<p>Hey,
I had been considering EDing Barnard for a very long time, very set on it. But what is stressing me out and basically making me consider RD (so I have other options) is that it’s all girls. I just am scared that if I go there I will have to work hard to have relationships with males and I think that will influence my social life a lot. I’m not sure if all-female will get to my head or not.
I basically just want to know everyone’s experience with meeting men while at barnard. i know it’s different for everyone, so id like to know some experiences. thanks.</p>
<p>columbia's right across from barnard. a friend at columbia has told me that no one he knows from barnard has experienced any problems.</p>
<p>Because classes, dining facilities, clubs, and even housing to some extent are intermingled with Columbia, Barnard hardly ever feels all-female, at least from my perspective (a Columbian from "across the street"), although in certain required classes and dorms, among other things, there is an all-female population or at least a denser concentration of girls. The fact that Barnard is located on a tiny city block in New York means that Barnard students can hardly avoid males when they inevitably spill off campus, either.</p>
<p>Do not worry about this. My daughter is in her second year at Barnard. She never had thoughts of attending a "women's" college until she encountered Barnard with its unique blend of excellent academics (with all the resources of Columbia University), fantastic dance training (she is a dancer), and the supportive, catalytic environment that is created when you are in that environment of Barnard women all reaching to attain the best within themselves. Yes, there are guys all over the place, but Barnard manages to retain the best part of being a school for women. If you have not visited (and it sounds like you may not have, or at least not during school), you should!!!</p>
<p>In my experience here, you'd have to work pretty hard NOT to have relationships with males. I have 5 classes, all of which have guys in them except one because it's an in-residence course. Even if you have all Barnard classes (which ,for me, was IMPOSSIBLE to do!), there still may be guys in them. They eat in our student center and in our dining hall and they study in our library. They are less of a presence on this side of the street around campus, but they are here. Like I said, you would have to go and hide in your dorm room all day to avoid meeting guys. </p>
<p>Also, if you ever feel like you need some "male influence", just walk to Columbia or, even better, get out of Morningside Heights and go downtown for some fun. My roomates and I LOVE the all-female aspect of Barnard and love living in a dorm full of intelligent, strong women, but we have mutual guy friends (most of them from orientation) that we hang out with when we "need a break" from all the estrogen. </p>
<p>As a side note, rumor has it (I am not claiming that there is any truth to this because I don't really know) that guys like Barnard girls better anyway because they're just a little nicer :-P.</p>
<p>hey everyone, thanks for all the responses! they are quite encouraging, but I am still anxious.
Do you feel freshman year, though, may be harder since you are required to take the 2 barnard intro coures (seminar et), which are all female? I guess I'm just worried because I've heard both. I know someone who is there now from my school who says it's a big adjustment and she misses having guys around, and just hopes once she can take columbia classes and join clubs, it will be easier. I love manhattan and would be comfortable exploring it etc. though. I'm also looking at coed LACS though, like wesleyan and vassar, and also cornell, but I am afraid that they're location wouldn't be as appealing as manhattan. but they are coed.
I have visited barnard twice. first time it was summer, and last time was last weekend. both times I didn't really see many people on campus, but liked my tour guides a lot.
it's just very hard to know how the experience will be for me personally. also I come from a h.s. where I haven't exactly been very successful with relationships, so I don't want to start off at a disadvantage by being at an all womens' school.
i feel like it could go either way for me :/ any more experiences would be great. thank you again.</p>
<p>I don't think my daughter has figured out that Barnard is a women's college; it seems like every time I call her I can hear some boy's voice in the background. I know that one of her closest new friends is a boy at Columbia. (My d. is in a committed relationship with a boy who attends school in Boston, so she is making friends but not looking for dating or romance). Half of her classes are at Columbia -- other than the FY English, she only has one other academic class at Barnard. With her course schedule she is on the Columbia campus every day of the week.</p>
<p>I think Barnard is nice because its a little bit of everything: it is a women's college where the students regularly take classes with men; it is a LAC with close advising and somewhat smaller classes where the students regularly take classes and have the full resources of a large research university; it is in a somewhat quieter neighborhood of a huge, bustling city. So basically, in my eyes you can go to Barnard and have it all..... but at the same time, my guess is that each student shapes their own experience. Even though my daughter seems to function as if her "campus" extends to Battery Park, there may be other students who stick around the Barnard campus and whose majors keep them focused on Barnard offerings -- for example, a dance or major might not have much reason to take courses at Columbia.</p>
<p>However, if you are in any way unsure, you really should apply RD. It is good to keep your options open in many ways. One thing I have found is that in the course of a year my kids learned a lot about their prospective colleges that they didn't know when they started. In fact, a lot of "inside" information seems to surface at admitted students events, so having a choice is nice.</p>
<p><em>agrees with Calmom</em> If you feel at all nervous, or are not absolutely and totally positive that a school is the perfect one for you above all others, don't do ED. Nothing wrong with keeping ones options open, and who knows - by the end of your senior year, you may be a different person.</p>
<p>As usual, Calmom had some excellent advice. Barnard truly does have it all! My daughter also just started Barnard. She too has tailored her college experience to meet her wants and needs. Daughter has met men on her campus,and on the Columbia campus. As part of a large university, the scholastic and extra-curricular offerings of Columbia are available to Barnard students.</p>
<p>FWIW, my daughter has some of the same concerns. The areas that particularly interest her are majors that are typically mostly female, and reside pretty much totally at Barnard. It appears that the Columbia dorms are only available to Barnard students if they are in a suite with predominantly Columbia students. So classes and dorms will both be predominantly single-sex.</p>
<p>There will be guys around, and at parties, etc. But the proportion does not look good to me. If Columbia itself is 50-50, and then add on Barnard, it looks to me like a great school for a guy to go to. From this one perspective.</p>
<p>To me a likely outcome of this type of situation/ratio is to wind up dating older guys well into their careers. We have friends whose daughter is in school in NYC who is doing exactly that. Face it, that's who's around there and available. I don't really prefer that for our daughter.</p>
<p>But there are tradeoffs, and this is only one consideration. No place is perfect.</p>
<p>Monydad, all I can say is that my daughter has had no difficulty rounding up lots of male friends. The Columbia college ratio is actually 60/40 male/female, and there are many Columbia guys very eager to meet Barnard women. </p>
<p>My son attended a small co-ed LAC with the student ratio heavily skewed toward women. Good deal for him.... but I have a feeling that it was a lot tougher for women students in that relatively isolated environment than it is for Barnard women. The Barnard women really do not have far to go to find men. </p>
<p>I think your friends' daughter dating the older man is her choice, not something that has anything whatsoever to do with the Barnard environment. Between Columbia and other area colleges, there are plenty of college-age men around for any student who wants to meet them.</p>
<p>hey everyone, thanks again for all the responses. I have been researching a lot, as the ED deadline approaches. this thread has helped immensely, since the only issue i can find with barnard is the "male issue." i went to see wesleyan, researched vassar, heard about upenn today from a admissions officer who came to the school. ive seen yale, tufts, harvard, columbia, cornell...
they're just not the same.
barnard is probably the most unique college I've visited. it has manhattan, it has close attention/advisors, it has an ivy league education/diploma at the end, it has strong, empowered women.
so like... ok. on the someodd acre campus there's no men. but really, men are roughly 2 feet away. coed classes, maybe coed dorming soph year. and ALL of manhattan. i dont know exactly how hard or easy it will be to meet men, but i wont know for any school. i feel the resources are there at barnard/columbia.
so anyway, i think im going to ED. I cant see myself being as happy anywhere else. i dont feel as i do about barnard for any other school. any other experiences w/ columbia-barnard dating would be great though, thanks</p>
<p>Dreadlocktear, my daughter met her boyfriend (they just celebrated one year together) at orientation last year. He attends Columbia. She has had NO problems meeting guys...</p>
<p>"The Columbia college ratio is actually 60/40 male/female"</p>
<p>Actually, Columbia College has more women enrolled than men- 2,194 female vs. 2,030 male.</p>
<p>According to Columbia data I just looked up, undergrad enrollment at Columbia U is 3,854 men and 3,553 women. The percent male/female is 52/48.</p>
<p>When 2,297 Barnard undergrads are added in, the ratio of Columbia + Barnard undergrads is just over 60% female-40% male. Maybe that's where you picked up on that proportion. This is actually more favorable to females than I thought before doing the numbers. It's really not much much worse than NYU, IIRC. Not that NYU is good, in that respect.</p>
<p>"Between Columbia and other area colleges, there are plenty of college-age men around for any student who wants to meet them."</p>
<p>Exactly which area colleges do you have in mind when you make that statement?</p>
<p>As I just mentioned, NYU, which really isn't near Barnard at all, is also lopsidedly female. Cooper Union has about 5 students, who are all commuters, and is located next to NYU. Outside of those two schools I can't offhand think of another NYC college that has a remotely similar academic orientation to Barnard/Columbia. There are some big commuter schools, located downtown far removed from Barnard, such as Pace and Baruch. Really not close to the same type of kids are going to these places, for the most part.There is CUNY; ditto. Julliard and FIT- small and also lopsidedly female, I would imagine. Fordham- commuter school, also mostly female, many older students, non-similar academics. Manhattan College, Pratt, Brooklyn Poly- in outer boroughs, not that similar. I don't know that many Barnard kids would have that much in common with these kids.</p>
<p>So which area schools are you thinking about? I'm just blanking on them, myself.</p>
<p>On the other hand there are obviously tons of smart single guys in various stages of their post-college careers living in NYC, and on the upper west side.</p>
<p>"plenty of college age men"</p>
<p>No doubt; just plenty MORE college-age women. If everyone met kismet their first day there,like churchmusicmom's daughter, there would still be 1,996 women left over. Ignoring the surplus female population at NYU, FIT, etc. Enough to fill many a (same-sex) liberal arts college all by themselves. These individual anecdotal stories are charming, but the numbers speak for themselves. </p>
<p>In a game of musical chairs, there are only so many chairs. And then you can post "My daughter's in a chair, so I don't see a problem".</p>
<p>But actually now that I've looked at these numbers it's not as bad as I thought. Which is not to say it's good. YMMV.</p>
<p>OK, I get you Monydad. I see now that there is a shortage of college age men in New York because they are all hanging out in my daughter's dorm room. I'll ask her to open the door and let some of them out.</p>
<p>Maybe next year can she send some of the surplus down to my daughter's room? (just in case...)</p>
<p>i really dont know but i dont think you would have a huge problem...but if you are worried, why dont you apply to columbia college?</p>
<p>hey
the simple answer is: I like Barnard better and feel it's a better match. I like Barnard's smallness within a huge city and even in affiliation with a big ivy university. I like the advising system. I also really like the flexibility aka there is no core, there are the 9 ways of learning but they are quite general not as specific as columbia's. i like the feeling/sense of community i get from barnard also. as i said, the ONLY issue is that im afraid of not meeting guys, but i feel that it wont be that hard. also being a columbia doesnt really seem to make a difference in the guy-girl issue... since they all can take coed classes and use the same facilities. despite the 60/40 thing, i mean... there's an ENTIRE city. and also i dont exactly see the problem with relationships with older men, like post college. anyway, ill never now for sure until i am there, i just hope it isnt an issue</p>
<p>dreadlocktear, I can assure you, it is not an issue unless you are particularly shy or reclusive.</p>
<p>i think that you are set then!!!! good luck</p>