Student Profile
Elsa
- Class: Senior
- Major: Dance
- Gender: F
- High School: Amherst Regional High School
- Transfer Student: N
Big Picture
Academic Life
Academics are Bard are not to be taken lightly--students here are serious and they are serious for the right reasons. Bard students by and large could care less about their grades or their GPA--what they care about is that they got something out of the class and that they honestly feel they did their best. Students, professors, and requirements alike are geared towards the ideal of learning for learnings sake. Professors encourage this non-competitive, individualizes approach and attitude with relaxed, discussion style classes where grades are based on papers and class participation rather than tests, exams, or lectures. Not do our professors know our names, we call them by their first names and they know who we are as individuals, not just as i.d. numbers. Students can be found discussing texts outside of class, while still drunk at dance parties, on the weekends as well as the weeknights--Bardians are interested in the things they are taking and express that by bringing their academic life into their social life on a regular basis.
Student Body
Bard students are mainly destined for lives of poverty working as teachers, artists, writers, and thinkers. Not surprisingly, they align themselves almost exclusively to the left of the political spectrum and not a few students to the far left, studying revolutionary art, politics, and revolution in an attempt to bring on the new world revolution. Yet Bard kids also have a big range of interests, and the ease with which students maintain friendships outside of their departments is amazing. While Bard works hard to diversify its student body, we're a long way off. Most students are white and upper-middle class/middle class, although Bard does provide scholarhships for students from bad high schools and economic areas. We do have a very diverse queer community that makes up all the stripes of the rainbow (as it were).
The Best Things
The professors, who are so engaged and so engaging and the students, who are curious and thoughtful.
The Worst Things
The fact that the administration cares more about the college than it does about the students and...the food.
