About

Our students typically enter Simon’s Rock after finishing 10th or 11th grade, which means that they skip the last year or two of high school and arrive at Simon’s Rock without diplomas. They make a deliberate break from the standard academic track to dive straight into college at an age when most of their peers are just heading into their junior or senior years of high school.

But Simon’s Rock is not some kind of “halfway” college or an unconventional prep school. It’s a rigorous institution accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, part of the prestigious Bard network, and regularly recognized for its excellence (ranked #7 in the Princeton Review’s top 20 schools with the most highly rated faculty; ranked #4 for the most innovative school and #5 for best undergraduate teaching by U.S. News & World Report.; students awarded 10 Fulbright fellowships since 2010).

We know this path is not for everyone, but for those who make the leap, choosing early college at Simon’s Rock has been demonstrated over 50 years to give our students a head start on finding and pursuing their passions—and to set them up for a lifetime of personal and professional success.