A Bennington Education

Step outside traditional majors. - At Bennington you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.

You get graduate-style academic advising as an undergrad. - You will work closely with faculty to design the content, structure, and sequence of your study and practice—your Plan. In one-on-one sessions with your faculty advisor and in meetings with your faculty Plan committee, your teachers serve as both mentors and guides. They help you discover how your intellectual interests and professional ambitions might shape an education of depth, breadth, and rigor. They guide your progress to ensure that your Plan is challenging, academically sound, and significant.

You'll complete a minimum of four annual internship experiences. - For two months every winter, you will work with an organization or institution of your choosing, anywhere in the world, to apply what you have learned on campus and to focus what you study and make at Bennington—engaging the field that interests you without waiting for graduation. This is your Field Work Term.

You will engage a community of active makers and practitioners. - The faculty and administration are mentors and peers ready to engage with your work, in addition to being subject matter experts. The Bennington community extends far beyond the campus, offering connections to notable alumni, colleagues, and employers around the world.

What does it all mean?

Bennington students graduate with a capacity to get it done, to put themselves out there, to find a novel solution. The proof is in the outsized impact our alumni have on the world’s stage: two winners of the Pulitzer Prize in literature—in a single year; four MacArthur Geniuses; too many Emmy and Obie and Bessie winners to count; the first U.N. Independent Expert on Minority Issues; the youngest winner of the Man Booker Prize; heads of America’s most influential cultural institutions; a National Institute of Mental Health “Innovative New Scientist”; a member of the NASA–prize winning team that designed a habitat for Mars exploration—just to name a few.