I'm an alum, '91. And I have a lot of thoughts on the college as it used to be, and a few about what its mission (seems) to still be about.

The external views are irrelevant. It's your experience that matters.

Bennington is the PERFECT school for a certain kind of student--people like me--who have always found normal school structures to be oppressive. You know, "memorize these things and regurgitate them and take an exam then forget about it afterwards." It's for people who want to learn, and then implement what they've learned in some fashion, to live what they're learning.

Primarily, it's about the arts, yes, but huge swaths of people I went to school with ended up with successful careers in law, medicine, technology, business, architecture, the sciences--all the fields that are considered "conventional" or "legit" to the Norms. So all these people making jokes about working fast food have literally no idea what the fuck they're talking about. (I'm the biggest financial failure amongst my friends, frankly, and before the pandemic, I was doing pretty well.)

Meanwhile, in the arts, there are people who are HUGELY successful and well-known, if not outright stars. (Yes, Peter Dinkledge, sure,) but Tom Fox (internationally known artist,) Kiran Desai (Mann-booker prize winner,) Tracy Katsky (television producer,) Deb Eisenstadt (Writer and movie producer,) Jill Eisenstadt (best-selling author,) Mary Early (Sculptor and artist, with grants and sales out the wazoo,) Brooks Ashmankis, (award-winning character actor,) et al. Et al. And of course all the really famous writers that have been discussed already. And these are mostly just people from MY era!

So here's the thing: Bennington is really what you make of it. Yeah, you can bullshit your way and coast through and pass your classes and learn fuck nothing, or you can take it seriously and REALLY learn something, and not just learn, but practice your art or discipline, live it, if that's what you want. No one is going to tell you you're working too hard, or spending too many hours in VAPA, or your senior plan is too ambitious or your side project doesn't fit the curriculum.

And in the more conventional disciplines, so many friends of mine went on to grad school at all the top universities--Harvard, Yale, UNH, et al. (I myself was supposed to basically mosey into Berkeley, it was all set, but all this shit happened in my life, and I ended up not going. Which I deeply regret.)

So, campus life can be intense, yeah, it being such a small school and so insular--but you will also make friends for life; friendships that carry on through decades.

Even the people that I considered to be my "enemies" at school, later in life, turned out to be people with whom I have an amazing connection and friendship. Why? because the Bennington experience is so totally singular, that only people who have shared can really understand. (And that's not as culty as it sounds; a certain kind of person goes to Bennington, and we all connect in similar ways, and the shared experience of being at this tiny school, thrown together 24/7, is just not something that can be understood from the outside.) My partner is always amazed at the number of friends I have, and the connection and love for each other we share. She's always "I don't get it! No one I know has friends like this from college!" And I don't really know how to respond.

I've done a lot of things in my life that I regret, and would love to go back and change, but going to BenCo was the best decision I ever made in my life, and I have never regretted it for a second.

And one last thing: There used to be a men's room in commons, under the stairs, where you go through the left-hand doors; in that restroom was, natch, graffiti. Someone had written "How did you end up at Bennington?" And people had answered, blah blah. But at the bottom, basically as a thread closer, someone had written "I got thrown off the island of Misfit Toys."

OP, if you can relate to that sentiment, Bennington is the place for you.

As for me: It was the first time in my life I found myself in place where I felt like I belonged. Greatest experience of my life.