by Dave Best
Located in New York, NY, The New School is a private national university. The New School in New York City is the only comprehensive university where a world-renowned design school, Parsons, joins a liberal arts college, a performing arts college, and graduate programs and schools including The New School for Social Research to seek out new ways to create a more just, more beautiful, and better-designed world.
Academic
The New School moved Parsons and Mannes School of Music to Greenwich Village so these schools are no longer housed in different neighborhoods across Manhattan. Like it’s name implies, The New School strives to embrace the new through being innovative and experimental. It strives to redefine education and is collaborative across all fields. Dual degrees are available between schools.
Parsons School of Design has offered students innovative approaches to education since its founding in 1896. Parsons is the only American art and design school within a comprehensive university. Creators and scholars master established art and design fields and advance emerging ones while studying a range of university disciplines. Almost 5,000 students study at Parsons.
Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School offers an experience designed for fiercely independent scholars. Students map out their own liberal arts curriculum. They immerse themselves in primary texts rather than textbooks, engage in small seminars rather than large lectures, work closely with liberal arts school faculty, and be part of a community committed to social justice. Students experience intellectual freedom and scholarly rigor in a university setting in New York City. Lang students ask the big questions, challenge assumptions, and study a range of disciplines at The New School.
The College of Performing Arts is made up of three schools. Mannes School of Music is transforming the music conservatory to make that career a reality with a dynamic integration of rigorous training and real-world experience. You can’t imagine the benefits. Doors open. Curtains part. Cutting-edge possibilities reveal themselves at one of the best music schools in New York. The School of Drama is home to a dynamic group of young directors, writers, actors, and creative technologists and an award-winning faculty. Our playwriting, directing, and acting school in New York City brings together rigor, creativity, and collaborative learning across performance disciplines to create work marked by professionalism, imagination, and civic awareness. The School of Jazz offers a dynamic mix of legendary musicians as mentors, a superb and renowned faculty, an audaciously progressive curriculum, countless opportunities to perform, and proximity to all of the action in the global epicenter of the music industry, New York City.
Social Life
The New School enrolls students from all 50 states and 115 foreign countries. Almost one third of its students are International which is the most of any national university. Approximately 24% of students live in campus housing. The New Schoo has no fraternities or sororities. The Narwhals field teams in a few sports as part of its new athletics program which now play against a select local collegiate teams.
Environment
The New School is urban and all its schools are now centered in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The new University Center, a striking embodiment of The New School’s mission of challenging the status quo, provides a new focal point for its downtown New York City campus. At the intersection of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, the forward-thinking design reflects The New School’s commitment to creativity, innovation, and social engagement.
The 16-story building, which opened in January 2014, is designed to accommodate a decade of transformation and growth in The New School’s academic programs and student population. The University Center offers state-of-the-art classrooms, a library-research center, a new auditorium, a cafeteria and an event café, and a 600-bed student residence. All students will find crucial resources in the University Center, including spaces deliberately designed to promote collaborative, interdisciplinary learning—a cornerstone of the educational philosophy of The New School.
And one more thing…
As a college counselor at Galin Education, I have the privilege of visiting many schools across the country. On those trips I often have the opportunity to connect with key members of the admissions staff. The New School stands out in the clarity of its mission and the honesty in communicating who their right student is.
Craig Tiege, Director of Admissions Communications and Enrollment Services at the New School explained, the right student at the New School isn’t afraid of new thinking and new ideas. They are intellectually curious and tenacious in their pursuits. Dig deep and understand academic scholarship, Harness creativity and strive to make the world a better place.
By the Numbers
Undergraduate Population: 6,792
Acceptance Rate: 66%
Average ACT / SAT – Test optional
Student-faculty ratio: 9:1
4-year graduation rate: 49%
US News Ranking: 129 National Universities (2017)
Tuition: $45,535 (2016-17)
