Unique colleges for Unconventional Students
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College can be much more than four years and football. Come hear about some of the funkiest colleges in the United States: schools where you run a ranch or a nuclear reactor, study the great books, don't receive grades, take one class at a time, start in 9th grade or attend for free?
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Unique colleges for Unconventional Students
- 1. Unique Colleges L e s s a S c h e r r e r Yo u r C o l l e g e Yo u r Wa y For Unconventional Students
- 2. The Work Colleges Pa y f o r c o l l e g e w i t h s w e a t e q u i t y 1
- 3. -Dennis Jacobs Pro ject Directo r, Wo rk Co lleges Co ns o rtium Work is not just career development, not just educational, not just an opportunity to provide service, but it is all of these things. “
- 4. Deep Springs College Learn on a working cattle ranch in Dyer, NV
- 5. -Deep Springs Student quoted in Cool Colleges by Donald Asher You’re not going to show a picture of a guy on a horse, are you? “
- 9. • A p p l i c a t i o n d e a d l i n e N o v. 7 • 2 r o u n d s o f a p p l i c a t i o n s • I n t e r v i e w a n d v i s i t t o c a m p u s • S AT 6 7 0 - 8 0 0 , A C T 3 0 - 3 6
- 10. Other Work Colleges *Alice Lloyd College, Pippa Passes, KY *Berea College, Berea, KY Blackburn College, Carlinville, IL *College of the Ozarks, Pt. Lookout, MO Goddard College, Plainfield, VT Sterling College, Craftsbury Common, VT Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC
- 11. Go Grade Free G PA ? W h a t G PA ? 2
- 12. Reed College Portland, OR So much glorious weirdness, so little time
- 14. Students burn drafts of their thesis during thesis parade Reed College/Leah Nash
- 15. My high school guidance counselor told me about Reed and it became the light at the end of my tunnel. The first time I visited Reed with my parents, we drove into Eliot Circle, the cherry trees were in bloom, and I started sobbing. My mother said, “Is everything okay?” and I said, “It’s perfect. It’s beautiful here. It’s everything I thought college should look like. ~Adrien Schless-Meier ‘12
- 17. -Auden Lincoln-Vogel Reed Cla s s o f 2013 …There were times when I actively felt the way I think changing. “
- 18. Evergreen State College OMNIA EXTARES! (Let it all hang out)
- 22. -Celi Tamayo-Lee E vergreen Cla s s o f ‘14 People come here wanting to figure out ways they can be most useful in society. “
- 23. Take One Class at a Time I n t e n s e f o c u s , g r e a t r e s u l t s 3
- 24. Colorado College, Colorado Springs Block plan, with lots of travel
- 26. The Film Studies department’s block-in-Hollywood students enjoy their moment in the spotlight. Photo credit: Colorado College
- 28. Instead of jumping on the MOOC bandwagon, we aim to be SSIP (Selective, Small, Immersive and Personal…. Yes, we just made that up). “
- 29. Cornell College, Cornell, IA Not Cornell University
- 31. -Loren Pope Colleges That Change Lives It produces much more than its share of writers, scholars and executives. “
- 32. Cornell Rams fans celebrate the men’s basketball team’s first home basket of the year against rival Coe College by filling the court with toilet paper streamers. Photo courtesy CornellCollege.com
- 34. Other colleges that follow a block plan Tusculum College, Greeneville, TN Prescott College*, Prescott, AZ v b
- 35. Study the Great Books S t u d y l i k e i t s 1 1 9 9 , A . D. 4
- 36. St. John’s College Annapolis/Santa Fe From ancient Greek to modern French
- 38. Days Hours Fresh Soph Jr Sr 3 1 Lang Lang Lang Lang 2 3 Lab Lab Lab 3 1.5 Math Math Math Math 1 6 Music Music 2 2 Sem Sem Sem Sem
- 40. -Janet St. J o hn’s ‘18 We read The Bible like it’s any other book, and we read every other book like it’s The Bible. “
- 43. Other schools who teach the Great Books Shimer, Thomas Aquinas and Sir Thomas More Colleges Reed College and University of Chicago v b
- 44. Support for Learning Differences H e l p t o g e t t h r o u g h 5
- 45. University of Denver Learning Effectiveness Program
- 48. Landmark College Putney, VT Pioneering college-level programs for dyslexia, ADHD and autism
- 49. -McKenzie La ndma rk Co llege s tudent It was a total relief to find someplace so accepting. “
- 50. “Albert Einstein had a learning disability and he did great things because he looked at things differently. Landmark helps us to realize our potential and our strengths.” ~ Tino, Landmark College student
- 51. Other schools with special learning programs include: University of Arizona - SALT Beacon College-dedicated to LDs Curry College – PAL (2e) UC-Colorado Springs (flex hours) Augsberg College – CLASS (free!) Uconn – BOLD University of Iowa – REACH (career development for cognitive disabilities)
- 52. Early College Programs W h a t ’s t h i s s e c t i o n a b o u t ? 6
- 54. Bard College at Simon’s Rock The First Early College Program
- 58. Mary Baldwin College Program for the Exceptionally Gifted
- 62. Thank you! Contact me to learn more! YourCollegeYourWay.com LessaScherrer@yahoo.com
Notes de l'éditeur
- How many of you know where you want to go to school? Big private university? Small liberal arts college? Ivy? Are you set in that decision? Today I’m going to talk about some colleges that you may not have heard of, but that can be particularly interesting environments for gifted students.
- Deep Springs College is a two-year junior college located due east of Yosemite National Park on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Total number of undergrads is 26 freshmen and sophomores, who undergo a deeply intellectual, as well as physical, experience. Not only to DS students work several hours a day (in addition to class time and homework) but they also participate in the governance of the school. Deep Springs awards Associate of Liberal Arts degrees and their graduates go on to some pretty high powered schools to finish their bachelor’s degrees. Yale, Brown and University of Chicago are the favorites.
- “You’re not going to show a picture of a guy on a horse, are you? Almost every article about us has a picture of someone riding a horse, driving a tractor, or milking a cow, as if this were one non-stop rodeo. They don’t get this place at all.”
- See? No cowboys! As Donald Asher writes in Cool Colleges: “L.L. Nunn wanted to create a place with democratic self-governance to develop respect for democracy and justice, manual labor to develop character, and strong academics to sharpen the mind and reasoning capabilities.”
- Oops. To be fair, this picture is from the college website. Every seven week academic term, every student is assigned a labor position, which can very from washing dishes in the boardinghouse (BH) to delivering calves to cooking meals for the community. Students labor at least twenty hours a week. After a student’s time in a position is up, he must submit a list of his preferred assignments for the next term to the student Labor Commissioner (LC), who compiles all the labor preferences and decides the next term’s labor assignments. The only required position is BH, which all students must do for at least two terms.
- Unlike most colleges, there are only two required courses at Deep Springs: composition, in your first semester, and public speaking, which is on-going. Deep Springs students generally have one or two classes that meet in the mornings from 9-12. Classes are taught seminar style, and which classes are scheduled is voted on by the Student Body after the recommendations of the Curriculum Committee. The Student Body also hires and fires teachers and decides whom to admit.
- It’s important to visit any college before you commit to attend, but supremely important to visit these unusual colleges to get a feel for what you’re getting yourself into. Deep Springs insists its applicants come out to visit for a week to interview and see what it’s all about.
- There are eight other schools in the Work Colleges Consortium. Three others—Alice Lloyd, Berea, and College of the Ozarks—provide free tuition in exchange for 10-15 hours work for the school each week. These colleges are committed to providing educations to low income students, so a large family income can keep you from being admitted. Blackburn College is focused not on physical labor, but rather business. Students hold all the management positions in the work program at Blackburn, and the school focuses on leadership, internships and other work skills. Students at Warren Wilson College must do 150 hours of volunteer community service as well as work at paying jobs.
- There are a number of colleges in the US that do not issue grades. Instead each professor does a narrative evaluation of each student, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses as a student of that material, and then reviews the narrative with the student before it becomes part of a transcript. At some schools, like Reed College in Portland, the narratives are translated into letter grades on the transcript, but the students are not given report cards. Says Eric Lau, Reed Class of 2010, “As opposed to high school, where the name of the game was passing exams and getting good grades, my ‘gradeless’ experience at Reed taught me how to study and learn, and showed me what it meant to have a solid understanding of a particular subject.”
- So let’s talk about Reed. Reed College in Portland, OR is quite possible the weirdest and most awesome traditional college I’ve ever seen. First the boring stuff: Reed has just under 1400 undergraduates, of which about 400 are freshmen. They accept about 39% of their applicants and their test scores run from 650-750 each part of the SAT and 26-33 on ACT. They are co-ed, and very, very progressive (one might even say communist).
- This is the *unofficial* seal of Reed College, showing their mascot, the Griffin and their guiding principles. Despite their devotion to free love, Reed’s tuition is $50,000/yr. The total cost of attendance is $64,000 if you live on campus. Reed virtually created the first-year-experience by requiring all freshmen to take Hum 110, a survey of humanities via the Western canon, team taught by almost all of the teachers on campus at one point or another. After lecture, the students break into 15-person study groups, headed by a professor, to discuss the material and also to get help with study skills, writing, etc. There are other colleges who are also using this model to a greater or lesser degree, but Reed has been doing it for 100 years. And they have their own nuclear research reactor, run by students.
- Reed is a college for hard-core academics, as well as hard-core partiers. Each senior writes an honest-to-goodness 70+ page thesis that sums up their time at Reed in a single research project. Many schools now require a “capstone project” for seniors, which sometimes amounts to little more than a scrapbook of “what I learned in college,” but Reed’s thesis, once written, needs to be defended in front of a panel of professors. Once all the theses have been successfully defended, the seniors have literally earned their laurels, process out of the library in the Thesis Parade and ceremonially burn their thesis drafts. Their final thesis is bound and gets stored in the “Thesis Tower” of the library, which holds the theses of every student who ever graduated from Reed, available to read or check out like any other book.
- Reed can be a haven for us intellectual mavericks, much like Mensa can be. People won’t think you’re weird for wanting to learn stuff, even maybe stuff not assigned by the prof. And most of the student body has a sense of humor. And some interesting sartorial choices.
- Another example of both the progressiveness and the sense of humor on Reed’s campus: The CAVE club. CAVE came into being as a reaction to the vegetarian and vegan students which abounded at Reed. The club totes around a BBQ and cooks burgers for people. Quickly they began offering vegetarian and then vegan options, because Reed. And I quote from the Student Activities website: “Once named: Carnivorous Alternatives to Vegetarian Eating. CAVE shall be re-branded as Carnivores and Vegetarians Eating. Why, you ask? Because I can. Also, I really like vegetables. Also I really like a few vegetarians. Get over it, and come eat some food.”
- The reason Reed does not assign grades to their students is because all of their students are at such a high level that giving A’s across the board would not distinguish them. Also most of the students are very grade-driven, and the faculty wants them to be more motivated by the learning than the grades. Students are allowed to see their transcripts (and their grades) if they ask, but are not otherwise offered them. In short, Reed is the school for students in search of a scholarly community with an irreverent streak.
- Also in the Pacific Northwest, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is less scholarly and even more irreverent. Just under 4,000 undergraduates (about 500 freshmen). Evergreen doesn’t have majors, grades, or even classes. Instead they have “areas of interest” and “programs.” These “programs” are interdisciplinary classes that allow you to learn about a subject from all sides. Evergreen is not a powerhouse in the selectivity (very nearly open enrollment) or standardized test realms (800-1200 *combined SAT reading and math), but their programs probably will not appeal to the Ivy League applicant. Unschoolers, though, will love this place!
- This shows how a “program” might shake out onto a transcript. Instead of taking three distinct classes that have some common materials, you focus on the common material to look at the subject from 360°.
- For example, if your area of emphasis is environmental studies, you will also study agriculture, ecology, field studies, geology, marine science and natural history. Evergreen is a national leader in its emphasis on the environment and clean energy. In fact, the Princeton Review highlighted the college’s free bus pass program, which reduces vehicular pollution; innovate heating and water conservation systems for campus housing; and the student green energy fee, which enables the college to us 100% renewable electricity and support hands-on student conservation projects.
- I can’t finish talking about Evergreen without mentioning their mascot, the Geoduck. A geoduck is a type of mollusk or clam. They are reputed to be delicious and a delicacy in Japan. Sportspickle named Speedy the Evergreen Geoduck “easily the worst college mascot. Or, you know, very possibly the best.” No comment from the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.
- This interdisciplinary program is one of the least expensive I’m going to mention this evening. As a state college, Evergreen costs just $8K for Washington State students and $21,000 for out-of-state students. Colleges of Distinction recognized Evergreen based on four factors: engaged students, great teaching, vibrant community and successful outcomes. They wrote: “True innovation is a joy to behold. The Evergreen State College has boldly departed from the stake standard operating practices that have come to shape academic programs at most institutions of higher learning.” According to a survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Evergreen freshman and seniors cite the remarkable quality of interaction with faculty members and other students, and the campus physical environment as keys to success.
- Evergreen comes very close to the One Class at a Time model of the Block Plan Colleges. Colorado College and Cornell College (in Iowa) both have students take 8 classes a year like any other college student, but they only take one class at a time for 3.5 weeks each, which a four day break in between. The block plan comes as quite a relief to students who like to study a subject in depth, without being pulled in many different directions every hour as in a typical high school.
- Colorado College is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They have about 2,000 undergrads, who pay $48,996 in tuition to attend. Their average SAT scores run from 625-730 and ACT 28-32. They’re very selective, taking only 18% of their applicants in 2014.
- That’s Pike’s Peak rising over the dorms at CC. You can also see it from the soccer field, and the exercycles in the athletic center. And you can visit it: one of the great features of the block plan is that freedom to travel during the block because you have no other classes to attend. Classes regularly leave campus to stay at one of the school’s cabins for the duration of the block. For example, ornithology and botany classes are able to have real field experience at the CC Cabin 30 miles west of campus. Even the calculus classes head out to the Baca Campus in the Sangre de Christo mountains 160 miles west. Why? Because it’s easier to concentrate on difficult topics without the distractions of campus. And, really, why not?
- Blocks do not stay in Colorado! One of the most popular (and my favorite to think about) is “The World of Odysseus: History and Myth.” This block is a month-long adventure through the Greek Isles in which students read Homer’s Odyssey while it’s following the crew’s route through the Aegean. Classes also in history, sociology, geology and science take place in various parts of North and South America. Students can take two or three blocks to spend a more traditional semester studying abroad, or they can design their own block trip, which can be funded by the college. In fact, “design your own block” is one of the extra essays required for application to CC, exactly because they want you to start imagining the possibilities even before you are accepted.
- Most classes are 15-16 students with one professor and taught seminar-style. CC is a great place for professors to come to teach one class, without missing too much of life at their own campus, so the school regularly hosts eminent visiting faculty from across the world. Because students are immersed in their classes, they are encouraged to “become” poets in creative writing classes, while math students “become” mathematicians and sociology majors “become” social scientists. The block plan has another benefit—students become incredibly efficient learners. “When you’ve got midterms at the beginning of the second week, you learn to study well very quickly. Honestly, when I spent a semester at another very rigorous college in the US and I found it easy because I was used to getting through a semester’s worth of material in a month,” Mohammad F, CC ‘16
- So if the block plan is so great, why don’t more schools do it? It’s expensive. CC has a 10:1 average teacher:student ratio. (Some classes have only 1-2 students in them.) That’s a lot of salary expense, plus the travel and extra campuses. Lots of overhead there. Most colleges don’t want to go to the trouble of of re-imagining the structure of their curriculum like CC has. For students who like the idea of studying one subject intensively or prefer not to have interruptions or distractions like other classes and other homework, Colorado College presents a great opportunity for a one-of-a-kind education.
- Cornell College is a small private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, IA. They have about 1125 undergraduates who pay $38,700 to attend. Their median SAT scores are between 510-670 and median ACT scores are between 23-29. So Cornell is not the highly-selective academic powerhouse that Colorado College is (or that Cornell University in Ithaca, NY is, for that matter), however they do offer the One Course At a Time plan like CC. So you don’t have to be a potential Ivy Leaguer to reap the benefits of the Block Plan. Cornell is also considerably cheaper than CC.
- Rare for smaller colleges, Cornell College provides full-time staff to advise pre-med, pre-MBA, and pre-law students. In fact, 100% of their pre-law students were accepted into law school in 2011-2013, compared with 84% nationwide and a 78% med school acceptance rate, compared with a national rate of 42%. Also 95% of the class of 2014 had graduated in four years, which saves time and money! Just yesterday, Fiske College Guides rated them one of only 24 Best Buy schools in the country.
- Cornell attracts unique and motivated students who lend their character to the campus community and actively define it. Cornell students represent a diverse, multi-talented, and engaged student body from across the national and around the world. They also were recognized as one of the Best College Cafeterias by BestColleges.com in 2013.
- I want to take a minute to discuss the onboarding process for block plan colleges. Both Colorado and Cornell Colleges have specifically planned First Year Experiences. These generally take the form of a common reading assignment over the summer before you attend, to provide you with something to talk about with your new dorm mates. They also require you to take a Freshman Experience block (Colorado requires two freshman blocks) which not only teach the subject matter but also teach you how to study rigorously and efficiently. You and 14 of your new best friends will experience the growing pains of adjusting to a block plan college together, with faculty support for critical reading, college-level writing, academic expectations etc. My guide at Colorado College said his Freshman blocks were the hardest classes he has ever taken, because he didn’t know what he was doing. And then he did.
- Prescott (press-kit) College follows a “block and quarter” trimester system, where they take a four week block, and then 11 weeks of multiple classes simultaneously. Like Evergreen, they expect students to engage in self-directed learning and are considered an eco-school (“Prescott was an early adherent to the outdoor education and adventure education models, and they believe that being in, surviving, exploring and paying very close attention to the outdoors is education and character forming in and of itself.”)
- We’ve looked at colleges that have an overlapping program of study (Evergreen) and colleges that allow you to study one class at a time in depth. Now we’re going to talk about a very special small liberal arts college with no majors, no electives and no professors.
- St. John’s College is a modern college, with a very old idea. Just like at Oxford and Cambridge and the original universities 800 years ago, St. John’s students study the Great Books with the help of “tutors.” Others would call them professors, but at St. John’s they are expected not to “profess” anything, but rather they are “the best students in the class,” helping the rest of the students wrestle with the material. And boy does it need wrestling!
- This is the reading list for freshman year. Intimidated? Add to this Ancient Greek, begun in freshman year with the goal of being able to translate some of these texts yourself by second semester.
- So this is how the schedule lays out. Every student, every semester, every year takes language (Ancient Greek Fr/Soph, Modern French Jr/Sr), Lab (which is the science section), Math (tracing the beginning of mathematical thought from angular geometry to calculus), Music (only Fr/Soph) and Seminar. Seminar is taught every Monday and Thursday night from 7-9pm. It is your literature, history, and philosophy classes all rolled into one. Sophomores don’t take lab because they are learning music theory, which includes the concepts of acoustics as well as linguistics.
- Every class at St. John’s is taught Socratic Seminar style. The tutor (or tutors in Seminar there is a larger class and two tutors) sits down with the other students and participate in the discussion—providing open-ended questions, defining terms and concepts (if no one else can), etc. They don’t lecture. Neither do they “lead” the discussion. I’m sure you’ve all had class “discussions” where the teacher very clearly had an answer in mind at the beginning and spent the whole class period trying to get someone to say it. That’s not how Seminar works. Instead of beginning with an objective, the tutors begin with a topic and the class works it over for two hours, trying to see what they can find in it. Everyone is expected to have done the reading, and usually have. In a class of 12-15, there is no place to hide.
- Janet was my tour guide—pre-med at a school with no pre-med program. When I asked her about how studying the great books of science got her ready for med school, she told me about her first day of Lab. “They took all the freshmen up to a meadow in the mountains above campus and told us to observe a living organism for three hours. One single organism—plant, animal, insect—by drawing, taking notes, detailed observations etc. Not only was it a good way to begin to get comfortable with the analysis that we bring to each of our classes, but it also began our year long study in Lab. Our objective for the year was to create a definition of life. What makes me alive and not a robot who can do all the things humans can do?” So they deal with the physical and the metaphysical at the same time.
- I took this picture primarily because the library at St. John’s looks so much like the library at Reed. The St. John’s library is a quiet zone—no talking allowed anywhere with the library. There is only one exception to this rule. The Don Rag and thesis defenses take place in the reading room on the second floor of the library. Like Reed, St. John’s give their students narrative evaluations and keep the letter grades for the transcript. However, instead of going over the evaluations with the student, they participate in a Don Rag. A don is the Oxford equivalent of a professor or tutor. I think you know what it means to rag on someone. During the don rag, you, the student enters the reading room where all of your tutors are sitting at a table. You sit in a chair in front of the table, and the tutors just talk about you like you aren’t there. They discuss you as a student in each of your classes—one of their jobs as tutors is to closely observe you as you learn. Janet’s don rag story.
- St. John’s has two campuses: one in Santa Fe, NM and one in Annapolis, MD. Students at one campus can easily spend time at the other campus if they tire of high desert or coastal Maryland. Each campus has between 300-400 high-achieving students. Like Colorado College, they encourage and prefer to admit students who have come to one of their summer academies to see how the Great Books concept fits them.
- If you’re interested in the Great Books concept, check out Shimer College in Chicago and, especially but not only if you are Catholic, Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai, CA and the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, NH. Reed and University of Chicago offer core curricula based on the Great Books concept. (That’s basically what Reed’s Hum 110 First year experience is.)
- According to USA Today, 79% of students with learning disabilities like dyslexia, ADHD and autism spectrum disorders, do not pursue a four-year college degree. Yet we know that many if not most 21st century jobs will require that bachelor’s degree. We also know that high IQ can co-exist with learning disabilities. Why should intelligent students be shut out of college simply because their learning style doesn’t mesh with the traditional classroom?
- The University of Denver (DU) is a private university in Denver (obviously). DU has 5600 undergraduates, and tuition is $44,000. DU is notable for its study abroad programs—nearly every student studies abroad and the school pays for them to do so—and for their graduation and placement rates. 93% of the class of 2014 graduated in 4 years. 97% of those students were employed or in grad school six months after graduation.
- The Learning Effectiveness Program is housed in the School of Education. LEP provides trained full-time staff mentors for students with a variety of learning differences, including dyslexia and other learning disabilities, ADHD, autism spectrum, mental health and other disorders. Students meet weekly with their mentor who helps them stay on track and talks through any issues they may have. Students also have access to time management and organization specialists and a variety of tutors (grad students and adjunct faculty) who can help them in any class. The LEP costs an extra $3,000 per semester. Students who don’t participate in the LEP can still access tutoring, extra time for tests and other accommodations through the disability services office.
- The staff at the LEP also work with faculty and provide professional development on designing curriculum to make it more accessible for students with disabilities. This goes beyond just offering extra time on tests to include testing in a distraction-free room, preprinted notes, and voice-to-text software, among others. The students are expected to advocate themselves for the accommodations they need, and to develop good study habits.
- Where the LEP is a program grafted onto a traditional liberal arts college, Landmark College, in Putney, VT was designed specifically for students with learning disabilities. The college is known for its innovative educational model, which combines learning strategies with the latest in assistive technology. The students are expected to become confident, empowered and independent learners. Landmark offers two and, now, four-year degrees as well as summer programs for students who will be attending other colleges or who are still in high school. For obvious reasons, the school does not report the standardized test scores or gpa of its incoming freshmen.
- Landmark offers full-time college to 544 undergraduates on campus. They also run a number of summer camps and transitional program—both on campus and around the country--for students with ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other learning differences who are attending other schools. Their tuition is $51,448 for full-time students. Prices for summer camps vary with location and duration.
- “The academic curriculum—and the individualized, holistic accommodation, coaching and training that each student receives—is designed to prepare students for transfer to four-year colleges with the skills, discipline and self-understanding necessary for continued success. Those students don’t only go on to state colleges or small private schools. Brown University has accepted students from Landmark in the past.
- Most schools with special programs for learning disabilities charge a fee for regular check-ins with staff counselors, specialized help with organization, and extra tutoring. The schools that don’t charge an extra fee are Landmark and Beacon Colleges (which are dedicated LD colleges) and Augsburg College’s CLASS program. Curry College is explicitly looking for twice-exceptional students, that is, gifted and learning disabled. The gold standard of these programs at regular universities is the Learning Effectiveness Program (or LEP) at the University of Denver.
- Early colleges are real colleges open to students between 14-18 years old. While most community colleges will admit anyone over the age of 15, these colleges and Early College High Schools are specifically focused on the needs and abilities of gifted teens. Up to 1/3 of high school drop outs are gifted teens who just don’t see the point anymore. Now they can enroll in college without a pre-existing grade skip, without having to accumulate useless credits and without having to graduate early.
- Let’s talk about early college programs. Bard College at Simon’s Rock was the first early college, founded in 1966 in Great Barrington, MA The school has 329 undergraduates, who pay $48,551. CR 620-680/M 620-720 ACT 29-31
- Most of the campus was built in the late 60’s/early 70’s so many of them look like Pizza Hut. This is the Student Center.
- The Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, or PEG, program at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA is a girls-only early college program that accepts student to college after 8th grade. There are 70+ PEGs out of 1423 total Mary Baldwin undergraduates. Tuition is $30,331 per year. SAT scores averaged 1750 for PEG students, although they are lower for the student body generally (900-1000).
- A pink sign on the main do0r of the college dorm reminded students to sign out. There are more rules: 11pm curfew, mandatory study hours, round-the-clock adult supervision and no boys allowed in the rooms. On weekends, they hop on buses for signtseeing activities or outings with other teenagers, including boys, from local boarding schools. Staff members shuttle them to Wal-Mart, take them to orthodontists appointments and karate lessons, remind them to wash dishes piled in dorm sinks.
- They can act like silly teenagers one minute and discuss Descartes the next. Most of the pegs feel they have as normal and experience as any other college students,” said Brenda Bryant, dean of students, quoted in the Washington Post. “They run for student government. They play varsity sports.” “In high school, a teacher would ask a question and we would just sit there and sit there, and eventually they’d answer themselves. People are here because they want to be here.”