A small college, deliberately

Learning run the way
a good council is run.

Witan College keeps its classes small on purpose — named for the old council of advisors who sat together to reason things through. We still teach that way: seminar-sized, discussion-first, and slow enough to actually think.

11:1
Student–faculty ratio
18
Fields of study
62%
Classes under 15 students
94%
Students in campus housing
Fields of study

A liberal arts core, taken seriously

Every student reads widely before they specialize — the council model applied to a curriculum.SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW SHOP NOW

I

Letters & Rhetoric

Close reading, argument, and the history of how English prose came to sound the way it does.

II

History & Governance

From early councils and charters to modern institutions — how groups of people actually decide things.

III

Mathematics & Natural Science

A shared foundation year, then focused tracks in applied mathematics, biology, and environmental science.

IV

Economics & Society

Markets, institutions, and policy, taught alongside the historical conditions that shaped them.

V

Languages

Latin, French, and Mandarin tracks, each built around reading primary texts, not just conversation drills.

VI

Fine Arts

Studio practice paired with art history — every studio student also takes a seminar on the work's context.

VII

Philosophy

Logic, ethics, and political philosophy, taught through primary texts and Socratic seminar discussion.

VIII

Independent Study

A capstone year where students design their own reading list with a faculty advisor and defend it.

Where the name comes from

The Witan met to reason together

In early medieval England, the witan was a council of advisors who met with the king to debate law, land, and succession — not a parliament exactly, but a habit of talking things through with people who knew things you didn't.

We borrowed the name because it describes how we still teach: no lecture halls of three hundred, no professor talking at a room. Just a table, a text, and enough people around it to argue properly.

Explore Our Programs
"You don't understand an argument until you've had to defend it to someone who disagrees with you at the same table."— From the College Charter, Article II
Admissions

Four steps to a decision

We read every application whole — essays, transcript, and recommendations together, not scored separately.

1

Submit your application

Transcript, one essay, and two recommendations — one academic, one from anyone who's seen you argue a point.

2

Interview with a current student

A 30-minute conversation, not an evaluation — mostly so you can ask your own questions about the college.

3

Admissions council review

A small panel reads your full file together and discusses it, the same way our seminars run.

4

Decision & financial aid

Decisions and a full aid offer arrive together, so you're never choosing blind.

"I picked Witan because my interviewer let me talk for twenty of the thirty minutes. That was the whole pitch."

— Third-year, Letters & Rhetoric
Campus life

Small enough to know everyone's name

A residential college built around a single quad, a library that stays open past midnight, and dinners that turn into seminars.

The Long Table

A weekly open dinner where any student can bring a question and the room argues it out over dessert.

Council Societies

Student-run debate, publishing, and reading societies, each modeled loosely on the college's own namesake.

The Old Library

Open until 1am on weekdays, with a reading room that's been quietly full since the college was founded.

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