Academics
Eugene Lang College is an “unconventional,” highly urban school with few academic requirements where courses have “really long poetic titles” and professors “go by their first names.” “Lang is about small classes in a big city,” summarizes a writing major. There’s a “rich intellectual tradition” and, no matter what your major, an “interdisciplinary curriculum.” “At Eugene Lang, you have the freedom to pursue your artistic or intellectual direction with absolute freedom,” says a philosophy major. However, “students who are uncomfortable in a city and who are not excited about learning for learning’s sake should not come to this school.” Lang’s “clueless,” “incredibly bureaucratic” administration is hugely unpopular. The “approachable” and monolithically “radical” faculty is a mixed bag. “Seventy-five percent of the professors are pure gold, but the 25 percent who are not really are awful.” “Lang’s greatest strength (other than location) is its seminar style of teaching,” explains a first-year student. “I’ve yet to be in a class with more then fifteen people.” Students say their class discussions are phenomenal. “The students, however, at times can be somewhat draining.” “All the teachers are highly susceptible to being led off on long tangents” and some “are too gentle and not comfortable shutting down wandering or irrelevant conversation.” Juniors and seniors can take classes at several schools within the larger university (including Parsons The New School for Design and Mannes College The New School for Music). “So if Lang’s ultra-liberal, writing-intensive seminars are too much,” notes an urban studies major, “you can always take a break.” Internships all over Manhattan are common, too.
Student Body
“Lang offers the kids with dreadlocks and piercings an alternative place to gather, smoke, and write pretentious essays.” It’s “overrun with rabid hipsters.” “Cool hair” and “avant-garde” attitudes proliferate. So do “tight pants.” “Every student at Lang thinks they are an atypical student.” “There is a running joke that all Lang students were ‘that kid’ in high school,” says a senior. “Shock is very popular around here,” and “everyone fits in as long as they are not too mainstream.” “It’s the normal ones who have the trouble,” suggests a sophomore. “But once they take up smoking and embrace their inner hipster, everything’s cool.” “There are a lot of queer students, who seem to be comfortable.” “We’re really not all that ethnically diverse,” admits a first-year student. There are “less affluent kids due to great financial aid,” and there is a strong contingent of “trust-fund babies” and “over-privileged communists from Connecticut.” “Most students are wealthy but won’t admit it,” says a senior. “To be from a rich family and have it be apparent is a cardinal sin.” “Most students are extremely liberal and on the same wavelength politically.” “Conservative kids are the freaks at our school. Left is in. But having a Republican in class is so exciting,” suggest a senior. “We can finally have a debate.”
Campus Life
There are “great talks given on campus every week by a wide variety of academics on almost every social issue imaginable.” Otherwise, “Lang is the anti-college experience.” “There is very little community” on this speck of a campus on the northern end of Greenwich Village. “Space and facilities are limited.” “There is no safe haven in the form of a communal student space” except for “a courtyard of a million cigarette butts.” Though a new 375,000 square foot campus center will open in the fall of 2014. Certainly, “you aren’t going to have the traditional college fun” here. On the other hand, few students anywhere else enjoy this glorious level of independence. “Life at Eugene Lang is integrated completely with living in New York City,” and “you have the entire city at your fingertips.” When you walk out of class, “you walk out into a city of nine million people.” There are dorms here, but “most students have apartments,” especially after freshman year. For fun, Lang students sometimes “hang around other students’ apartments and smoke pot.” Many “thoroughly enjoy the club scene.” Mostly though, “people band into small groups and then go out adventuring in the city” where “there is always something to do that you’ve never done, or even heard of, before.”
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