Bennington College Viewbook

You contain multitudes.

So should your education.

Benni�gto� College

For nearly a century, Bennington College has stood for excellence, innovation, and rigor in liberal arts education.

Now, more than ever, the world needs interdisciplinary and multifaceted thinkers.

On our stunningly beautiful campus in Vermont, we educate those students who want to “hyphenate their future” through a structured and rigorous process we call The Bennington Plan—an unparalleled education with unmatched support.

5

#

IN THE NATION

U.S. News & World Report 2022-23

Also nationally ranked for value, teaching, and social mobility

3

BEST COLLEGE THEATER

9

BEST CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

#

The Princeton Review 2024

IN THE NATION

#

IN THE NATION

Benni�gto� College

MOST INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS

The Princeton Review 2024

Design Your Benni�gto� Plan

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Your 4-Year Academic Plan PAGE 4

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Your Own Faculty Team PAGE 12

High-Profile Internships Every Year PAGE 18

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An Inclusive Community on a 440-Acre Makerspace

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Year 1: Explore and identify the questions you want your Plan to answer. Years 2 & 3: With mentorship and support, dive deep into a particular discipline or cluster of disciplines to shape your courses and your Plan. Year 4: Through a thesis or senior project, you will bring it all together and define your impact.

Not only do you have a faculty advisor, you have a Plan committee—three faculty practitioners who are, themselves, extraordinary writers, artists, scientists, performers, policy makers, and scholars— who mentor and guide you toward your best work.

You’ll spend six weeks each year, what we call the Field Work Term, working in some of the most exciting organizations, companies, and institutions around the world.

When you graduate, you not only have a valuable degree, you have an incredible resume to go with it.

“The lights are always on,” is an expression of Bennington’s unending creativity and innovation. Living in unique houses, each with its own identity, you and your friends will inspire each other to stand up, step forward, be yourself, and put your ideas into the world.

Being inclusive also means we work hard to make a Bennington education affordable for our students.

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1

Plan Big: Design Your 4-Year Academic Plan Open the way for interdisciplinary insights, rigorous creativity, and the skills to invent the new.

YEAR 1: STRETCH AND GROW

Learn broadly, and learn boldly. Work with your faculty advisor to take courses in areas guided by your interests and needs—not constrained by the learner you’ve been before— and make your choices as the learner you want to be. Build the foundation of your own education, and develop the Bennington Capacities—to inquire, research, create, engage, and communicate. As you gain your bearings and explore new opportunities, reflect on how your first year at Bennington will guide the next (and the next and the next!).

YEAR 2: BRING YOUR PLAN INTO FOCUS

Create your own, unique educational Plan, one that connects across disciplines to feed your passion and curiosity and celebrates your strengths while addressing your weaknesses.

Collaborate with your Plan committee—your faculty advisor and two additional faculty mentors expert in areas that support your ambitions.

Propose your Plan to them, hear their guidance, and work together to chart a course to a more mature phase of learning and creating.

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YEAR 3: LIVE YOUR PLAN

Learn, make, and do the work of your Plan every day—even when that is re-making and re-doing—as your understanding of your goals and potential develop and grow.

Lean into the faculty and peer relationships that set Bennington apart as an intellectual and creative community. Connect on- and off-campus experiences in your Plan as you move through classes, Field Work Terms, and personal growth. As your learning builds, look ahead with your Plan committee to advanced work and a final year you will be proud of.

“While Bennington encourages intellectual exploration, I still have space to specialize and hone in on the technical requirements for graduate school.”

Shlesha Pradhan ’24 from Kathmandu, Nepal, studies Biology, Neuroscience, Dance, and Music.

They are interested in the ways music affects the physical therapy experience and its effectiveness and aim to become a multidisciplinary physical therapist.

YEAR 4: ACHIEVE AND ELEVATE

Culminate your Plan in a piece of advanced work that demonstrates your Capacities in the classroom, lab, studio, or all three: a study, production, public action campaign, or other achievement specifically yours. As you celebrate your accomplishment with faculty and classmates, elevate your thinking to consider how your plans and successes extend beyond Bennington into life and a career.

TAKE COURSES AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE Bennington students can crossenroll at Williams College for courses related to their Bennington Plan. Students at both colleges expand their study opportunities through this partnership.

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Hy ARCHITECTURE

DRAMA

PSYCHOLOGY

POLITICAL SCIENCE

ANTHROPOLOGY

PUBLIC HEALTH

CERAMICS

ate Your Fu ture GLOBAL AFFAIRS

POLITICS

PUBLIC ACTION

ART HISTORY

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

ASIAN STUDIES

HISTORY

CREATIVE WRITING

DRAWING

JAPANESE

PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY

ITALIAN

LITERATURE

DIGITAL ARTS

ANIMATION & PRODUCTION DESIGN

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

CHINESE

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PHILOSOPHY

BIOLOGY

EDUCATION

DANCE

PRINTMAKING

VIDEO

FRENCH

phen MUSIC

SCULPTURE

MATHEMATICS

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

CHEMISTRY

Areas of Study: Bennington students have made plans using courses that span the following areas of study: Advancement of Public Action Animation & Production Design Anthropology Architecture Art History

“The Plan is a really great learning experience, because once you get out of school, you have to develop your own plan committee in life.”

Sawyer London ’24 is interested in ceramics that blur the boundary between functional and sculptural work. He uses materials others have discarded while staying true to the look and feel of the work he wants to produce, including his understanding of composition, color, and texture.

Areas of Study: Ceramics and Sustainability

Biology Ceramics Chemistry Chinese Computer Science Cultural Studies & Languages Dance Digital Arts Drama Earth Science Economics Environmental Studies French History Japanese Literature Mathematics Media Studies Music Painting & Drawing Philosophy Photography Physics & Astronomy Politics Printmaking Psychology Sculpture Spanish Video Visual Arts

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Benni�gto� College

“Bennington has made me a lot more independent. I'd say it's put me in a position to take charge of my own education, and I've grown in a lot of ways. Honestly, I like being in a small community.

I like knowing everybody's name. I like to walk outside and be able to say ‘hi’ to people and know them.”

Harlem native Alma Reiss Navarre ’24 chose Bennington, because it offered “a mix of great financial aid and the ability to do everything that I love at one time.” They study visual art, dance, and accessibility with the personal rule that they will “leave no question unasked.”

INQUIRY:

How can the study of color help build community?

AREAS OF STUDY:

Visual art, dance, and accessibility COURSES:

• Chromaphilia • Walls: Literal and Symbolic • Mediation and Negotiation for Complex Conflicts FIELD WORK TERMS:

• Smack Mellon, Brooklyn • Steven & William Ladd Studio, New York City • Independent Study in Visual Art, Dance, and Bookmaking • Lake Studios Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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“I really want to make lives better, especially in developing countries. Studying here has given me more advantages. Typically, I would need to work for five years on domestic issues before being given assignments that address international business. But I can do that right away because of Bennington!”

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Ryota Terashima ’24 used his experience at Bennington to secure a highly competitive job at a Tokyo-based company before graduation. He will be working at the intersection of infrastructure technology and international development.

“I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to shape myself and shape my interests here and then take all of that passion and all of those ideas and all of this exposure and put it into hard work.”

Dance, acting, directing, anthropology, psychology, public action, and influential Field Work Term placements led Stefanos Zogopoulos ’23 to his passion in costume design. All his Bennington experiences came together in his senior work.

Alisha Bade Shrestha ’23 studied media, theater, translation, and public action. She collaborated with Stefanos Zogopoulos on his senior work, a production of Peerless by Jiehae Park.

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Your Own Faculty Team

Plan to be taken seriously and to be encouraged by your professors—stellar faculty who are shaping the fields you’re interested in. Bennington’s unique model of student-faculty collaboration— your own team of faculty members committed to you and your ideas—is why 95% of Bennington graduates say faculty encourage them to pursue their goals, compared with 22% of graduates nationally.

95

Bennington students say % offaculty encouraged them to pursue their goals, compared to 22% of graduates nationally.

Jenny Boully (center) is the author of seven books, most recently, Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life.

Her first book, The Body: An Essay, is regarded as a canonical text in experimental essays, poetic prose, and imaginative form.

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A few of the extraordinary writers, artists, scientists, performers, policy makers, and scholars on our faculty.

Award-winning musician, composer, and sound designer Michael Wimberly excavates and explores improvisation and the music of the African Diaspora.

Intermedia-sound artist Senem Pirler’s interdisciplinary work crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, video art, performance, and installation.

Benni�gto� College

Shawtane Bowen is a writer, actor, and producer. He is a founding member of Astronomy Club, the first all-Black house team at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater in New York.

Özge Savaş is a critical and applied social psychologist whose work is in conversation with decolonial, intersectional feminist, liberation, community, and cultural psychologies.

Amie McClellan is a cell biologist who uses baker’s yeast to explore how “molecular chaperones” participate in helping proteins attain and maintain their structure and function and how this relates to human diseases that arise when this process goes awry.

Dance artist Levi Gonzalez’s work employs a queer corporeal logic to resist narrow definitions of knowledge and experience.

Dancer, mediator, and educator Susan Sgorbati is the originator of Emergent Improvisation and the director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action.

Poet and essayist Franny Choi is the winner of the Elgin Award for Science Fiction Poetry.

Blake Jones’s research integrates Endocrinology, Behavioral Ecology, Cognitive Science, Ornithology, and Conservation Biology.

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Orchestration

Courses are both classic and up-to-theminute, with as much as 50% of the curriculum changing each year.

NICHOLAS BROOKE

Punk Culture: An Interdisciplinary Approach Comparing Political Institutions

STEVE MOOG

ROTIMI SUBERU

Intro to Sketch Comedy 1 Visionary Architecture

SHAWTANE BOWEN

Framed? Literature Heroines on Screen

DONALD SHEREFKIN

NOELLE ROUXEL-CUBBERLY

Technology Entrepreneurship

Intermediate Video: Migration and Landscape

MELTEM BALLAN

JEN LIU

Photography, Materiality, and Storytelling LUIZA FOLEGATTI

Sounding Home: Music, Migration and Diaspora JOSEPH ALPAR

Pretty Lies, Ugly Truths, and Deep Fakes: An Introduction to Oil Painting J BLACKWELL

Poesis: Calling Psychology Into Existence: Study of Expressive Arts’ influences on Psychology SHELLEY JACKSON

Benni�gto� College

On the Question of Violence: Inquiry, Movement, and Rupture

The Art of Literary Translation: Your Histories, Texts, and Authorial Selves

DAVID BOND

MARGUERITE FEITLOWITZ

Creating Immersive Soundscapes from Information: An Introduction to Data Sonification

Responding to Site / Site Specific Dance

JEN KUTLER

ERIN ELLEN KELLY

The Business Side of Music

Idiosyncratic Tools

KYOKO KITAMURA

JOHN UMPHLETT

Gothic Vision: Specters of Subversion, 1300 to Now

Alternate Visions: Seeing the world through Women and LGBTQIA+ Contemporary Photographers

J. VANESSA LYON

FARZANA WAHIDY

Race, Robots, and Asian/American Literature Songs in the Key of Wonder

FRANNY CHOI

MICHAEL WIMBERLY

Conflict Resolution Theories: An Introduction MICHAEL COHEN

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Field Work Term Opportunities Real-world experience has been built into a Bennington education since the beginning.

We call it Field Work Term, and it means you’re guaranteed not one or two but four internships. Every year you spend six weeks working off campus. This is another reason Bennington graduates earn such high marks from employers: they are truly experienced by the time they graduate and have built a valuable resume as well as earned a degree.

Museum Fellows Term: Accessing New York’s Art World Museum Fellows are chosen from among Bennington College student applications and provided the opportunity to live, work, and study in New York City for 20 weeks. They intern at a museum or cultural institution, take classes offered by Bennington College, and experience art in the city.

Left to right, Museum Fellows Term Program Director Elizabeth White, 2023 Fellows, and Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

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Field Work Term Fellowships

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National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Recent graduates have studied gamma rays from astrophysical sources at the University of Utah, identified the properties of soft matter in a lab at Laney Graduate School's Summer Opportunity for Academic Research (LGS-SOAR) at Emory University, and created migration studies materials at Vassar College.

Fellowships to Fund Field Work Term Placements Prestigious fellowships—including the Endeavor Foundation Environmental Action Fellowship, Iftekhar Entrepreneurial Fellowship, Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation Fellowship, the Newman and Cox Public Action Fellowship, and others—fund exciting Field Work Term opportunities around the world.

“One of the magical things is you feel like you’re participating in culture— the kind of culture happening in New York City and Los Angeles.”

98

%

of students are lauded by employers for their innovation and creativity (98% vs. the national average of 25%).

93

%

of Bennington graduates, six months out, are employed, enrolled in service programs, or in grad school.

97

%

of employers would rehire a Bennington intern.

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An Inclusive Community on a 440-Acre Makerspace Our entire campus is a gorgeous, creative incubator for all areas of study—from astronomy to the visual arts—with the classrooms, studios, labs, stages, equipment, and materials you need to create, to make, and to test your ideas.

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LGBTQ-FRIENDLY The Princeton Review 2024

IN THE NATION

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#

BEST ARCHITECTURE Architectural Digest

IN THE NATION

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#

TOP 50 GREEN COLLEGES The Princeton Review 2024

IN THE NATION

Benni�gto� College

BENNINGTON.EDU/VISIT

Offering one of southern Vermont’s most breathtaking views—dubbed the End of the World—this is where modern dance was born. The houses that border the lawn were home to Bret Easton Ellis ’86 and Pulitzer Prize-winner Donna Tartt ’86.

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In 1935, at age 32, Zora Neale Hurston presented a talk on Black American music and dance.

Ralph Ellison gave talks and readings in the lounge.

R. Buckminster Fuller constructed an early prototype of the geodesic dome at Bennington in 1945.

Frank Lloyd Wright's mid1930s lecture at Bennington included his opinions of the College's Colonial Revival architecture.

Benni�gto� College

Commons is the historic and beloved center of the campus community. It combines dining, socializing, classrooms, and study areas within a collection of dynamic spaces.

Martha Graham’s Letter to the World premiered on the third-floor stage.

Bob Dylan performed on that same stage—twice.

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Room to Be Who You Are If you want to be part of a lifelong community that will give you the space, the courage, and the friendship to stand up, step forward, and put your ideas into the world, it’s here. It starts in lots of smaller communities in our Houses.

HOUSES-COLONIAL

The Colonial Houses have hardwood floors, fireplaces in living rooms, and kitchens; some feature porch swings or courtyards, others open to Commons Lawn, and others include pianos. There are four floor plans providing a variety of room types and layouts.

BARNES HOUSES

Also known as the 70s Houses or Milk Crate Houses, the Barnes Houses have some of the biggest rooms on campus. All Barnes Houses have hardwood floors, comfortable living rooms, and kitchens with dishwashers.

WOO HOUSES

These award-winning houses have been featured in Architectural Record. Each three-story house is equipped with an elevator, living room with fireplace, kitchen with dishwasher, and balconies.

SHINGLE COTTAGE

Shingle houses six seniors every year who are selected on a lottery basis. It is the nearest to the

Benni�gto� College

Visual and Performing Arts Center (VAPA) and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA).

WELLING TOWNHOUSE

An off-campus co-op in North Bennington, Welling Townhouse is about a 20-minute walk to Commons. Welling features spacious rooms and organic food.

LONGMEADOW

Dedicated to living in an intentional community on campus, this house gives juniors and seniors the opportunity to form and shape their own community standards and to design the type of community in which they would like to live.

PARAN CREEK APARTMENTS

Located in North Bennington, the Paran Creek Apartments are in a newly renovated historical mill that spans the width of the river. A walking/cycling path leads from the campus soccer field directly to the Paran Creek Apartments and takes about 15 minutes to walk.

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The lights are always

on 29

Music. Bold fashion.

Dramatic performances.

Percussion. Organic farmraised food. Movement.

Laughter. Voices engaged in insightful dialog. Cultural exploration. Creative synergy. Inspiring lectures.

All-out worship of natural beauty. These are some of the common elements of social life at Bennington.

Sunfest, Bennington’s own music festival featuring Bennington's amazing student bands, recent alumni performances, and professional acts Rollerama, an annual roller skating dance party Guest lectures, poetry readings, and scientific presentations More than 40 clubs and organizations covering everything from literary translation to powerlifting. Students connect over shared cultural heritage and the love of the game Animal Crossing. And, if you can’t find a club that suits you, it’s easy to create one.

The combination of club events, casual gatherings, and collegesponsored programs means that there are multiple engaging things to do every night of the week.

Benni�gto� College

Some Recent Student Clubs: Asian Film Club B-Rad (Bennington Radio) Badminton Club Bennington Drag and Queer Performance Club Black Student Union Chess Club CIDSU (Chronically Ill & Disabled Student Union) Color Guard Club Data Science Club Doctor Who Club!

Dodgeball Drama Collective FLoW (First-generation, Low-income, Working-class Students) GenAction Bennington Latine Student Union Muslim Students Association Magic the Gathering (M)othertongues Magazine Powerlifting Club Restorative Justice Rocky Horror Picture Show Club SEPC (Student Educational Policies Committee) SILO Magazine Skate and Create Soccer Club South Asian Students Association The Fool The French Club (Le club Français) The Improv Club The Lucid Dreaming Club The Unbored Games Club Chess Club Bennington Outdoors Club Philosophy Club Tennis Club Polar Narratives Club

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The Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Center, its 120,000-squarefeet equipped with state-of-the art technical labs and 20 studio spaces, is open 24/7. Four floors of space to create means your ideas are never boxed in.

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Take courses that matter to you—with no general education requirements.

Philosophical Zombies and Super-intelligent Robots CATHERINE MCKEEN

Political Ideologies in Action JOHN HULTGREN

Women and Human Mobility ANDREA GALINDO

Seminar in Comparative Democratization ROTIMI SUBERU

Decolonization of Work and Career in Psychology to Promote Equity and Social Justice SHELLEY JACKSON

Re-Thinking Society: Radical Visions PAUL VOICE

Dirt Line: Soil reveals stories about climate, communities, and time ALEXIS ELTON

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Differential Geometry, Gauge Theories, and Gravity

Introduction to Cancer Biology

ANDREW MCINTYRE

AMIE MCCLELLAN

Managing Complexity for an Abundant Future Language Contact and Shift

JESSE MCDOUGALL

LEAH PAPPAS

Intro to Maps and Geographic Information Systems TIM SCHROEDER

Games and Probability JOSEF MUNDT

A History of Mathematics TIMOTHY KANE

Population Ecology and Ecological Models KATHRYN MONTOVAN

Introduction to Rust Programming Language MICHAEL COREY

Psychedelics: Mind and Brain BLAKE JONES

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Ground break ASAD MALIK ’19, CEO of Jadu,

a virtual reality company, has been featured in publications including The Independent, Forbes, and Rolling Stone

ers Benni�gto� College

LIZ LERMAN ’69

Choreographer and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient

Start Here

Culture creators, movement starters, icons, and iconoclasts make this place—and it makes them—from the computer scientistdesigner behind Xbox to the makers of The Matrix and Twilight to alumni remaking urban public transportation to renewable energy entrepreneurs. Even before you graduate, you’ll have this alumni network to help you.

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JONATHAN LETHEM ’86,

Novelist and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient

SALLY MANN ’73,

Boundary-pushing contemporary photographer and critically acclaimed memoirist AMELIA MEATH ’10,

Singer-songwriter of Sylvan Esso and the folk trio Mountain Man

CARLOS MENDEZ-DORANTES, PHD, ’15,

GÜVENÇ ÖZEL ’02,

who studies the formation of cancer-associate genetic abnormalities

Director of the IDEAS Lab at UCLA and winner of a NASA competition to design habitation on Mars

MICHAEL POLLAN ’76,

Journalist and bestselling author who has raised the American consciousness of food

DONNA TARTT ’86,

Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Goldfinch and The Secret History

ANDREA DWORKIN ’68,

Radical feminist writer and activist

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PHOTOS VIA GETTY AND WIKIPEDIA

DEBORAH BORDA ’71,

President and CEO of the New York Philharmonic

JORDAN THOMAS ’92

Built one of the top legal practices in the country defending those who expose corporate wrongdoing

BRET EASTON ELLIS ’86,

Published his first novel, Less Than Zero, while at Bennington BRUCE BERMAN ‘74,

Chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures who produced The Matrix trilogy and other blockbusters OUSSEYNOU DIOME ’14,

Called a “creative disruptor” in the field of agricultural finance by Forbes JASON FRIDLEY ’97,

Plant ecologist addressing climate change

BETTY FORD ’37,

HELEN FRANKENTHALER ’49,

Painter and pioneer of abstract expressionism

U.S. First Lady and pioneering advocate for addiction treatment

SOFIA ALVAREZ ’07, play-

PETER DINKLAGE ’91,

Emmy-award winning actor of Game of Thrones

SPENCER COX ’90,

Groundbreaking AIDS Activist

wright, screenwriter, and director known for To All the Boys I've Loved Before and Along for the Ride

MELISSA ROSENBERG ’86,

The screenwriting genius behind the Twilight saga and the hit shows Dexter and Jessica Jones

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Resources for Your Education Merit scholarships, need-based scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study allocations make Bennington affordable to students from a wide range of socioeconomic situations. In fact, the 2023 New York Times College-Access Index ranked Bennington #19 among liberal arts colleges nationwide for economic diversity among students.

Merit Scholarships: Regardless of financial need, every applicant is considered for meritbased scholarships without a separate application. Scholarships are awarded based on the overall strength of the student’s application for admission and recognize outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. These scholarships are automatically renewed each year to students in good academic standing.

Benni�gto� College

Financial Aid Forms Required: Domestic Applicants: CSS Profile Form and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Form International Applicants: Bennington College Application for International Student Financial Aid

Bennington awards millions in scholarships every year.

$32 million awarded in 2022-23

77

%

of undergraduates received needbased aid.

Bennington's 2022 graduates' average debt was

47

% lower

than the debt of students who attended other private colleges and universities.

“Best Value College” The Princeton Review 2021

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Benni�gto� College

Admission Each year, Bennington attracts thousands of applicants from nearly all 50 U.S. states and more than 100 countries. Bright, talented, curious, and engaged students bring diverse backgrounds and varied perspectives that contribute to the vibrancy of our community.

Bennington offers two application options.

• The Common Application is a standard submission with required recommendations and transcripts.

• The Dimensional Application invites prospective students to share a collection of work that reflects their creativity, curiosity, and readiness.

Class of 2027:

24 18

%

BIPOC

%

Financial Aid and Application Deadlines: Early Decision: November 15 Early Action: December 1 Early Decision 2: January 15 Regular Decision: January 15 Fall Transfer Priority: March 15 Spring Transfer: November 1 There’s no application fee, and Bennington is test-optional.

FIRSTGENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS

27

%

PELL GRANT RECIPIENTS

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Bennington liberates and nurtures the individuality and rigorous creativity of its students, supporting them as they forge their own paths and work toward a world more beautiful, sustainable, democratic, and just.

Apply at BENNINGTON.EDU/APPLY

DESIGN BY PENTAGRAM PHOTOS BY LUISE STAUSS