<p>I know that Georgetown School of Foreign Service is among the best but for a student who is currently undecided on her major but very interested in both Biology / Neuroscience and International Relations, do you think she's better off at Barnard or Georgetown? She is familiar with and likes both cities and campuses... Any thoughts/insight would be greatly appreciated. thx</p>
<p>Aren’t international affairs and biology at two different schools at Georgetown? Would you have trouble studying both or changing schools if you changed your mind? That said, I don’t know if Barnard has a strong international affairs program. It was non existent when I was a student many years ago. Yes, the UN is in NYC but that does not mean that there are ready opportunities exist to intern there. The sciences are definitely strong at Barnard and Barnard is probably a more supportive place for a woman to study the sciences than at Georgetown (or at any other university). While Barnard students may study virtually any course at Columbia, both Barnard and Columbia have biology departments, so she would study her biology courses at Barnard.</p>
<p>Barnard doesn’t offer an international relations major, but does offer that as a concentration within a poli sci major, and also there are a limited number of spots available with a combined 5-year master’s program with SIPA at Columbia. My d. did focus on international relations and I think she was very happy with the offerings at Barnard-- and was able to secure a job perfectly suited to her interests after graduation. I’d note that Barnard undergrads can also take courses at SIPA.</p>
<p>Even though it has a medical school, Georgetown is not known for its sciences and I would say Barnard is the stronger of the two there. Georgetown SFS is stronger in international relations.</p>
<p>My understanding of Georgetown SFS is that the curriculum is very specialized and intensive – I don’t think a student there would have the option of switching to a bio major, though possibly the student could apply to transfer from SFS to Georgetown College. Or are you talking about a student who has been admitted to Georgetown (College) and not to SFS? Because if she hasn’t been admitted to SFS – then there wouldn’t be a formal “international relations” major available to her there either. Instead she could opt to focus on a specific language or culture, or a Government major -but she would need to ask whether SFS courses would even be open to her.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your input. Very helpful. Apollo6 and Calmom, you make a good point. She specifically did not apply to SFS because she is currently undecided. We will meet with Georgetown to discuss this exact issue. Their reponse will have a strong influence on her decision I suspect as she is looking for flexibility. Assuming that she will have the the ability to either double major, major/minor or choose one or the other, I was wondering which school would be best. I’ve always been a fan of Georgetown and didn’t really know much about Barnard until recently. I have 3 friends whose Ds go to Barnard and they all are extremely happy and enjoying the experience. I am impressed with what I have read and heard about Barnard but am somewhat put off by the apparent conflict between Columbia and Barnard students.</p>
<p>SFS parent here - don’t know if you’re aware of one of the SFS majors: Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA). Within the STIA major, there is a Biotechnology and Global Health concentration:</p>
<p>[Science</a>, Technology & International Affairs - STIA Major - Georgetown University](<a href=“http://bsfs.georgetown.edu/majors/stia/]Science”>Science, Technology and International Affairs - SFS - School of Foreign Service - Georgetown University)</p>
<p>I don’t think its too difficult to transfer from College to SFS.</p>
<p>Oops…forgot to tell you about the new science facility at Georgetown. Here’s an update:</p>
<p>[Science</a> at Georgetown College - Georgetown College](<a href=“http://college.georgetown.edu/programs/sciences/]Science”>http://college.georgetown.edu/programs/sciences/)</p>
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As far as my d. was concerned, it was non-existent. I think she found it easier to “fit in” among Columbia friends than among other Barnard student, partly because she’s always tended to have a lot of male friends. </p>
<p>I think it really depends on personality somewhat – my d. is very outgoing with a strong ego & great sense of humor, so she can take jokes in stride and have a smile on her face along with a snappy comeback. It probably helps that she is a younger sibling – honestly, there is nothing that anyone could say to her that would come close to the types of things she was inured to by the age of 6. But I do think the whole “conflict” is exaggerated – I saw no sign of it at all when visiting my daughter. I saw boys hanging around the Barnard campus, my d. had good friends who attended Columbia, and neither my daughter nor any of her Barnard friends or roommates every said anything to me or in my presence indicating any sort of concern at all in that respect. </p>
<p>And my kid did definitely let me know her complaints – she just didn’t seem to have any about the Barnard vs. Columbia thing – and she was pretty much regularly on the Columbia campus. As a first year student, she had classes 5 days a week at Columbia (and only 4 days a week at Barnard) – so she probably spent more class time in Hamilton Hall then anywhere else. When she was having a hard time making friends, I suggested a Columbia-based club (that happened to hold its meetings in a Barnard building) – that didn’t work out, but she met a Columbia GS student at the club meeting and they were pretty much best friends for a long time after that. Her sophomore year she was an officer in a Columbia student association.</p>
<p>As far as your d. is concerned – now is the time to seriously look at the course catalogs & get a sense of major requirements at each school, along with Georgetown’s core curriculum & Barnard’s “9 ways of knowing”. That might give her some ideas as to how realistic it might be to double major or how much flexibility there would be if she started out with one focus and later wanted to switch.</p>
<p>Also – what does your d. see herself doing in terms of international relations? My d’s interests seem to be focused on the UN & UN agencies – & of course the UN headquarters is in NY, not DC. So she is very happy with her NYC-based, UN-connected job. I’d also wonder if Georgetown College students are at a competitive disadvantage with SFS students in terms of internships and jobs… or if there are just so many schools in D.C. that it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Our daughter was just accepted to Barnard. We spent the last three days speaking with Barnard and Columbia students about the two schools and the alleged “conflict.” To my pleasant surprise, there is no conflict and the relationship between these two schools and their students is impressive. Columbia and Barnard undergrad students find no distinction between themselves. They share one academic course catalog, classes, facilities, cafeteria’s, all social clubs, frat’s and sororities, athletic facilities, etc. Columbia students mentioned they like the food better at Barnard. One mentioned that her best friend was from Barnard. Barnard students take classes every day at Columbia and vice verse. The alleged “conflict” seems to be a rumor that in no way reflects the reality at these schools. I know. I asked.</p>
<p>Mansfield, thanks for the info. My d. does know about that major that you mentioned. Can I ask what your child is majoring in at SFS? Also, how does he/she like the Georgetown experience? Does he/she have a specific career in mind?</p>
<p>Calmom, this is exactly the type of information that we are looking for. Its great to get candid feedback based on your ds own experience. Re: my ds specific interest in international relations, it may be more on the developmental side, but shes not sure yet. I think that her interest stems from her early exposure to different cultures because of my own international career and our time overseas. This has sparked her interest in and awareness of different cultures, languages and political structures, etc. She also has a strong interest in biology and the sciences, so this is a work in process </p>
<p>Thanks to all… At the end of the day, these are both fantastic schools offering unique opportunities and thats why the decision is so difficult. We will be visiting both schools in the coming weeks. My hope is that she chooses the school thats right for her and that she has an amazing college experience.</p>
<p>Well, I’m biased in favor of Barnard – I’ve got a daughter who did the poli sci/IR thing, and another parent on the board - Churchmusicmom – has a daughter who majored in neuroscience and is now in a Ph.D. program at a top university. So you can come over to the Barnard thread for more information. </p>
<p>I do think that Barnard’s 9-ways of knowing curriculum is really built to encourage exploration. Churchmusicmom’s d. entered as a science-averse, possible dance major – but Barnard’s requirement of a year in a lab science led her to a psych class where she fell in love with neuroscience. </p>
<p>Do you think your d. may want to study abroad in college? Barnard definitely encourages study abroad and makes it easy, but they do have a rule that in most cases the student must have studied the language of the country where they are studying. So, for example, my d. (who studied Russian) could not have opted for a semester in Italy. She had to choose from either an English-speaking country or a Russian one. </p>
<p>Also, if your daughter has AP or IB credits, look into how the respective schools handles them. I feel that Barnard was very generous with AP credits – that essentially put my d. a semester ahead from the beginning. I think that could be particularly important for someone contemplating a double major. For the most part, the AP credits couldn’t be used to fill the distribution requirements, but they did give my d. a leg up in some courses. </p>
<p>Feel free to PM me if you want more info about my d’s experience.</p>
<p>My impression is that it was pretty easy to transfer out of SFS, but not a sure thing at all if you wanted to transfer into it. I think for an undecided student Barnard is probably a better choice.</p>
<p>I would counsel a little more caution and skepticism about the Columbia/Barnard split. I have known students at both places who didn’t feel there was any issue at all. Indeed, some of the women I know who went to Columbia recently wound up living at Barnard because they liked the dorms and the atmosphere better there. However, I have also heard Columbia students, male and female, say things that, frankly, were ugly and offensive about Barnard students. This was 6-7 years ago, and maybe things have evolved enough so that doesn’t happen anymore. Plus, even if some residue remains, that doesn’t mean Barnard may not be a great choice. But I would still look hard before I concluded that there was nothing there to see.</p>
<p>I’m very non-biased and very familiar with both of these schools. (I have members of my immediate family who graduated from both-- one in intl relations, one in science.) </p>
<p>It is not easy to transfer into SFS. However, all Georgetown students have access to the internship connections and job network of Georgetown. If she wants to study intl relations, really, the choice should be Georgetown. </p>
<p>The relative I have who graduated from Barnard majored in the sciences and attended medical school. She felt that Barnard prepared her well but that the women were catty. I would not dismiss concerns about the Columbia/ Barnard split. There is a significant difference in SATs between the schools and there are students who feel that the ladies are Barnard are not as competitive. My relative went on to an ivy league medical school, a top internship and grad degrees at a top private institution. She definitely credits her science training at Barnard for that.</p>
<p>The campuses are different in their feel. Georgetown has a very international feel and, even though it’s in DC, is-- compared to Barnard-- an upper-class oasis. DC also has a lot of young people and there’s a party around every corner. Barnard is in NYC. It is absolutely a city school and the kids are never away from real life.</p>
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<p>Would you counsel a minority student to avoid a school if you heard some white students say ugly and offensive things about URMs?</p>
<p>As I said, it probably depends on personality – but just because there are some idiots at Columbia doesn’t mean that Barnard is a bad place for a confident person. </p>
<p>I mean --my d. isn’t a mind reader so she had no clue as to whether there were kids in Columbia dorms cracking Barnard jokes when she wasn’t around. But that didn’t really impact her day-to-day experience, because those remarks probably weren’t coming from her friends or people who share her interests.</p>
<p>Um, I would like to point out that I didn’t counsel anyone to “avoid” Barnard, and I specifically said I thought Barnard could be a great choice, which is what I believe. </p>
<p>It would bother me a lot about a college if I heard students there say racist things in a manner that indicated they didn’t even know they were saying racist things, or that they were saying things that everyone around them didn’t accept as true. In this case, it was Columbia students referring to Barnard women as dumb and not up to snuff. They were not mean kids, they were just repeating conventional wisdom as far as they were concerned. One of them DID counsel my daughter not to go to Barnard, because why would she want to do that when she had so much on the ball?</p>
<p>My point was not that any of that was true, or that life would be awful for someone at Barnard. It was only that I wasn’t prepared to accept at face value the couple of posts that essentially said “Barnard/Columbia split? What split? No problem here!”</p>
<p>Evidently there are different experiences. The overwhelming predominance of the Barnard community, students & parents, who post on cc report perceiving no issue with this whatsoever. My own daughter did have an issue with it, but from CC it would seem nobody else there did.</p>
<p>Given that I was a first year at Barnard the year that Columbia College went co-ed (that dates me), I will say that it was never obvious which woman was from Barnard and which one from Columbia or Engineering. I lived in a coed dorm and my friends all had friends male and female from Columbia. I never heard any negative comments -just good natured boasting from Barnard because our perception was that Barnard was tougher because we were required to write a senior thesis and Columbia students weren’t. Unless things have dramatically changed over the years, I wouldn’t give Barnard-Columbia feuds a second thought.</p>
<p>“Unless things have dramatically changed over the years,…”</p>
<p>The most material thing that has changed, as it potentially pertains to this issue, is that Columbia’s admit rate is now single digits, with stats to match. The type of people who are there may be somewhat different from when you attended.</p>