<p>Re Barnard financials:
Barnard has an annual operating budget of about $165 million. About 1/3 of that goes to payfor instruction. Roughly 20% goes to financial aid. About $5 million is paid to Columbia for cross registration and use of Columbia facilities. For that $5 million - 3% of the overall budget -, Barnard students have full access to Columbia’s libraries, undergraduate and some graduate level course offerings, dining facilities, athletic facilities, and common areas on the Columbia campus. I think that is $5 million well spent.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s cheaper to “rent” rather than own. Barnard students have the benefit of the entire Columbia infrastructure, including faculty and resources --but their administration saves money by paying agreed fees on on a per-use or per-student basis. Of course the agreement is reciprocal - Columbia students have access to Barnard courses and the Barnard library, and facilities such as the new Diana center. But of course the resources that Barnard offers to Columbia are much smaller in comparison to the resources that Columbia is able to offer Barnard. </p>
<p>Honestly, Reed seemed waaay too quirky for me. I wish I’d visited to see the real Reed and try to see if it was as extreme as I’ve heard. And also the fin aid was amazing…I appreciate the life of the mind, but I really wasn’t feeling “Communism, atheism, free love”…No, gracias. That’s why Uchicago was more my style.</p>
<p>I haven’t visited Reed either, so it’s reputation may be more of a caricature than fact. But then again, my son’s impressions of the school when he did an overnight did seem to line up with the other sources of information he had – but that was a while back, in 2001, when the school was still accepting about 75% of its applicants – so it is possible that with tighter admissions the overall environment has changed somewhat.</p>
<p>My d. was admitted to UChicago and I have the sense that she ended up with very similar academic experience at Barnard, more so than either she or I anticipated. That is, Chicago also has the reputation of being the “death of fun” school because students are studying so hard. Barnard students certainly have plenty of fun, but Barnard/Columbia also turned out to be a place where students spend a LOT of time studying and there’s not much of an on-campus partyscene – partly because dorm policies at both campuses tend to discourage the sort of dorm-based parties that are common on many other campuses. Columbia does have fraternities – and the frat parties that go along with that – but my d. wasn’t into that sort of thing, so it really wasn’t part of her experience. </p>
<p>I think that in general, Barnard/Columbia students tend to be highly focused & driven, and I think they are able to compartmentalize well to budget their time --so they do take advantage of all that the city has to offer – but overall it is academically intense environment.</p>
<p>Numbers about PHD production are really only a useful indicator of academic quality if you think Beloit college is on the same level as Middlebury. </p>
<p>@Englishman hopefully today! I got called about my acceptance off the waitlist on Wednesday and got the official email on Thursday, sooo…today should be the day?</p>
<p>A graduate of another women’s college, and we know students at Amherst, so a few points to chime in on.</p>
<p>Barnard strikes me as the best of both worlds, as a premier women’s college with access to the undergraduate opportunities at Columbia. If you were excited about school in NYC, and embracing that future, I’m not sure that admission to Amherst should push you off that track. Barnard and Columbia have a very different campus culture than Amherst. You might spend some time reading the Amherst student paper, and comments, as there has been a lot of controversy lately over the trustees’ decision to ban fraternities entirely (they were underground before, but allowed – now they are banned entirely). </p>
<p>Good luck with your decision, there is no “right” decision, just one based on what fits best for you. </p>
<p>I have a son in a fraternity at UofA and I am delighted my DS14 will attend a school without fraternities, I for one feel they are over-rated and unnecessary in this day and age, this from a parent who for the past 3 years has supported and funded his DS11 being in one. Good decision Amherst.</p>
<p>For some people, no Greek system is a plus. D specifically choose schools with little to no Greek system - if Greeks were a big part of the school, she almost always struck it from her list.</p>
<p>I think that Midwestmomofboys is suggesting reading the Amherst paper as a way of getting the sense of overall campus culture --that is, the reasons for the decision and the reaction to it might be more important than whether one prefers a campus with or without fraternities. I haven’t read the Amherst paper – but I certainly would agree with the idea that reading The Columbia Daily Spectator and the Bwog would be a good way of getting a better sense of student life and opinions at Columbia/Barnard. (An added, sad note: as of the end of this year, The Spectator is ceasing its publication of a daily print paper – I do think that the daily print version was a big part of my daughter’s life at Barnard – it was distributed free to all students so of course everyone read it each day. Its demise is just one more sad chapter in the overall demise of print journalism- but I think that overall, far fewer students will be reading it regularly when it isn’t available to them on campus newsracks).</p>
<p>I’d add that I think that fraternities have a very different potential impact in a small college-town setting than in an urban setting. Columbia has fraternities & sororities (and Barnard women can join the sororities, plus there are one or two co-ed fraternities) – but there’s very little pressure to get involved with them because there is plenty of other things to do for entertainment and socializing in NYC. Whereas the fraternities typically become much more dominant on a campus where there are not a lot of other social and entertainment outlets for students. </p>
<p>Not sure if Amherst’s fraternity decision has that much of an actual effect (compared to the 1984 decision of pushing the fraternities off-campus), as only about 10% of men are in the unrecognized off-campus fraternities (there are no sororities). Barnard has no sororities, although Columbia has fraternities and sororities that appear to be a minor presence (10% of students); Barnard students can join the Columbia sororities.</p>
<p>Its not clear to me, as a parent, the impact on campus life. But I do find the animated discussion about it in student newspaper interesting and potentially an interesting take on Amherst student life. </p>
<p>I thought the more interesting part was the issue of the way the matter was decided – that is, the complaint seems to be that the college admission issued a decree without opportunity for student input or comment. </p>
<p>I think I posted this before (but maybe not): my observation and experience has been that the relationship between students and their colleges administrators plays a significant role in campus life and the college experience – so the perception that rules are being handed down in an arbitrary way would tend to indicate a certain level of discontent --but as it is only a single issue, it’s hard to say. There was an issue a few years back about Barnard’s recognition of Columbia sororities, and that one went through months of debate and a student vote. See <a href=“Year in Review: Barnard SGA votes to recognize sororities - Columbia Spectator”>http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2011/05/07/year-review-barnard-sga-votes-recognize-sororities</a></p>
<p>So the discussion might be as much about process as about the issues being determined. </p>