Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School

Academics

Eugene Lang College is the liberal arts college of New York City’s The New School, where students are allowed to customize their curriculum using resources throughout The New School, including Parsons School of Design, The College of Performing Arts, and a range of other colleges and schools. Classes at Lang itself are readingand writing-intensive and typically conducted seminar-style, with the curriculum inherently cross-disciplinary (dual degrees and cross-university minors are readily available). All students complete a First Year Seminar and writing courses as well as some light general requirements (though “the bare credit minimum to graduate for each kind of course is flexible and forgiving”), and are encouraged to look into study abroad and internships as early as their sophomore year. The school understands that “not everyone learns the same way,” and so the highly specific courses on offer “are all unique and crafted with care and deliberateness,” and most take high advantage of the locale, with “field trips almost every class around New York City.” Career Services also taps into the city to connect students with moments for growth: “internships and opportunities are truly out there.”

Professors “put effort into creating comfortable atmospheres for student discussion” and “their knowledge comes from real world experience rather than pure theory.” As one student says: “You can tell they always come to class ready and excited (in their own way) to discuss the topic they teach.” Unique projects often replace exams and assignments, with students citing “graphic arts or musical pieces or performance art in lieu of written essays,” or a class in which “we created a zine which was shared with the Lang community.” There’s “a level of freedom across all disciplines of study,” and students appreciate that the texts used “discuss different perspectives on the topics” come from “authors of all different types of backgrounds, rather sticking to the traditional canon.”

Student Body

The New School offers “a highly creative environment” filled with “incredibly smart, driven and ambitious” people who “genuinely have an academic pursuit they care about strongly.” To that, those specifically within the Lang college “usher in a new era of style, intelligence, and swagger,” bringing a “progressive,… strong sense of urban sensibility” and enjoyment of “the finer things in life like art, music, and literature.” While the student body does tend to skew wealthy, everyone “recognizes the privileges that come with attending a private institution” such as Lang. It is, overall, “a haven for [the] creative, opinionated, [and] LGBTQ,” and students—many of whom are “international or have some connection to somewhere outside the United States” are “very open-minded and kind.”

Campus Life

When your campus is New York City, the cultural world is your oyster: whether “seeing Broadway shows, visiting parks, going to food festivals,” there is enough to do that “it often leads me to forget I am a student.” That said, the campus is never overlooked: it has highly enjoyable workshops from people both within and without the campus and clubs often organize events to “bring awareness [to various causes]…or to spread positivity on campus.” Upon arriving at Lang, people “throw themselves into the New York experience” and many occupy their time with “personal projects such as theater productions, student films, small businesses, [and] writing books.” Nearby Washington Square Park and Union Square are common hangout spots, and many explore further and “find their favorite hole in the wall places and bring their friends with them to enjoy it.”