Application & Admissions

Application forms

• Fall 2010 session in New York, NY (PDF)
• January 2011 session in Baltimore, MD (PDF)

NB: You will NOT be able to save the filled PDF file (you can ONLY print it) unless you have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed. It is not necessary to sign the form electronically. If you don't have a digital certificate, leave the signature field blank, print the form, sign it, and mail or fax your completed form. Don’t forget to also attach your personal statement! Electronic documents should be sent as email attachments (PDFs are preferred; please, no TIFs or JPGs). If you are in doubt about the appropriate electronic format, we strongly encourage you to mail (single-sided, please) or fax your application.

Before completing the above application, consult the RBS Course Descriptions for individual course requirements and previous course evaluations. Submit a separate application for each course in which you wish to enroll (reproduce the form as many times as you need to do so for this purpose). Please DO NOT send payment with this application: no payment is due until you have been notified of admission into the course or courses for which you have applied.

Application procedures

This section provides basic information about applying for an RBS course. See also the Frequently Asked Questions page.

Time lines

Rare Book School posts application forms for each session at least four months before it begins. You can find the currently available application forms for the upcoming sessions above. For current course offerings and dates, see the RBS Course Schedule.

RBS staff members acknowledge all applications by email upon receipt. RBS faculty members make their first round of admission decisions exactly three months before their courses begin; after this they review applications as they are received. RBS accepts applications until the week the course runs, but chances of admission are greatly increased if an application is received two weeks ahead of the first round of admission decisions, i.e. three and half months before the course begins. As soon as these decisions are made, applicants are informed of their admission status via email. All applicants also receive a hard copy of their admission decision by US mail.

Confirming your attendance

Shortly after faculty members’ admission decisions have been made, the RBS director mails you a letter informing you of your admissions status. Admission letters are accompanied by a confirmation form and a tuition invoice.

Confirmation form: In addition to the accept/decline boxes indicating whether or not you will attend, the one-page confirmation form prints out your work and home addresses, phone numbers, email address, &c., so that you can check to be sure that we have correctly input this information from your course application.

Tuition invoice: You provide information on this form on how you wish to pay your $100 tuition deposit and the remainder of the tuition owed.

Immediately after receiving the admission letter and the two accompanying forms, you need either (1) to confirm that you plan to attend the course by returning the confirmation form and tuition invoice and by sending in a deposit, or (2) to decline from the course, either by checking the appropriate box on the confirmation form indicating that you must decline and by mailing it in, or by sending us an email message saying that you must decline. Please remember that most RBS classes are limited to 12 students, and that many courses have waiting lists. A student who is admitted to a course and who then neither confirms nor declines is occupying a space that another student would be glad to have. We assume that students who neither confirm nor decline have permanently lost interest in attending RBS courses and we mark their files accordingly.

Travel and Housing Guide

The RBS Travel and Housing Guide contains all of the information you need concerning getting to Charlottesville, booking a dormitory or hotel room, and getting a feel for what the RBS week will look like. Please look here first for all questions you may have after you are admitted. Additional questions may be answered on our Frequently Asked Questions page.