Marlboro College

Marlboro College is a small, private, academically rigorous liberal-arts college located in Marlboro, Vermont, United States, with an enrollment of 195 students. The College received a perfect academics rating of 99 from The Princeton Review in 2014. Students at Marlboro create an individualized course of study in collaboration with faculty members and participate in a self-governed (self-run) community. Students pursue a self-designed, often inter-disciplinary thesis, the Plan of Concentration, based on their academic interests that culminates in a major body of scholarship. The College's unique facilities that can be used by students include an organic farm, a solar greenhouse, Marlboro's own nature forestland preserve, and an aviary. Bi-monthly "town meetings" are held to vote for and change the College's bylaws.Marlboro College was founded in 1946 by Walter Hendricks on Potash Hill in Marlboro, Vermont, and many of the first students were returning World War II veterans. The school's operation was initially financed using money received from the GI Bill, as well as loans from Brattleboro Savings and Loan. The campus incorporates the buildings of two old farms that once operated on the college site. Marlboro has grown slowly but steadily since its inception, and 192 students currently attend, with an average enrollment of 250 students. The College, however, is kept "intentionally small." In 1997 Marlboro College founded the Marlboro College Graduate School in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont to apply the same educational principles of Marlboro College to advance the careers of working professionals. The Marlboro College campus has also been the summer home for more than 50 years to the Marlboro Music Festival.