<p>I’m a junior, been doing the whole college search thing. Originally, I was only looking at the Ivies (Yale, Brown, Cornell), but a teacher suggested I take a look at Barnard. </p>
<p>Got a few questions</p>
<p>-How are the classes? Very hard? Are the teachers hard gradrs?
-How is the life outside of classes-fun?</p>
<p>Also, I know no one can tell for sure, but would Barnard be a reasonable school to apply to? (I have no idea how hard/easy it is to get in.)</p>
<p>I have a 95 gpa, 2310 SAT, study unique languages, internships,sports/clubs, and national awards. I’ve also started my essays. </p>
<p>My daughter (Barnard grad, 2010) feels that the classes at Barnard are more rigorous than most other colleges, including Ivies. (That’s her opinion only, of course – but it is base on comparing her experiences with that of friends who attended Ivies with similar majors). However, there’s a lot of grade inflation so when my d. put in the work, she got A’s. If that seems at all contradictory… my d. is something of a perfectionist – the positive side was simply that she didn’t encounter any sort of unfairness in grading – work that deserved an A was given an A.</p>
<p>Thanks, that sounds like what I want…a friend at Cornell told me that everything is graded on a curve there, so you could do great work, but if people do better work, they get an A. That didn’t sound like a great environment for me.</p>
<p>The curve thing is pretty much what I was getting at. My d. was a poli sci major so I don’t know if things could be different in math & science courses. Also, I think that at some schools with tough grading, there is a philosophy of giving B’s as the default grade for good quality work, reserving A’s only for the best. At Barnard, good quality work is going to usually get an A - and super amazing work might get an A+. My d. had a little bit of a bump her first semester in terms of figuring out what was expected of her, as she was coming from a far less rigorous high school – she learned the hard way that having the “right” answers on a midterm was not enough – but once she was clear on expectations, things were fine. She never ran into a problem of getting a weaker grade than she thought she deserved, at least if you don’t count an A- as a being all that bad. </p>
<p>I think that my d’s view as to the rigor of work might stem from the high level of reading and fairly intense writing requirements at Barnard - I think most Barnard majors require a senior thesis.</p>
<p>I’m a 1996 graduate of Barnard. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the school is its relationship to Columbia. During my three years at Barnard (I spent my junior year at the London School of Economics) I only had ONE class that was not Barnard/Columbia combined, and that was my freshman English class. Basically, Barnard classes are just as difficult as other Ivy League ones and when you combine the classes offered in the Barnard catalog and the Columbia catalog, you have an incredible array of interesting and diverse classes. I took the History of the City of New York, the Holocaust in Film, and other interesting courses. </p>
<p>As far as life outside classes, remember that the school is in New York City, so you have a wealth of opportunities to go to shows, see films, go to museums, and other activities. A Barnard education is what you make of it!</p>
<p>Barnard is a very selective school, with approximately 25% of applicants accepted (it’s the most selective of the Seven Sisters). If you have strong grades and extracurriculars give it a try!</p>
<p>@agentwood:hmm, didn’t know it was that selective. i guess my app is decent, most people say ivy material, but everything got so competitive. one question–if im not an artsy person, would there be things to do?</p>
<p>@calmom: that sounds very fair. at my high school, even if you have earned an A+, teachers will usually give an A-, and ive never liked the policy. im actually looking into polisci/IR, but want to go to med school, so would take the pre recs for med school.</p>
<p>I’m not an artsy person and I loved Barnard.</p>
<p>Barnard is academically rigorous in ways that might be different from larger schools. I recently realized this when taking a class with a professor who had just transferred from a much larger university. She was used to testing extensively memorized material and giving long, grueling tests. Professors that spent more time at Barnard focus their grading more on writing assignments, participation, critical thinking, etc.</p>
<p>The curve is, more often than not, a good thing. Whereas an uncurved class would see an average at a C, a curved class makes average-level work a B or B+ and assigns all other grades accordingly. More students end up with A’s this way – this is what’s meant by grade inflation.</p>
<p>Some professors don’t believe in A+'s, but not all. </p>
<p>If you’ve got med school questions, I’m your girl. Just graduated Barnard, going to NYU (top 30ish I think) in the fall.</p>
<p>Thanks…yea I’m probably most worried about the whole “artsy” thing. I’m more of a sports watching, shopping, parties type girl. two more questions?</p>
<p>does barnard do a good job at sending girls to med school?</p>
<p>Barnard does do a pretty good job with sending girls to med school. One thing to note is that most Barnard ladies don’t go straight to med school after graduating, but instead take a year or two or three off beforehand. There are a lot of reasons for this, including the fact that time off just seems to be the trend these days, but it shouldn’t influence your decision either way. You do what works best for you and your goals/lifestyle and you own it. That said, I haven’t heard of many (any?) girls applying and not getting in. And the schools they do go to are pretty legit (NYU represent).</p>
<p>Barnard just this year approved the official funding of Greek organizations. This means that while Barnard girls were able to join Columbia sororities beforehand, some of Greek life now actually receives funding from Barnard. I imagine this makes it easier/better for Barnard girls, but I’m not involved so I can’t really comment beyond that.</p>
<p>Plenty of shopping and nightlife around here. Sporting events are available, too, but it’s not a huge point of focus for students. As someone who went to every football and basketball game all four years (through the marching band, which I assure you is more of a spirit/comedy group than it is a musical one), I’m all for sports fans joining the Columbia community.</p>
<p>oh and i hear there are some decent professional sports teams in the area… ;)</p>
<p>I’m actually starting to like Barnard more and more. I’m a pretty anxious person, so I would want to get to med school right after college. A good med school acceptance rate is really important. Is premed really competitive at Barnard?</p>
<p>Sounds good about the sororities. </p>
<p>I’ve actually been to a football game there, it was pretty nice. Loved the band!</p>
<p>One of the things I loved most about Barnard was how noncompetitive premed classes were. I mean, yeah, people are crazy about their grades and they study nonstop for these classes, but no one is out to sabotage anyone else. Every premed at Barnard is really in it together and I definitely got that feeling from many of my premed classes. The peer support is incredible. Also the bio and chem departments are wonderful (I took physics at Columbia so I can’t really comment).</p>
<p>I think Barnard has actually moved up my list! This may be a stupid question, but would you say i have a decent chance at Barnard? I really don’t want to apply to so many reach schools, so if Barnard is a high reach, idk if i can apply.</p>
<p>What other schools are you looking at? Your original post referenced Ivies – Yale, Brown, Cornell. Barnard is not nearly as difficult to get into as Yale or Brown. It may or may not be as selective as Cornell, depending on individual circumstances. </p>
<p>It seems to me that you are going about the college search the wrong way, focusing on reach schools first. Perhaps that is because you haven’t really given that much thought to the issue until now.</p>
<p>You really should begin by figuring out what YOU want in a college, and then finding colleges that match your personal goal. That is, start by looking for “fit”. Then when you have narrowed things down to a list of perhaps 20 colleges that seem like good fits, pick out some safeties from that list as for sure colleges to apply to. (If there are no safeties, then expand your criteria until you find some). Then, among the remaining colleges, focus on simply developing a list of perhaps 6-8 based on which you like best. </p>
<p>So you might end up applying to 8 colleges total – 2 safeties, plus your 6 favorites. It doesn’t matter how selective the favorites are, because you’ve got the good-fit safeties. At the same time, if you are focusing on fit – not selectivity – it is very possible that you will have strong match or even safety schools among the favorites. But if not, you’ve still got those safeties.</p>
<p>Barnard is obviously not a safety for anyone. It may be a strong match for many. You should not be considering selectivity in whether you apply to Barnard, but rather simply the question of where it lies on your personal preference list.</p>
<p>good advice. umm yea, looking at Yale, Brown, Cornell (but not so much), Penn, Tufts, and Georgetown as schools I like. and the safeties, i got a few that id be really happy with. so i mostly have safety or high reach. from the statistics, it seems like barnard is more of a middle ground between high reach and safety, and that would be perfect, but im not sure.</p>
<p>I think you need to spend more time thinking about what you want in a college and focus on finding a good fit college.</p>
<p>My observation over the years has been that fit is an extremely important factor in Barnard’s selection process, much more important than stats. All you have posted here, basically, are your stats - plus a list of other colleges you are looking at that don’t seem to have much in common with each other on the surface, other than all being highly selective, so it’s hard to get much of a sense of what you might be looking for.</p>
<p>If you are thinking of Barnard as a backup for one of those school… I wouldn’t be very optimistic of your chances of getting into Barnard. It’s got nothing to do with stats – it’s what stand out on the application that (a) shows the Barnard ad com that the applicant is clearly a great fit for Barnard and (b) shows the Barnard ad com that the applicant has something to offer the school that makes that applicant stand out.</p>
<p>Now you may very well have those stand-out & fit qualities – but you haven’t made it very clear what those are – and you haven’t asked any questions related to academics. That is – you asked how hard the classes were and what grading was like… but you didn’t ask about the quality of any specific department or the professors, etc. For example, you wrote that you “study unique languages” – but didn’t ask about the quality of offerings at Barnard/Columbia in those languages.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t know if Barnard is a good college for you or not, but if your main goal is to fill in a “match” slot on your college app list… then I think you should look elsewhere, probably to a college with a more numbers oriented and less holistic approach to admissions. Because in less you can articulate in a better way what it is that appeals to you about Barnard (other than “higher chances of admission than Yale”) — you are going to have a hard time on the “why Barnard” essay.</p>
<p>Do spend some more time learning about all of the colleges on your list, and visit campuses if you can. I don’t think you need a solid college list now – my kids certainly did not narrow down their choices until fall of their senior years. So it may be that as you think about things more and investigate colleges more, you will get a clearer idea of what you are looking for and which colleges are the best fit.</p>
<p>I second Calmom’s advice. My username is obsolete at this point, if I could I’d switch to 2Down1Togo … I’ve been through searches with my two oldest … and I’m pretty convinced doing a search trying to find reach/match/safety schools is the backwards way to approach the process. If a student first focusses on what they want in a school initially ignoring academic stats … size, area of counrty, urban/college town/ suburban, majors offered, single sex or not, D1 sports or not, frats/sororities or not, etc … that this initial list will not be too long (for one of my kids it was about 25 & for the other about 100) … and then add info about academic stats. If a search is done this way I think the list will typically naturally include reach/match/safety schools AND they also will be fits. A couple additional random thoughts. Both my kids ended up picking schools that were NOT the highest rank schools on their list because they believed the schools were the best fit (and I agree with both their choices 100%). Second, this approach works as long as the student has some specifics in their search … the list would be huge if they the list is any school with an English major … the list would be fine if it would be any school in the northeast or mid-atlantic that is small to medium size in a college town and has an artsy vibe to it that has an English major.</p>
<p>totally get what you guys were saying. sorry i came off that way, i just dont feel comfortable giving too much info out on the web, as im sure you understand! I’ve been doing research, and Barnard has a lot of the qualities on my “list”. i just had never really considered it bc of the all-womens thing, but when i read more about it, thats actually what i like about barnard.</p>
<p>ive actually been to the columbia campus many times, bc my parents went there, and have been to the barnard campus too, and think I would fit very well.</p>
<p>^ This sounds similar to my daughter. Her initial list was centered around research universities in urban areas and she was not interested in LACs or all women’s schools. In fact when we visited schools the two schools we were planning to tour where we never made it out of the car were two LACs. When we toured Columbia we toured Barnard in the afternoon … before talking to FirstToGo (I was not allowed to speak to her or school reps) I sent an email to Mom3ToGo and said I know where FirstToGo is going … she’ll go to Barnard (if they take her). My daughter applied to Barnard ED and is loving her experience … her applying to Barnard ED given her search criteria appears a bit ironic … however Barnard is pretty unique place (which is why I always suggest visiting). For FirstToGo Barnard had a bunch of unique advantages</p>
<p>1) The smaller classes and attention of a LAC …
1B) While it’s relationship with COlumbia brings the breadth and opportunities of a large research U … at this point (after 2 years) my daughter has had classes, had jobs, and done research at both Barnard and Columbia.</p>
<p>2) The empowering environment of a women’s college
2B) having a large coed school (with men) literally across the street which greatly expands the social options … I believe (virtually?) all ECs are joint between the schools.</p>
<p>3) Being in a great Manhattan neighborhood</p>
<p>At the start of the tour day my daughter was pretty sure Columbia was her first choice … and after the two tours Barnard moved from somewhere way down the list to the top. Full disclousre - Columbia still was her second choice … she really liked Columbia but she LOVED Barnard.</p>
<p>Sounds a lot like me. I’ve taken a tour of Columbia, and didn’t like it, mostly because of their Core, so even though it had everything else I wanted, I counted it out. Barnard seem to have more flexible requirements, and that’s pretty important. I love NYC though, but NYU is too big and impersonal for me.</p>
<p>hey can anyone tell me if i have a chance in getting acceptance into barnard college?</p>
<p>gpa: 92
SAT: 2010
EC’s: Key Club, Track and Field, JROTC(it’s a leadership program at my hs)
coursework: Have two AP’s so far this year, but im going to have 3 AP’s next year (Macroeconomics, English, Psychology)
Summer: going to volunteer at a nursing home and going to attend Girl’s State</p>
<p>it’ll be greatly appreciated if someone can tell me if im on the right track. I just recently got nominated for the posse scholarship so my mom is pushing me for the list of schools, but I don’t see any other college that I would attend. My parents don’t have a lot of money so they’re also trying to persuade me to attend hunter college in manhattan, which is a city college.</p>