard’s ultimate team is young and growing; we are headed into our fifth year. We play mixed (coed) and practice by the Blithewood Mansion which over looks the Hudson so we have some great sunsets at the end of every practice. To play other teams we travel to weekend tournaments in New York and various parts of New England.

Last fall I was sitting on the sidelines during a tournament at Green Mountain College  in Vermont. Thinking out loud I asked, “why don’t we host a tournament?”

The upperclassmen on my team laughed and told me it would simply be impossible. Too many details would need to be taken care of; parking, field space, insurance, medical, food, not to mention getting 12 to 16 teams to show up and pay an entrance fee. The list seemed endless.

But like Kevin Garnett,  I believe that at Bard anything is possible. I think this is true because of the availability of everyone here. I took on this unruly project and over the course of the fall semester started to flesh out the idea with several members of the Athletics staff.  By the beginning of the spring semester we had permission to use Red Hook High School’s field space as part of a good relationship our athletics departments have. Every time I encountered a problem I had to visit a different department on campus. Concerns of safety led me to Bard EMS, housing involved trips to the Residence Life Office, ideas about feeding players led me to the Chartwells office. All of these places were very helpful and by April everything came together for our tournament.

By an amazing amount of luck we picked (three months in advance) the only sunny weekend in April and the tournament went amazing. Friday night we hosted a glow in the dark game at Blithewood and Saturday morning all 14 teams from around New England came to play. Just a couple of the schools that came were Hampshire, Marist, New Haven, RIT, Hamilton, Wilkes, ESU and the eventual winners the Green Mountain Flying Squirrels. The whole day went great. There were a few injuries that EMS handeled like pros and everyone was well fed and played hard. The final match between East Strausburgh and Green Mountain came down to a sudden death point full of extreme dives that reminded all the teams watching of what great ultimate looks like and why we all put in the time practicing and traveling to tournaments.

What made the tournament so great was that a year before our entire team had been talking with certainty about how impossible having this event would be.  That shock hurt our level of play but we were all so happy it didn’t matter much.

Another story of overcoming impossible would be Bard Paintball but I will leave that for Aaron to tell you about.

“I had amazing opportunities here, like playing with faculty members, and having masterclasses by great musicians. One of the things that worried me most before attending Bard was that my violin playing would suffer because I wouldn’t have enough time to practice. From attending Bard, I learned that a lack of surplus time is not necessarily a bad thing: it forced me to develop my organizational skills and made me create some pretty useful shortcuts that make life easier for me now. One of these shortcuts is to practice in my head, and then to lay out a rough plan of my practicing time to make the time spent inside a practice room so much more effective.

“I can’t say that I practiced as much as some of my friends who went to strict conservatories, but my violin playing definitely didn’t suffer either. I have to thank my teacher most of all for this, because he not only made me sound much better, he also taught me how to listen critically, and to know exactly what to strive for. I also enjoyed the orchestral excerpts lessons with Erica Kiesewetter, and I believe these helped me a great deal with getting into orchestral summer festivals. Some of my best memories at Bard are of chamber music: I’ve had truly inspiring coachings, groups filled with incredibly talented peers, and rehearsals where I’ve learned almost as much music as diplomacy.

“One of the greatest things about Bard is how flexible professors and staff members are when you want to do something outside the curriculum. For example, it could be some competition, some audition, a recording project, or something totally different. If you know beforehand that it will be hard for a week or two around a certain date, most professors are willing to work around your schedule. During my last semester, for example, my math advisers were aware of a difficult week where I would be auditioning for grad schools, and so they scheduled my Midway at a later-than-usual date, but with a warning that I would have to work harder for the remaining semester than everyone else.”

This summer Tina will return to the Aspen Music Festival and School before entering the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in the fall, where she has been awarded a Presidential Scholarship to study violin with Cho-Liang Lin. Originally from Quebec, Tina transferred into the Bard Conservatory in its first year, and has graduated a year ahead of the inaugural class. Her violin teacher at Bard was Weigang Li; her Senior Project adviser in mathematics was Maria Belk.

 Travis McGrath, Junior, Head of PlanningCommittee

To start out I want to say I am not a blogger. This is new so if I ramble please bear with me. I’m writing to tell you (whoever you might be) about club funding at Bard.

Anyone at Bard can start a club and get funding. Not only can anyone start a club, they can make clubs about anything, and I mean anything. Alongside the Free Press (our newspaper) and the Jewish Students’ Organization we have Flying Eagle Falcon Squad (an acrobatics group that gives stilt lessons on Thursdays) and the Foursquare Club. Last semester we had 111 clubs sign up for budgets. What makes this so cool is that all these clubs get their funding through a process completely controlled by students.

Bard administrators talk about an expectation of adulthood and it sounds kinda cheesy but this is a great example of that idea. Each year students pay an activities fee as part of their tuition and that money is allocated to clubs by students. We are trusted to be responsible for our own money.

The allocation process can be as wild as the range of clubs. The whole thing is run by a branch of student government of which I was just elected to be the head. So this fall, with butterflies in my stomach, I will try to explain this process to all the club heads when they sign up their clubs the first Saturday of the semester. After club-head-day clubs will submit their budgets and meet with the planning committee to answer any questions we might have. Then we put everyone’s budget together and see what we can fund and what we can’t. Part of me wishes we could just publish that budget and have it be over with. But no. That would skip the fun part. After student government proposes a budget it must be voted on at Budget Forum.

Budget Forum is a democratic meeting where amendments can be proposed by anyone and every student gets to vote on the amendments. In plain language that means clubs can challenge each other for money. Regardless of how well the Planning Committee makes the budget this is bound to happen. Bard Bomb Squad will inevitably be challegened by somebody (I hope the yarn club does it this time) and make a wild speech about protecting Bard and fighting terrorism. Last year there was a great debate between the Orcapelicans and K.L.O.U.D.S. (kids looking out over daytime skies, don’t ask…) that ended with people standing on chairs and lots of jeering and wild shouts from the crowd. The Orcapelicans won and made really neat sweatshirts and a new CD.

Everyone talks about Bard being a small place and having a sense of community. Budget Forum is one of the ways that happens. Though it is often loud and occasionally seems to border on anarchy it is a time when students get together and decide what they think is important. What clubs do you want to see get more funding? Or perhaps what clubs shouldn’t? The point is that as thinking adults (or at least that’s what we’d like everyone to think) we have the freedom to decide for ourselves how our money is used.

Nathan Madsen, Director of Conservatory Admission

The American composer John Adams is mostly famous for his operas. He likes to set contemporary ideas and events to music, and, especially when paired up with the visionary director Peter Sellars, he makes a big splash. Instead of Vikings, Gods, or Kings, his characters are Chinese Communists, Atomic Bomb Scientists, and Palestinian Terrorists. (Did I mention he made a splash?)

But for my money his most distinguished and durable work to date is the 1998 orchestral piece “Naive and Sentimental Music.” I believe we have every right to expect it to be the first work in almost 60 years to join the permanent orchestral canon — the last two additions being Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (1943) and Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony (1953). There is so much to this piece that merits such distinction. If you hear that it’s coming to an orchestra near you, go and indulge yourself. The piece certainly speaks for itself.

Now you know how I feel about John Adams. So I’ll get to the point already:

Teacher selection.

Huh?

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  What 10 current students think you should know about life at Bard:

TIM: I’m a Senior majoring in French Studies with a concentration in modern literature.  I am writing a senior project on the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.

Here are some things I’d like you to know about Bard:
1. Bikes are very helpful at Bard.
2. There are often bon fires at parties.
3. Many students have incredible vocabularies, so invest in a tiny dictionary.
4. Bard is light on bureaucracy - Feel free to ask what I mean by that.
5. There are enough computers, but a laptop is helpful.
6. Most people play music at Bard, it seems to be the campus’ most effective tool of cohesion, besides Kline.
7. Speaking of Kline, it isn’t bad.  However, it can be a little repetitive.
8. Leon Botstein has monthly teas at his home, to which all students are invited.
9. Most professors are very open with their students, both academically and socially.
10. Bard is close enough to the NYC that you can go for the day.

RONALD: I am a first year student at Bard. I’m from St. Rose, LA, but as a commuter, I became an honorary New Orleanian somewhere around the ninth grade. I’ve played piano for about 12 years now, and I’m a music major here. I’m currently flirting with the idea of double-majoring in political studies. While Bard was not my top choice at first, I have come to enjoy it a lot and have learned a lot about myself as a writer and intellectual. That has proven to be no small nor unimportant task.

Here are some things I think you should know about Bard:
1. The campus is huge, and I’m still discovering parts of it.
2. The late fall/winter season can seem long at times, but once the spring time hits I remember why I loved the campus so much initially.
3. If you’re into something that most would find obscure, chances are, someone else at Bard is into it too.
4. The food at Kline (because I get asked this question a lot) evokes hundreds of emotions; every student you speak with will say something different. I personally prefer my mom’s cooking, but I can live off of Kline food.
5. L&T’s curriculum looks intense (and so does the course curriculum), but there is nothing to worry about because the professors make themselves really available. If you apply yourself, you can do anything here.
6. On a related note, Bard is hard to fail at, but hard to do really well at. You should really strive for the best here, even though it may be tempting to be satisfied with B’s and C’s.
7. For those that are from elsewhere, the trip to NYC, although convenient, can get expensive (especially because it’s a really expensive city and it’s built to make you spend money compulsively), so you may want to budget your expenses if/when you go. For instance, “I’ll only spend $25 on food, $70 shopping,” etc.
8. As a minority student, you may think that Bard is not quite as diverse as you’d hope. While this is probably true, the good thing is that there is a good deal of solidarity between students of color (of all backgrounds/ethnicities/races) and that you will have the opportunity to become a part of that unique intellectual community.
9. Keep healthy during midterms and finals. They are stressful times, you’ll probably be pulling some all-nighters, so make sure to eat healthy, and maybe keep a basic gym routine as well (jogging every now in then is not a bad idea either).
10. Be you. Yes, try new things, but Bard is a much more interesting place when people are themselves, and you wouldn’t be here if you had nothing to contribute to the environment. So, be yourself, and be confident!

EUN HAE: I am an Asian Studies/Economics and Global International Studies major. I am originally from Korea, but grew up in India. I am involved with the Asian Student Organization, Students for a Free Tibet and Educational Policy Committee of the student government. I also work for Admissions office and Student Activities event staff. I chose Bard because of its quiet, serene location, renowned faculty and small class sizes. Read the rest of this entry »