<p>Other than the housing location, Barnard doesn't seem any different from Columbia to me. Barnard women get a Columbia degree at graduation, can take Columbia's classes, Columbia students can take Barnard classes, both colleges share the same events and facilities... etc. What are some differences?</p>
<p>One difference I know: Columbia has the choice of having an internship count as a class.</p>
<p>oy gevalt.</p>
<p>Time time to kick back & eat some popcorn…
Glad those days are behind my family.</p>
<p>Columbia is generally more prestigious, which doesn’t hurt. And, I’m guessing you know that Barnard is a women’s only college.</p>
<p>Barnard is less competitive and single-sex. They like applicants who are committed to a kind of feminist leadership. They cannot take Core classes (and don’t have a Core Curriculum), I don’t believe they get Columbia degrees, the dorms, dining hall, classrooms, and classes are different. The colleges are certainly closel affiliated, but they are not the same.</p>
<p>I’m with you, monydad. I especially enjoy the discussions comparing and contrasting the language and signatures on the diplomas of Columbia and Barnard.</p>
<p>to the OP … I was thinking the same thing before my daughter and I visited the two schools and then after the visits I thought the two schools were very different … both excellent and the relationship between them great but both different and most students would probably prefer one school over the other. I’d suggest you do a search for Barnard since this topic has been discussed in length a few times.</p>
<p>here’s one string that might be interesting to you … <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/barnard-college/625022-how-easy-hard-go-barnard-columbia.html?highlight=barnard[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/barnard-college/625022-how-easy-hard-go-barnard-columbia.html?highlight=barnard</a></p>
<p>Barnard use to be an almost equal branch of the community back before Columbia went coed, but now it’s just a school across the street in decline. The connection to Columbia is contractual, and could completely disappear if either party declined to renew the contract whenever it’s up next.</p>
<p>hey lovebrown - columbia does not allow internships to count as a class.</p>
<p>i think the best way to describe it - administratively they are different beasts and slightly different cultures (the core v. 9 ways of knowing, a large university v. being the only game in town for the bc admin)</p>
<p>practically - on the one hand you can see it as one large undergraduate student body and indeed in many ways you could end up doing the same thing at either school. if being part of the larger student body is not your thing, certainly if you want you could be a barnard student and never engage with columbia and vice versa. so consider it in practical terms to be up to you how much or how little you want to do with the other school. </p>
<p>there are perception differences that usually lead to conflicts. which one is the best school. who has hotter girls. why are those girls dumb. i mean it really gets into silly stuff and those arguments go nowhere (see monydad and pbr, they are veterans of those debates). i think ultimately though you need to decide if you want your base to be a co-ed university, or a liberal arts womens college. perhaps further, how okay with you are you with the prestige gradient. though as a barnard student you are learning from very reputable faculty (that are in fact hired by columbia and barnard jointly), there is the perception (rightly or wrongly) that columbia is more prestigious and ergo if you are smart enough to get in you should go there. i know, however, many great barnard students that either got in to columbia or decided not to apply, that knew they wanted their grounding in a womens college and believed in that mission.</p>
<p>all questions worth asking to yourself. in the end - know that you can go to either place and get a great education</p>
<p>re: fastfood - i think barnard was in decline through the mid-90s, but most folks agree that Judith Schapiro and now Debora Spar have really resuscitated the college and made it quite clear that it is here to stay. based on how tight the contractual relationship between the two schools is - it will always remain in both interests to maintain the status quo. a college doesn’t spend 30 million on a new student center if it thinks it is going to die. and i think your thoughts here are not quite true. i understand if you disagree, but as someone with some strong ties to columbia and to alumni, i don’t think that the perception is still held that barnard is in decline.</p>
<p>Look at their new move to force all students to purchase meal plans. They claim that this is to improve student interactions, but it is clearly to shore up the bottom line.</p>
<p>The existence of a new student center does not mean that the school at large is doing better. </p>
<p>I would never say that Barnard is a bad school, but its just not that well thought of in the Columbia community.</p>
<p>wait - barnard gets columbia degrees? dont you have to GO to columbia and pay COLUMBIA tuition and room and board and be enrolled in a school to get a degree from it? My mom went to RISD and took classes at Brown but got a RISD degree…</p>
<p>@dreaming
The Barnard tuition isn’t that much different and Barnard students can take most classes at Columbia and vice-versa. The relationship is much closer than the limited Brown/RISD cross-registration. That said, for prospective applicants, the advice I offer is similar to admissiongeek’s: go to Columbia if you like Columbia and go to Barnard if you like Barnard. Women who go to Barnard go because they want to go to a progressive, urban “Seven Sisters” liberal arts college and become women leaders, not because Columbia is right across the street. And people go to Columbia (College) because they want to go to the undergraduate liberal arts school (with a famous Core Curriculum) within a prestigious urban research university. While not mutually exclusive, the kind of person who would want one seems very different than the kind of person who would like the other. The bottom line is that Barnard is not a female version of Columbia. It is a VERY different school.</p>
<p>fastfood - so what you mean? having students get a dining plan (something that is often enforced in most liberal arts colleges anyhow) is somehow a sign of weakness? and even if it is trying to shore up its bottom line, that does not imply it is somehow not doing well (or well by comparison considering how crappy the past year has been financially). it is just a tactic to make sure that one of the most unstable costs a university faces (food) can be more properly paid for. would you somehow imply that columbia isn’t doing well because they figure out they can cut waste by turning ferris into a dining hall? i’d call it prudence.</p>
<p>the existence of a new student center certainly rebuffs any speculation that the college plans on disintegrating. </p>
<p>thanks pwoods for a great post here.</p>
<p>look, I’ve heard that the school is financially insolvent, and is on its last leg. Maybe that’s not true, whatever. But my larger point is that it is not an equal institution as compared to the College. The OP wanted to know differences, that is a major difference. </p>
<p>I also mentioned that Barnard has a contract to allow students to take classes at Columbia, and that the contract is not permanent. I was just describing the relationship… Not claiming that any change would, or is likely to, occur. </p>
<p>I never even hinted at the idea of Barnard disintegrating. You are the first to bring that idea up. But, as I’m sure you know, it is a rumor. </p>
<p>Required dining plans are common at peer schools, sure, but not in New York where there are tons of other cheaper and better options. I’m not saying it’s weakness, but the manner in which they announced the plan was definitely misleading. Also, the new plan is in no way comparable to Columbia opening up Ferris Booth for meal swipes. Ferris is still an option, Barnards plan is not. </p>
<p>The Diana was being built before the financial meltdown. Barnard is suffering big time from what I hear. </p>
<p>So for the OP, the differences:
Barnard takes classes at Columbia,
Requires meal plan for 4 years,
Shaken up from the recession worse than Columbia.</p>
<p>first you write
“I’ve heard that the school is financially insolvent, and is on its last leg”</p>
<p>then you say
“I never even hinted at the idea of Barnard disintegrating.” yeah you didn’t use the word disintegrating, but you implied it all the same.</p>
<p>i think it is intellectually dishonest to use rumor as a cause for alarm. if you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t pretend. and i will reiterate, i know many alumna of barnard that would disagree with you in fact (not just opinion) about the finances of the college. their endowment was already very low such that it was strongly insulated compared to other colleges. and there has never been an implication by anyone i know of in the upper reaches of barnard admin or alumnae base that would suggest anything to the contrary. i would question the sources of your rumor because they conflict very sharply with the reality that i have heard. so unless you have something more substantiating, saying oh don’t consider barnard cause it is in a tough financial place, is frankly ridiculous. </p>
<p>re: Ferris. i don’t get what you mean it is still an option. what i was saying is that i know for fact that dining is making ferris a dining hall for financial reasons, as more than likely the barnard meal plan. sure materially they are different, but they derive from similar financial demands. </p>
<p>i am sorry if it sounds like i am beating a deadhorse on here, i just think it is important that you nor anyone get around with bad logic and bad information. i know you are entitled to your opinions, but if they suck, i’ll be sure to call you out on them.</p>
<p>admissionsgeek - how do you know so many administrative people?</p>
<p>ahhhh… i give up. I’m not trying to paint a doomsday picture here. i don’t even think what we’re saying conflicts that much. And I never once said that no one should goto barnard! </p>
<p>if you know prezbo et al, then i’m sure you have a better perspective than lowly me.</p>
<p>skippy, i am active within alumni circles and because i like to get a pulse of what is going on, i keep up with folks. can’t say me and prezbo are close, but i have my ways of getting information. so when fastfood wrote that thing about barnard, i asked a friend that actually now works at columbia but went to barnard how true it could be, and she said it was the furthest from the truth (something a handful of other barnard alumna have said).</p>
<p>so when i push you fastfood, no it isn’t because i think you are lowly. i think anyone can say something of importance. i just think you were making implications and repeating rumors that are unsubstantiated and that is dangerous. </p>
<p>i definitely don’t know everything that’s going on, and there is a line between fact and opinion (i am a fan of barnard so i would defend it), but i hope you appreciate my perspective here and the ‘insider’ like information i’ve been able to gather by virtue of well just asking big wigs what’s the deal and being plenty shocked by how open they are in sharing info. </p>
<p>but if folks don’t have accurate information and actually believe as fastfood implies that barnard is financially in ruins, they may end up not applying. i have a problem with that not because i just want to defend barnard, but because it is not true. i think there are serious reasons not to apply to columbia or to barnard. fastfood mentioned some, but his most glaring statement was this thing about financial solvency. and i am sorry i had to play the “i know what you dont know” card to shove his opinion aside, but if in the end you think i’m a jerk for playing that card, but also believe that he is probably wrong about barnard, then i think it is worthy cause.</p>
<p>didn’t say financial ruins!! 
anyway</p>
<p>how do you get active in alumni circles? </p>
<p>I don’t any of those arguments are reasons not to goto Columbia. The only reasons I don’t like Columbia has nothing to do with the university, but the location. Obviously the location has many benefits too. But that entire discussion is for another day!</p>
<p>OK, some of this stuff is just nonsense… </p>
<p>Barnard’s financials can be easily viewed online here:
[Barnard</a> - Finance and Planning](<a href=“http://www.barnard.edu/opir/financialstatements.html]Barnard”>http://www.barnard.edu/opir/financialstatements.html)</p>
<p>As a Barnard parent I haven’t received any frantic or even semi-frantic letters seeking donations… just the ordinary letters seeking donations … so I don’t think anyone is worrying about money just yet. When a college starts running into financial problems, the signs would be things like layoffs of faculty, reduced class offerings, etc. AFAIK, no evidence of that is Barnard. </p>
<p>My daughter is graduating but if not, I wouldn’t be happy about the meal plan – but they do not require a full plan for all 4 years – they just want everyone to buy into it, with a diminishing level of required meal points purchases each year. I figure its a contract thing – there are new eateries opening up at the new Nexus or Diana or whatever they call the thing, which clearly means new contracts with the companies operating them. Barnard’s administration likely is focused on guaranteeing a certain level of patronage for the new food service options, and so they’re pushing people onto the plan to get bodies into the dining hall & cafes. Students forced to buy the Barnard meal plan points will have to patronize the new eateries, hopefully driving up usage and revenue so that the operators/caterers are happy to deliver the services that are contracted for. </p>
<p>The $$$ paid to Barnard for meal plans (and to any other college for that matter) - has nothing whatsoever to do with the financial health of the college, and everything to do with the financial health of the companies that provide the catering services. The less students on the plan, the higher the cost for those students – so requiring more students to buy into the plans is one way to hold down the costs charged for meals. (Students who buy into the plan but don’t eat all meals they have paid for are subsidizing everyone else). But the meal plan budget is entirely separate from the college operation budget, and self-contained – that is, they certainly don’t use meal dollars to pay administrative costs.</p>