525 E. Houston Street, New York, NY, 10002
No, Bard High School Early College is not a private school. It is a public early college high school operated through a partnership between Bard College and the New York City Department of Education for New York City residents.
No. While BHSEC Manhattan shares some characteristics with charter schools, such as autonomy in hiring administrators and faculty, BHSEC Manhattan operates as a partnership between Bard College and the local public school system. As a college, BHSEC does not use a lottery-based admissions process. BHSEC is governed by a Memorandum of Understanding between Bard College and the NYC DoE.
No, Bard High School Early College is not a specialized school. However, BHSEC is a selective school and all students who apply must meet all of our criteria to be considered for admission.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding between Bard College and the NYC DoE, BHSEC Manhattan shapes its curriculum, first and foremost, as a rigorous course of study in the liberal arts and sciences that meets Bard College requirements for a general education during the first two years of college. While students take local standardized assessments, those assessments do not drive the Bard curriculum or the material taught in the classroom; to the extent possible, state and local required assessments are given during the 9th and 10th grades so that they do not interfere with the associate in arts degree curriculum taught in the 11th and 12th grades. Students have choice over courses within the academic disciplines offered at Bard: Division of the Arts, Division of Languages and Literature, Division of Mathematics and Sciences, and Division of Social Sciences. Our course catalogue is available here.
The Bard High School Early College model allows all enrolled students the opportunity to earn an associate in arts degree from Bard College, worth approximately 60 transferable credits, completely free of charge. This saves students and their families up to two years of college tuition, fees, and related costs. While there are additional costs of providing a college program in high school, Bard relies on funding from public and private sources to ensure that costs are not passed on to students and families.
For general information about Bard Early College, click here.
New York City residents who are in the 8th grade.
Fill out the NYC Department of Education (DOE) Application for Admission to High School in MySchools and submit the BHSEC assessment writing responses and video response in MySchools.
The application is available in your MySchools account. Private and parochial school students should ask their guidance counselor or high school placement counselor for assistance in setting up a MySchools account.
The code for the Manhattan campus is M51A and the Code for the Queens campus is Q74B.
You will only need to take the assessment once. You must list BHSEC Manhattan and BHSEC Queens as two separate choices on your DOE High School Application. You must rank the two campuses in preference order. If you are accepted to one of our campuses does not mean you are automatically accepted to the other campus. Meaning, if you rank both campuses on our high school application, and you are matched to the one that you ranked lower on your application, you may not be able to switch to the higher ranked campus because the Department of Education sees the two campuses as separate schools. Again, you only submit your BHSEC assessment once.
There are three parts to the assessment: two writing prompts and a short video statement. There are no test preparation materials for this assessment.
You may only take the assessment once during the academic school year. If applying to both campuses, you only need to take the assessment one time.
Due to the pandemic, we are not having in person interviews, instead students will submit a video.
Official notification of acceptance to all New York City public high schools is sent by the Department of Education to the middle school guidance counselors and to each student’s MY SCHOOLS account. The notification date is determined by the Department of Education’s Office of Enrollment.
Students who are not accepted to the 9th grade may reapply the following fall for the 10th grade if we have space. Students who are not accepted to the 10th grade are not eligible to reapply. As a cautionary note, however, very few 10th graders are admitted each year and the number admitted is dependent upon the number of students admitted into the previous 9th grade class.
You may apply; however, the majority of accepted students have over an 85% grade point average.
We welcome students applying to 9th and 10th grades to visit our school virtually during the scheduled online events. Registration is required and dates and times vary.
Please be aware, we do not give admission priority to applicants who attend our events. It is best to register early to get the date and time that you prefer.
We send the confirmation information to registered parties only.
Yes. You are not required to visit the school to be considered for admission. We do not give preference to students who attend an admissions event.
On the website, you can find information about our mission, curriculum, faculty, college office, extra-curricular activities, admissions, and much more. In addition, representatives from our school attend the Department of Education (DOE) city wide and borough wide fairs when they are held. Check the DOE’s website for additional information.
The Department of Education (DOE) system will match students and programs/schools: a student will be matched to only the highest choice school which also accepted that student to its program. Thus, students will not be notified of their acceptance or denial to all 12 schools; they will only know about their highest choice school to which they have been matched. Click here for more information on the DOE high school admission process. We will consider all qualified students regardless of where they rank BHSEC. However, if students are serious about applying to BHSEC, we encourage students to place BHSEC at the top of their DOE priority list. It is also important that students meet the DOE’s admissions deadlines. BHSEC cannot consider any student for admissions who does not apply through the DOE and satisfies its application guidelines.
