Bard College at Simon's Rock

At Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon's Rock, age doesn't define intellect: our mission is to inspire the curiosity and creativity of motivated younger scholars with a challenging, empowering, and inclusive education in the liberal arts and sciences.

Bard College at Simon’s Rock is the only four-year college in the United States specifically designed to allow bright, highly motivated adolescents to fully realize their intellectual and creative potential by beginning college immediately after the 10th or 11th grade.

Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock is an independent boarding school that prepares bright, motivated 9th- and 10th-grade students to enter college two years early at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.Offering students both significant autonomy and appropriate support, Simon’s Rock fosters a diverse community of intellectual and chronological peers. Under the guidance of talented and dedicated faculty, students learn to formulate and defend their own ideas; to engage with the ideas of others; and to become innovative thinkers who contribute with purpose to the world around them.

We take you seriously as scholars and as thinkers. We believe your ideas matter. In small classes with lots of individual attention, you’ll get an education that’s about connecting and synthesizing—not memorizing and regurgitating.

As you study science and math, languages and literature, the social sciences, and the arts, you’ll learn how to learn: you’ll find that asking insightful questions becomes second nature, and discover commonalities and connections no one noticed before—a surprisingly rare skill, and one that’s highly valuable in graduate school, the workplace, and life.

You’ll be expected to write (and write, and write) in every class at Simon’s Rock—tangible proof of your ability to think clearly and coherently, and to develop a complex, persuasive argument. That’s why your very first experience on campus is the intensive weeklong Writing and Thinking workshop led by faculty from different disciplines. You’ll gather in small groups (generally 11 students and a professor) to pursue the arts of critical thinking and clear expression.

Simon’s Rock is college now for motivated younger students ready to realize their intellectual and creative potential.Our students typically enter Simon’s Rock after finishing 10th or 11th grade, which means that they skip the last year or two of high school and arrive at Simon’s Rock without diplomas. They make a deliberate break from the standard academic track to dive straight into college at an age when most of their peers are just heading into their junior or senior years of high school.

But Simon’s Rock is not some kind of “halfway” college or an unconventional prep school. It’s a rigorous four-year institution, accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), part of the prestigious Bard network, and regularly recognized for its excellence (ranked #7 in the Princeton Review’s top 20 schools with the most highly rated faculty; students awarded 10 Fulbright fellowships since 2010).

We know this path is not for everyone, but for those who make the leap, choosing early college at Simon’s Rock has been demonstrated over 50 years to give our students a head start on finding and pursuing their passions—and to set them up for a lifetime of personal and professional success.

The time to undertake a challenging interdisciplinary college program is the moment a young person is most curious about the world, most driven to ask big questions, and flexible enough in their thinking to make profound connections. For many bright students, that time comes well before a conventional high school track allows.At Simon’s Rock, our students thrive because they are given the chance to do challenging work in an engaged community at the moment they are ready for it.

“Early college” is a term used to describe a number of different programs. By “early college” some people may mean AP classes or IB programs, or dual enrollment at a high school and college. It is also sometimes used to describe a situation in which a student graduates early and enrolls in college classes with an older cohort.

Early college at Simon’s Rock is different. We’re the only full-time, four year, highly ranked college of the liberal arts and sciences designed for motivated students ready for college after the 10th or 11th grade.If it’s the right decision for you, you’ll leave high school (a diploma isn’t required) and start college.

Simon’s Rock is a small, intensive college of the liberal arts and sciences specifically designed to offer students a broad-minded, paradigm-shifting college education after the 10th or 11th grade. We take young minds seriously enough to offer a full college experience beyond what they might get from an AP/IB class or a test that duplicates college textbook material, offering over 40 concentrations (our version of majors), plus a large (and ever-evolving) selection of special programs, internships, and study-abroad opportunities.

Our students join a diverse, tight-knit community of their intellectual and chronological peers. We’re a community of individuals, but nobody is an outlier here because of their age, or their decision to seek greater academic challenges.