Choosing the Right College Curriculum–How Much Choice Is Right For You?

I recently toured several colleges in New England, including Amherst and Hampshire Colleges in Massachusetts, and Bennington and Marlboro Colleges in Vermont.  These visits brought home the fact that students do have choices in the sorts of curriculum they would like to form the core of their academic experience in college.

The core of college is the curriculum, after all.  I mean, the residence halls, the athletic facilities, and the free massages are all nice, of course.  But this is school, not a resort.  So it makes sense to think about the kind of curricular structure is right for you.

This short video explains the “Open Curriculum” of Amherst College, and compares it to the more structured–but still very individually directed–academic structures of Bennington and Marlboro Colleges. 



Mark Montgomery
College Consultant

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Bennington College–An Independent, Individually Planned Curriculum

I spent some time on the campus of Bennington College in Vermont, where the curriculum is very different from most other colleges.  Bennington requires students to create educational “plans” that map out their entire academic experience.  Faculty members review these plans very thoroughly, and apparently about 70 or 75 percent of plans are rejected in the initial stages.  Bennington is off-beat, but it is still quite rigorous.

I asked Emmet, my student tour guide, to explain a Bennington education to me.  Here is what he told me.


Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant


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Bennington College: Creative, Self-Directed, Intellectually Serious Alternative

I recently spent a gorgeous spring afternoon on the campus of Bennington College in southern Vermont.  The campus is a lovely mixture of colonial architecture and internationalist modern styles, and 650 students are proud to be known as a relatively off-beat, alternative, and artistic bunch.  Like Marlboro, Bennington does not offer traditional majors, but requires students to develop their own plan of study that is closely supervised by the faculty.

This video offers a brief summary of my visit to Bennington.


Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant


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