Bard College

Bard College

Bard is a liberal arts college of 1900 undergraduates. Our largest campus is located 90 miles north of New York City and situated on the Hudson River near the Catskill Mountains. Bard also has a growing network of campuses and partnerships outside the United States including programs on the West Bank and in Kyrgyzstan, Austria, and Germany, to name a few, and is Co-Founder of The Open Society University Network (OSUN). Bard also runs one of the largest college degree granting prison education programs in the United States, which was started by Bard students over 20 years ago.

Furthermore, Bard operates eight public high school early college programs across the United States designed to increase access to high caliber secondary school education. As the first college in the U.S. to create a Human Rights major, Bard continues to build upon unusual programs like these to further its mission of increasing access to education.

As a liberal arts college, Bard offers majors across four divisions: Science, Mathematics and Computing; Languages and Literature; Social Studies; and the Arts and also requires students to complete five unique academic traditions, one of which is a year-long thesis of original work that we call Senior Project. Bard College runs an exceptional arts program, which includes the Bard College Conservatory of Music, offering students a five-year double degree program as well as the first ever U.S. degree granting program for Chinese instrument performance.