Set in Small Town Mountainous Vermont
Select among 850 Classes and 44 Majors
Superlative Foreign Language and Science Departments
Commons Systems Housing
For those of you who enjoy strapping on your Rossignol Avengers and skiing down a slope just minutes after leaving your class in physics, or shouting in German, or any of the other 10 languages taught, across the slopes where the Adirondacks and Green Mountains shoulder up on either side of Lake Champlain, or just sitting in meticulous marble and limestone quads viewing alpine vistas on a clear autumn day, Middlebury, whether you’ve heard of it or not, is what you’re pining for.
Middlebury, a small town Vermont liberal arts college of 2,500 undergraduates rests on 350 acres, a mere 5 minutes from the town of Middlebury; it also has a separate 1800-acre mountain campus, which contains its Bread Loaf School of English, home of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. As a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) it plays against other similar schools such as Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Hamilton, Tufts, Williams, and Wesleyan.
Middlebury also has qualities many students seek in a small private liberal arts school:
Strictly caters to undergraduates—all classes are taught by professors
Professors place emphasis on teaching not research
Undergraduates have broad opportunities to research with mentoring faculty
It is small and accessible. The student faculty ration is 9:1,mean class size is 16, retention and 4-year graduation rates are over 90%
Offers need-blind admissions (as do the Ivy League and most of the other highly selective private schools)
What amazes most students about Middlebury, however, is the scope of its offerings. Middlebury offers 850 classes among its 44 majors (with the ability to minor or double major). Its total immersion language programs are particularly famous and effective (each summer it brings in hundreds of students to master one of 10 tongues). Junior year study abroad includes Middlebury campuses from Russia to Latin America. Additionally, Middlebury also is affiliated with the Monterey Institute of International Studies for teaching graduate level language in California.
Middlebury encourages relationships between its students and professors. Each freshman enrolls in a seminar that emphasizes analysis, discussion, and writing, taught by a full professor, who becomes the student’s first year advisor. Sophomore year also includes an advanced writing course. By senior year, many students do a capstone thesis, requiring extensive research, and advisement from one of Middlebury’s professors. Middlebury desires in each of its graduates a broad foundation of knowledge, solid research and writing skills, and at least one or two close relationships with professors who can validate their worth for either graduate school or the real world.
Even though Middlebury’s roots are firmly in the classics and liberal arts, it now offers programs in a range of pre-professions: architecture, law, medicine, education, and engineering. Not surprising as Middlebury has always been an educational innovator: it was one of the first schools to adopt coeducation, establish international studies programs, and introduce the Environmental Studies major. Middlebury also boasts superlative science departments, with a particular strength in physics.
Unique among its offerings are its five ‘commons’ systems, a housing program for entering freshmen, in which each is assigned an advisor, usually the professor of their seminar. This aids freshmen in quickly assimilating into the Middlebury community and adjusting to its rigorous academics. On a lighter note, if you ski, a season pass to the Snow Bowl for all undergrads, is $100. This is just one more way a school boasting a varsity sport participation rate of 27% keeps its students physically active.
Middlebury offers academics that are as rigorous as any college in the country. Even its selection of majors and classes belies a school of only 2500 undergraduates. Couple this with the physical beauty of its campus and its strong departments across foreign language, sciences, and even pre-professional programs, its highly entrepreneurial educational bent, and it becomes evident why Middlebury just might be the best college no one has heard of. Word is spreading.