Barnard v Columbia

No. And likely a question that deserved its own thread.

Again, let’s not go OT, but “consortium” is probably not the right word, as Columbia and Barnard have one athletics program, which is not the case at other consortia (although the Claremont Colleges have 2 athletic programs between them).

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For some, one of many criteria to choose one college over the other is either the attraction to, or rejecting the rigidity of, a strict “Core” curriculum of very specific courses, even very specific pieces of literature, that every Columbia College student must study, regardless how well it fits with one’s interests or ambitions.

In comparison, Barnard’s “Foundation” is a distribution matrix, furthering breadth of knowledge. Barnard offers literally hundreds of courses spread across all disciplines and departments that will fulfill one or two distribution areas.

From that expansive list, Barnard students choose their own courses; many will satisfy more than one area of “exploration”, and possibly even apply to their major/minor at the same time. While “foundations” might sound like just another word for “core” - they are not.

Example: My daughter satisfied her “Thinking Technologically and Digitally” by choosing a very applicable Computer Science class that developed an interactive experiment for a Psych lab. She also took a neat planetary movement course, that fulfilled “Thinking Quantitatively and Empirically” and another (Science?) requirement. So, typically Barnard students will find course offerings that are very much in line with their areas of interest (or related to a minor/major) that also happen to tangent one or two “foundations”.

My sister was among the first group of local girls to be allowed to live in dorms following expansion in the 1970s (before that, there were a fairly high number of commuter students compared to other LACs.) We were surprised by how tiny the actual Barnard campus was, even for a city school.

ETA: The OP hasn’t posted since March. How about we close this big boy?

It was necrobumped by a user asking another respondent (who is still active) on this thread about her D’s experience is at Barnard, so I was keeping open pending a response. But since we got one today, I agree it’s time to close.

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