Is Barnard the same as Columbia?

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This is one thing I don't get about some barnard students. What's the point of going to an all-womens college if you are going to choose to take the majority of your classes in a coed setting?

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Barnard students do not necessarily choose Barnard because it is a women's college -- my d. is there in spite of that fact, though she certainly does not take classes at Columbia out of a desire to study with boys.</p>

<p>What Barnard offers is an urban LAC-type atmosphere with the resources of a large university. My d. also wanted flexibility with course choices (ie., no core) and she appreciates the close advising and relations with the faculty that Barnard offers. </p>

<p>However, my d. has taken about half her courses at Columbia because that is where the classes she wanted or needed are. For example, she has signed up for a stats class and a history class at Columbia next fall, in order to fill her only 2 remaining unfilled "9-ways of knowing requirements" at Barnard. Like every other student on either side of the street, she went on line and looked at what was available by subject; checked out profs on Culpa; and signed up for courses that looked interesting, filled needed requirements, and/or fit within available or preferred time slots. In her lab science course, the class was at Barnard and the lab was at Columbia. So basically a student at Barnard is likely to spend a lot of time taking classes at Columbia whether they plan to or not -- it's hard not to.</p>

<p>But more than that: Barnard students who participate in various activities on both sides of the street are proud of their connection to both their college and the University. My d. has more than once done things that put her in the capacity of a representative of Columbia or its students (she's an officer in a student group) </p>

<p>There probably are some students who try to fudge because they want the prestige of Columbia... but a lot of other students simply feel a connection to Columbia University because they are involved with many Columbia-things, and probably simply refer to themselves as going to "Barnard" or "Columbia" depending on the context in which it comes up. </p>

<p>Anyway, this topic gets beaten to death here on CC, but to people who are actually living in campus housing and attending school at Barnard, its pretty hard to get the elephant out of the room. Columbia, without a doubt, is the dominant presence -- and as far as I know, my d. carries a student ID card that says "Columbia" on it. Believe it or not, its possible to have a sense of belonging and school spirit for both.</p>

<p>But in answer to the OP: no, they are not the "same", any more than two siblings are the "same". They are closely related, but different. (Try to visualize it all as a Venn diagram -- there are areas of overlap and areas of separation.)</p>

<p>a Venn diagram would be fun...too bad CC doesn't let you post pictures</p>

<p>Columbia University (Columbia college/SEAS) is Ivy League
Barnard is not</p>

<p>"ending with its relationship to Columbia ("basically the all women's undergrad college"). I never, ever ever say simply "I am going to Columbia"."</p>

<p>saying the 'all women's college of columbia university' would be incorrect. the precise relationship is an affiliate. I don't know of any univ in which you can apply to two seperate undergraduate schools similtaneously, and get accepted to both.</p>

<p>If you end the explanation like that, you imply that barnard is an undergraduate school belonging to columbia, which, for a variety of reasons, not just the one cited above, it is not. The previous details are irrelevant in defining the relationship between barnard and columbia. It's like me saying "I go to a univ in NYC, it's a small school connected to a grad school, the undergrad engineering school of columbia" at the end I still cite the school as belonging to and subordinate to columbia, rather than closely connected but still an indepented institution like Barnard is.</p>

<p>I said "basically", and honestly no one who is asking cares or understands what "affiliate" means. Trust me, I've tried explaining the true and exact relationship before, but seriously, no one cares that much. They just want to know the caliber of difficulty of your school. For example, someone was telling me that they went to U Chicago, and I didn't really know much about it. I was kinda surprised at why they would go to a random school in Illinois, but they explained to me that it was ranked the same as Columbia University. Columbia is used as a standard which unfamiliar others can understand.</p>

<p>Also, when you go to the Columbia University website and search for my name, it's there. That's gotta count for something:)</p>

<p>ColumbiaLover -- I think that Barnard is technically part of the Ivy League, due to the fact that Ivy League is a sports thing, and Columbia and Barnard share their athletic teams.</p>

<p>But anyway, what makes Barnard so wonderful is that it is a LAC with the resources of a large university. It's got the best of both worlds, as they say in the brochures haha.</p>

<p>I just realized that calmom basically said that same line. And I have to agree with most of what she said as well. I didn't really scout out an all women's college.. I had a phase in my life where I was dead set on going to an Ivy league college, but then through my college search, I realized that it wasn't really for me. Then I found out about LACs, and really loved the idea of them... but most of them were in the middle of no where! Barnard was the college that had everything that I wanted -- a curriculum that supported academic exploration, a fabulous location with a tremendous amount of opportunities at hand, and a small community feeling without the isolation. It worked best for me, and I seriously don't think of myself as trying to sneak into Columbia College.</p>

<p>What really gets in a lot of people's craw is the "well people don't recognize the Barnard name, so I say it's part of Columbia" line of justification.</p>

<p>It gets in people's craws for 2 reasons</p>

<p>1) You can hash it any which way you want, but the statement just isn't true. Barnard is an independent institution with incredibly strong academic and social ties to the University. They have their own administration, their own trustees, their own endowment and budget, they have to pay Columbia for access to its facilities and to purchase utilities. The closest comparison is the Claremont Colleges consortium. Do students who go to Scripps of Harvey Mudd say they go to "Claremont"?</p>

<p>2) The reason why people don't recognize the Barnard brand is because you're so happy to keep riding on Columbia's coat tails. This is partially the Barnard administration's fault which at times demands that Barnard be treated as having an independent identity within the University (e.g. demanding equal billing at various events - i.e. "The Barnard-Columbia blah blah Program", but doesn't seem to make an active effort to educate its students in how to establish the Barnard brand in situations like employer interviews etc.</p>

<p>Sidenote: What exactly does the fact that the administrators on facebook lumped Columbia and Barnard together say other than that the facebook adminsitrators know nothing about the internal structure of the university? (There's also the IT issue of email domains that's another source for pointless Barnard-Columbia arguments)</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/168550-barnard.html?highlight=Barnard%3F%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/168550-barnard.html?highlight=Barnard%3F&lt;/a>
barnard? - College Discussion</p>

<p>You might want to take a look at this thread</p>

<p>Do students who go to Scripps of Harvey Mudd say they go to "Claremont"?</p>

<p>We do not; facebook says we do.</p>

<p>The Claremont consortium is different than Barnard's situation, because the people at, let's say Scripps, aren't getting a degree from Pomona.. they only share their resources.</p>

<p>Columbia University (Columbia college/SEAS) is Ivy League</p>

<p>"Ivy League" is an athletic conference. Columbia University participates in the Ivy League athletic conference via the aptly named "Columbia-Barnard Athletic Consortium".</p>

<p>I had dinner with a group of new people last night. Here is the exact conversation that went down at one point:</p>

<p>Context: A college prof mentions how difficult it was for him to learn Czech while living in Prague. I comment that slavic languages are quite difficult, mentioning that my daughter studied Russian extensively in high school but still had found her college courses to be very demanding. </p>

<p>College Prof: "Where does your daughter go to college?"</p>

<p>Me: "She goes to Barnard."</p>

<p>College Prof: "That's the woman's college at Columbia, right?"</p>

<p>Me: "Yes,she studied Russian at Columbia"</p>

<p>Woman sitting next to me: "I graduated from Barnard. It's a separate college"</p>

<p>Me: "That's true. The college has a separate admissions and administration, but the Slavic Languages department is joint with Columbia." </p>

<p>The point? If the issue at hand was, "Calmom's daughter" then "Barnard" would suffice as an answer; but if the issue at hand was, "quality of Russian department at X college" .... then it would be rather unfair to fail to give credit to the faculty doing the teaching in Hamilton Hall. </p>

<p>Now it happens that my d. has one class in particular in her major (not Russian) that she raves about. If my conversation had started last night with "how much my d. loves her colloquium professor".... then my response to the comment about "Barnard at Columbia" would probably have been, "Well, Barnard is affiliated with Columbia, but this class is at Barnard." So at that point, we would be over at the Barnard-only part of the Venn diagram. </p>

<p>Again... its all about context.</p>

<p>The other day I ran into an old acquaintance who asked about my children.</p>

<p>Me: "My son is a student at Columbia University in New York and my daughter graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio."</p>

<p>Her: "Oberlin College? I never heard of it."</p>

<p>Me: "Oh, it's an LAC in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio."</p>

<p>Her: "Hmmmmmm."</p>

<p>Me: "So how are your children doing?"</p>

<p>The point? Who cares whether or not she ever heard of Oberlin College. I don't give a damn. If she really cares, let her google it.</p>

<p>Sniv, I see what your saying but that's not the point. You bring up the diplomas (one of the retreaded pieces of "Evidence" that always comes up...), but the diplomas are a term of the relationship, they don't define it.</p>

<p>If all five claremont colleges agreed to issue one diploma, but each signed by the dean of the respective school, it wouldn't that change the relationship between the schools.</p>

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The point? Who cares whether or not she ever heard of Oberlin College. I don't give a damn. If she really cares, let her google it.

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<p>Who cares? The tons of parents who love to play the "mine is bigger" game with other parents to prove how wonderful their little darlings are.</p>

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Sniv, I see what your saying but that's not the point. You bring up the diplomas (one of the retreaded pieces of "Evidence" that always comes up...), but the diplomas are a term of the relationship, they don't define it.</p>

<p>If all five claremont colleges agreed to issue one diploma, but each signed by the dean of the respective school, it wouldn't that change the relationship between the schools.

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<p>The Columbia and Barnard diplomas are materially different in a number of ways. It's more than just one signature's difference.</p>

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College Prof: "Where does your daughter go to college?"</p>

<p>Me: "She goes to Barnard."</p>

<p>College Prof: "That's the woman's college at Columbia, right?"</p>

<p>Me: "Yes,she studied Russian at Columbia"</p>

<p>Woman sitting next to me: "I graduated from Barnard. It's a separate college"

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</p>

<p>This is what people call an "PWN4G3" (ownage).</p>

<p>Your answer to his "That's the woman's college at Columbia, right?" question was non-responsive. To the extent that you felt the need to add extraneous information to provide context, you should have initially provided the full scope of information that you later provided when you were rightly called out.</p>

<p>This is probably going down a rabbit hole, but you can compare them here: Diplomas</a> - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia</p>

<p>The Barnard diploma has the seal of barnard college in addition to that of the university, and the latin is a little different and includes a reference to Barnard College. But it's still bestowed by the Trustees of Columbia University and signed by its President.</p>

<p>My point is that this doesn't "prove" anything, like many people want to say it does. All it proves is that as part of the institutional agreement between the two schools, Columbia continues to grant the diplomas that Barnard graduates receive. Wonderful symbolism, but it doesn't matter where it counts. As far as Columbia is concerned, Barnard students (along with Teachers College graduates, who also get their degrees from Columbia and go to the same big commencement extravaganza that graduating students from all 16 Columbia and 2 affiliated schools attend) never graduated from Columbia: <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract/degrees_awarded_2006-2007.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract/degrees_awarded_2006-2007.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>OMG! This Barnard vs. Columbia quarrell again?</p>

<p>I can't believe you guys are seriously going to go through this. Barnard and Columbia are like family. No need to be hostile.</p>

<p>A lot of people mentioned Barnard students using the Columbia name deceptively to get jobs, so when I was on campus, I asked around and found out what Barnard women wrote on their resumes.</p>

<p>The overwhelming answer was a quizzical look and "Barnard College." Some also said "Barnard College - Columbia University." I did not find a single woman who either listed her education as "Columbia University - Barnard College" or, worse yet, "Columbia University."</p>

<p>Now, I'm not saying these women don't exist - but they MUST be in the minority. By the way, talking to both Columbia and Barnard students, they didn't seem to feel any sort of dislike toward the other institution although they did mention some "hostile things that get said on the blogosphere" and "competition for Columbia guys." </p>

<p>Conclusion: As it was about SAT scores and being leader of every team, this is a classical CC case of "much ado about nothing."</p>

<p>Edit - Oh, part of the reason I asked was because I was writing a resume for internships and wasn't sure what to put down. I'll be going to Barnard next fall. Well, when I went to an interview and my interviewer, a columbia alum, saw that it said I'd be going to Barnard College next fall, he smiled and started giving me a whole load of tips on surviving Columbia. O-o Yeah, so I guess it didn't matter that much to him.</p>

<p>doubleposted</p>