Students in their freshman year must take one or more Designated Writing Classes, and submit 20 pages of writing to the Clear Writing Committee at the end of the first semester. If the committee decides that the students' writing skills need more work, they are assigned a class to help with this, and are allowed to re-submit another 20 pages at the end of the next semester for re-evaluation.
In Freshman and Sophomore years, students are encouraged to take courses in a wide variety of subjects. For Junior and Senior years, students develop a Plan of Concentration: a self-designed major with a defended thesis. Much of Junior and Senior years are spent doing independent work, and taking tutorial classes (one or two students and the instructor). The Plan culminates in a written thesis and another project that the student chooses.
The results of this work are then defended in an oral examination before two Marlboro professors, and one Outside Evaluator who is not involved with the college, but has expertise in the student's field of study. The presence of the outside evaluator ensures that the grading process is objective, rather than becoming self-referential.
Class sizes at Marlboro are small (generally one to ten students in a class, but occasionally as many as thirty in a particularly popular course), the student-to-teacher ratio is very strong, and students work closely with the professors. Marlboro College has one of the highest ratings in the country, both for percentage of students to go on to graduate school, and for percentage of students to donate money to the college after graduation.