Undergraduates experience a thorough grounding in the history of ideas and significant world texts, and graduate students pursue advanced study in interdisciplinary modes of thought. Creating your own program requires maturity, motivation and independence. Students seeking a combination of flexible options and an academic challenge are natural Gallatin candidates. 

The Gallatin School grew out of the educational reform movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when social forces were bringing new populations of students to higher education. Gallatin was created to respond to the needs and interests of a special kind of student — focused, self-disciplined and creative. Some were accomplished professionals and people with broad life experiences, and the University recognized that they wanted to exercise more personal freedom in designing individual paths of study. 

For more than 40 years, the Gallatin approach has continued to attract a wide variety of bright, talented students with its flexible but academically rigorous curriculum, its innovative, interdisciplinary approach to education, outstanding teachers and advisers and small college atmosphere.

The key to Gallatin's educational approach is its faculty advisers. Your adviser ensures that your program has depth, breadth and coherence, and that it is consistent with your professional and educational goals. Advisers also supervise and evaluate independent studies and internship projects and advise graduate students on their theses. 

Along with academic course work, internships, private lessons in the arts and independent studies can be essential parts of your education at Gallatin. All of New York City becomes your classroom: you can intern at a publishing company, a television station, a museum, a hospital or a theater. Besides helping you decide if a particular field is right for you, these internships provide firsthand experience that can often lead to a full-time position after graduation. Through independent study, you can design your own project and work one-on-one with a professor who is an expert in the field. As a small college within a highly regarded research university, Gallatin provides its students with the best of both worlds. Our small size — 1,200 undergraduates and 200 graduate students — creates a strong sense of community among students and faculty and allows you to develop lasting relationships with your professors, advisers and classmates. At the same time, access to all of New York University means that you have virtually unlimited resources — a wide variety of courses taught by world-renowned scholars, excellent facilities and research institutes and all of the resources of New York City at your doorstep