Is it easier for Barnard students to get into Columbia’s grad school? Or is it harder for them since colleges might want to avoid accepting their own students?
Are you asking about PhD, Master’s, or professional (law/med) programs? The answer can be a little different. For PhD programs, there is an unwritten rule that you should go different places. The best way to pick a PhD program is to have a conversation with a professor at your undergraduate school. The best result is that they give you a suggestion that you should go study under Professor X or Y. Then they send an email to Professor X and Y about this great student.
Professional School tend to be more incestuous. For example, Yale law school accepts more students from Yale than any other school.
Please don’t choose Barnard solely because you think now that your dream grad program is at Columbia. Your goals for grad school will almost certainly change while you are an undergraduate. By the time you are applying to grad school, the place that best meets your needs could well be a place you hadn’t ever heard of until then.
@Eeyore123 I was thinking of going to a masters program in Econ. So if I go to Barnard would I have a higher chance of getting into Columbia’s masters program?
I completely understand @happymomof1 , I just wanted to know if there was a better chance
I’m going to answer this question, but I also want to submit that the true answer is unknowable and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I went to Columbia for graduate school. I’d say from my observations Columbia students (especially in my department, psychology, but I’ve seen it in others), in aggregate have perhaps slightly better chances of getting into graduate programs at Columbia, assuming that they are otherwise excellent candidates. This really depends on the individual department, though. Two caveats.
One, do remember that while Barnard is affiliated with Columbia and is officially one of its four undergraduate colleges…it is also a separate institution, and it has its own economics department with its own faculty. You’ll have the opportunity to take economics classes across both departments, and to do research with Columbia professors - but you’ll most likely take most of your classes with the Barnard economics faculty.
Two, you can’t necessarily apply the high-level probability to your individual probability - that doesn’t mean that if you go to Barnard that you, personally, will have higher or lower chances of admission to any of Columbia’s programs. That depends on a whole variety of other factors - for example, a student who would thrive at another college might not mesh well with the atmosphere at Barnard.
If academic tradition holds, it may be recommended to you that, for reasons of variety and challenge, you pursue your graduate-level education in an environment different from that of your undergraduate college. You wouldn’t have to adhere to this of course, but if the suggestion resonates with you, then Barnard may not represent your best choice of college if you are decisive in goal of attending graduate school at Columbia University.
Regarding the above, it should be noted that Barnard offers a top-notch economics department when considered by faculty publishing: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.uslacecon.html.
That academic tradition doesn’t make much sense (and definitely doesn’t hold in many countries overseas where departments heavily recruit grad students from their undergrads).
But to the OP: That should not factor one iota in to your decision-making as you have no clue what interests or paths you may take in the future.
Does Columbia even have a standalone econ master’s?
Absolutely. Columbia offers a bunch of (terminal) Master’s programs, most of which are cash cows. (Dunno if Econ is one of those, however.)
Of course it makes sense.
Academia, like many other fields, is strongly influenced by networks and connections. It’s all about who you know, and who you’ve worked with. Having broad networks only benefits aspiring scholars, and most serious graduate students are encouraged to start expanding that network in their first year.
Attending a graduate program outside of your own undergraduate department not only connects you to people you don’t already know; it also exposes you to different philosophies and approaches. This is especially important in a social science field like economics, where approach and philosophy have a big influence on how economists go about doing their work.
Sometimes it makes sense to go to your undergraduate department - they may just be the best department, or one of the best, in the student’s interest/specialty area.
Columbia does have a standalone economics master’s program: https://econ.columbia.edu/masters/