Orange High School

Bard Early College: 

About Bard

In an effort to address challenges of equity of access and success in higher education, the Bard Sequence works to provide a meaningful bridge between high school and college, one in which a young person’s first exposure to higher education is rigorous and intellectually inspiring while also providing them with the support they need to become confident, self-motivated college students. The Bard Sequence is based on the belief that all students benefit from a safe space in which they can learn to succeed in college by failing forward, taking risks in the classroom, and finding their voices as collegiate learners.

Bard Sequence’s theory of change is rooted in the belief — backed by 20+ years of evidence from our early colleges — that students are most successful in college when they have early and authentic exposure to and preparation for serious collegiate study. This gives young people the confidence that they have the core skills they need to succeed academically and socially as members of a college community. This is particularly true for the students that Sequence is focused on serving: first-generation college students, low-income students, and students from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds. Early college fundamentally changes students’ high school experiences by allowing them to learn in a more student-centered, responsive way and helping them develop critical knowledge, skills, confidence, and momentum toward the postsecondary paths of their choosing.

Building on the success and ongoing innovation of Bard Early College, Bard Sequence is an opportunity for schools to provide students with engaging, meaningful early college experiences. Students leave the Bard Sequence with an official transcript from Bard College certifying that allows them to transfer their credits to a wide range of institutions of higher education. On top of this, students’ experience taking college courses in the humanities provides them with the preparation and confidence to successfully pursue post-secondary degrees.

Seminar Sequence: 

The core of Bard Sequence is Bard Seminar Sequence, a four semester, interdisciplinary humanities course totaling 12 Bard College credits. Each Seminar course builds upon the others, exploring themes of identity, civilization, disruption, and resistance through the discussion of a set of challenging and culturally responsive works of literature, philosophy, art, and beyond, spanning across the range of human history. The Seminar Sequence guides students not just to observe and understand the conversations between these texts, but to join in and orchestrate that intellectual conversation themselves through self-reflection, discussion, and creative and academic writing. Throughout the course, students build and practice skills that are central to any program of post-secondary study, including close-reading and textual analysis, critical thinking and discourse, and college-level composition and editing.

For more information about the Bard Seminar Sequence, please review our course descriptions.