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<p>That really means nothing in today’s world. How many schools are there that do NOT have a majority female enrollment? Not too many!</p>
<p>You guys are funny. Some of the male grads from that era are federal judges (Richard Roberts) well known authors (Michael Gross) photographers (Terry DeRoy Gruber) Director of the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins (Richard Huganir) Physicans/ Cardiac pharmaceutical researchers (Jon Plehn), successful Market research experts/consultants (Paco Underhill), White House correspondents (Chip Reid) , just to rattle a few off the top of my head. These folks were hardly “less intelligent”. That is downright insulting.</p>
<p>The commitment to remaining a majority womens education was made many decades ago (around 1969)-- well before women began to dominate the higher education scene.</p>
<p>So the other schools were just slow to catch up!</p>
<p>The adcoms of the five all women remaining sisters give admission events without Vassar. I don’t know whose decision that was, but I take my cue from that. I don’t think that invalidates Vassar’s decision or it’s excellence, but I don’t think it occupies the same cultural niche as the other five. The printed materials from these events tell the same story. Both my kids looked at Vassar; one almost went. I have no quarrel with is decision.</p>
<p>Jym, how come so little is said about Newcomb College and Tulane?</p>
<p>This was a discussion abbout the seven sisters. Thats a discussion for another thread. It was another decision made to maintain the viability of the school (Tulane) and not without much challenge and resistence from some of the Newcomb community/faculty.</p>
<p>Well I guess the other 5 schools just arent very sisterly. How gauche.</p>
<p>I dont rightly care, to be honest, if the all womens colleges pooled their resources and held college events together. Lots of schools do that. The point I was making, and am done with trying to clarify, is that no one “ejected” Vassar from its identity as one of the “seven sisters”. Now enough already. Really.</p>
<p>Jym, you raised the “small issue” that Vassar is still one of the Seven Sisters, but are now making a big deal about it. Again, is being in or out of this sisterhood that important? It’s nothing but a name, and considering the membership being six or five, a rather silly name to toss around. </p>
<p>Sounds a lot like the silly discussions about Big 12, Big10, or Big Whatever in sports, and BigX for accounting firms. I do not see Exxon crying over its lost "“Consortium for Iran” cartel position and the associated Seven Sisters. </p>
<p>Ancient history it is!</p>
<p>I raised a point of clarification and a few posters ran with it in a huge way.</p>
<p>I would not think if some of the HBCU’s started to admit a more diverse student body that they would suddenly stop being considered a HBCU.</p>
<p>
It has it’s own identity, but it would definitely NOT be the same without the Columbia affiliation – any more than it would be the “same” if Barnard were to be relocated to a suburb in upstate New York. </p>
<p>I don’t think that people who are not familiar with Barnard realize the extent to which everything is intertwined. </p>
<p>To try to separate Barnard from Columbia would be analogous to surgery to separate conjoined twins who are sharing several vital organs. Given that Barnard is an academic entity rather than a living being, it would survive – but in a radically transformed state. </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that in 4 years at Barnard, my daughter spent more time physically on the Columbia campus than on the Barnard campus, and much more time off campus than physically on either campus. Sometimes she would have classes 2 days a week on the Barnard campus, 5 days a week on the Columbia campus. She had a work-study job at Columbia; she was an officer in two Columbia-based campus organizations. </p>
<p>It’s not just Columbia - it’s the whole city. My daughter only lived physically on campus her first year. Barnard does not offer work-study to seniors, so my daughter got a job her senior year working for a professor at NYU. </p>
<p>Part of my d’s experience was probably colored by the construction during the time she was there – during that period, there really was no place to hang out on the Barnard campus, and by the time they opened the Vag, my daughter was a senior living in building 10 blocks away, so not likely to hike up to campus to see friends or grab a cup of coffee. But I still don’t think Barnard has the <em>feel</em> of being an all women’s college; the classes and on-campus culture certainly are female-dominated, but the students just aren’t spending all or even most of their time within that environment. </p>
<p>I’m sure that historically, the Barnard experience would be more similar to what the Radcliffe experience once was … but of course Radcliffe is no more.</p>
<p>To get some closure on the alliance/affiliation of the seven sisters colleges, here is a lovely history of the consortium, written in 2007.
Never realized that Vassar actually put together the first meeting of the sister schools. Doubt they’d really ever be “uninvited”. So the belief that they are no longer siblings is inaccurate. They are no longer an all womens school, but that does not make them no longer one of the seven sisters. That was my point. [The</a> Seven Sisters - Vassar College Encyclopedia - Vassar College](<a href=“http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/organizations-events-activities/the-seven-sisters.html]The”>The Founding of The Seven Sisters - Vassar Encyclopedia - Vassar College)
Ok, back to the question at hand. Except did remember one male alum from the early days of VC’s coeducation who I’d like to not remember was one of the class. He was Jimmy Severino back then. Then became known as “James Severin”, whose boorish radio rantings about immigrants got him silenced.</p>
<p>One of the things that sets Wellesley apart is that it has always had a female president.</p>
<p>
Vassar is 80 miles away from Yale. It may have been one time seen as Yale’s “sister”, but never was in a position to merge. Pembroke was never one of the seven sisters, though obviously it was all-female and affiliated with Brown, and occupied a position relative to Brown similar to the Barnard/Columbia relationship. </p>
<p>I don’t think the point of this thread is to figure out which former seven-sister college is the most loyal, I assumed it was directed at the respective character of the remaining all-female colleges.</p>
<p>Calmom,
I used Pembroke as an example because it did merge with its “affiliated” school at the very time that Vassar was making its decision to stay independent or move to New Haven, which was the issue being discussed at the time. Its exactly because Vassar didn’t have a “male” school across the street or very nearby, as did Radcliffe, Pembroke, Barnard and Bryn Mawr (with schools like Wellesley, Smith and Holyoke requiring a tad more of a ride down the road, which exists with the 5 college consortium for Smith and Holyoke). Contrary to this statement, which is patently wrong,
**Not once , but twice, Vassar looked at a formal merger with Yale.<a href=“though%20the%20second%20discussion%20had%20more%20%22legs%22%20than%20the%20first”>/b</a>. Here’s a summary of the feasibility studies about the proposed merger. <a href=“http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/coeducation/the-vassar-yale-study.html[/url]”>http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/coeducation/the-vassar-yale-study.html</a> It would have been an absolute shame to leave the spectacular campus in Poughkeepsie. So instead both schools went coed. As did Princeton, and Dartmouth a few years later.</p>
<p>Jackson also merged into Tufts. No, Tufts wasn’t Ivy and Jackson wasn’t SS, but both were held in high esteem.</p>
<p>Vassar no longer offers the single-sex home environment.
I love Vassar. But, it’s now coed. Women’s colleges offer something that can’t be had in a 60/40 environment. </p>
<p>I don’t want to argue and think we’ve gotten off track. But this isn’t about elite smaller colleges, predominantly female. It’s about what happens when especially bright and focused women are exposed to a unique academic situation.</p>
<p>Agree, we’ve gotten off track. But that said, there is a difference, albeit perhaps subtle in some aspects, between the “seven sisters” (which was the topic of discussion) and single sex/all women’s colleges. Was simply correcting the incorrect comment(s) that Vassar is no longer considered one of the Seven sisters. It got blown out of proportion, but I do not regret correcting/responding to the incorrect and inaccurate representations made here, or the offensive comment about the “less intelligent” male grads.</p>
<p>Separate question - How many students at Barnard/Columbia cross register? How many males take classes at Barnard?</p>
<p>And, to get back to pizzagirl’s original question, she asked:
So how did the conversation revert back to that of a single sex education? That was NOT the topic of this thread.</p>
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<p>Very common from what I’ve seen and heard from Barnard & Columbia alums. </p>
<p>In fact, cross-registration is so seamless it’s almost an afterthought in practice. Moreover, there are certain majors which are only offered at Barnard…so Columbia students must take all/most of their major classes there and vice-versa…especially in STEM fields. </p>
<p>Also, it is common for males to take Barnard classes…especially if they’re majoring in fields only offered at Barnard…or certain popular faculty/courses are only offered at Barnard. </p>
<p>Some less academically serious males also take Barnard courses due to an apocryphal perception that Barnard classes tend to be easier or even “gut” courses compared with Columbia’s…with mixed results.</p>
<p>So in actuality, the classroom experience at a school like Barnard may not be all that different from a school like Vassar.</p>
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<p>Main differences are environmental(Urban vs suburban/rural) and student culture (urban sophisticated pre-professional vs more laid-back artsy intellectual vibe). </p>
<p>In some ways, Vassar is much more closer to Oberlin than to Barnard judging by what I’ve heard from several Vassar alum friends who visited both of the other campuses.</p>
<p>
This question actually reflect a misconception about the the registration process. For purposes of accounting, there is such a thing as “cross registration” (There are fees exchanged between Barnard/Columbia depending on the enrollment figures) </p>
<p>But practically speaking, Barnard students have a unitary registration process. There is no distinction between signing up for courses on any campus, other than a small number of courses with limited enrollment, and the Columbia Core. They have a huge catalog of courses to select from, some of which are taught on the Barnard campus, some of which are taught at Columbia. Some courses are identified with the letters “BC”, which means that they are taught by Barnard faculty. Some courses are identified with the letters “W” or “V”, then there is no way to figure out from the course number where the course is taught. It could be Barnard, it could be Columbia, or it could be that the same class is taught one semester on once campus, the next semester on the other. Barnard has broad distribution requirements, which tends to force students to cast a wide net when selecting courses. There are also science classes where the lecture is at Barnard, and the lab at Columbia. The campus affiliation would not ordinarily be a factor in course selection. </p>
<p>There are some stats available… I’ll see if I can dig them up.</p>