<p>I definitely knew some Cooper students! If you can get them out of the shop or studio, they're a lot of fun.</p>
<p>And remember, there not being enough men for all women only matters if you think the other girls have something on you. ;) More seriously, for me the issue was NEVER there not being enough guys to date, or fighting over guys with my friends, or whatever. It was not meeting guys I clicked with. Even then, it was still WAY better than it was in high school. Strangely, better even than being in this ridiculously male-dominated grad program.</p>
<p>Ouch! My freshman daughter hasn't met her dream man yet, but quite bluntly she says she is having plenty of fun just being with all the bright, supportive Barnard women. Her classes and part time job are keeping her very busy too.<br>
By the way, she is a very pretty blonde who had more than her share of serious boyfriends in high school.</p>
<p>Exactly. It took me a little while to meet mine, but us gals gotta have some standards, right? And my gal pals were way more fun than most of the guys I was meeting. ;)</p>
<p>yea, i mean as long as im able to meet men, hopefully one i like, it's fine. im a little weary of being around all girls mostly because a lot of the girls in my school drive me crazy (very superficial, competitive). im hoping it'll be different in barnard/nyc. its cool to have a base of friends who are girls but like, as long as there are guys too.</p>
<p>Sorry to sound so after-school-special-ish, but I have found that most girls at Barnard are actually different. I didn't hang out with girls in high school because I couldn't stand the "she stole my boyfriend and he thinks she's prettier than I am but I'm smarter than she is because we can't wear the same dress to the prom" attitude. I find that, as Barnard women, we compete more with ourselves than we do with those around us. I also find that most of us are too busy volunteering, reading 400 page books, and writing theses on the meaning of human existence to be concerned with "little" things like that. I, too, was afriad of the very same thing, but things (at least in my findings) are not really like that here.</p>
<p>dreadlocktear -- I am serious -- my daughter is always hanging with guys. I'm not talking about dating - she is in a committed relationship with a guy who attends college in Boston - but she always had guys for friends, and she seems to be continuing the pattern at Barnard. Obviously it is easier to meet girls. But we don't have a bunch of guys her age living in our house or on our block, and she never had a problem with the idea that she had to get out of the house in order to meet guys when she lived at home... so I don't think she finds it all that inconvenient to go across the street at college. She has guy friends at Columbia and also friends at NYU -- she pretty much goes down to Greenwich Village every weekend so she doesn't find it inconvenient to meet up with her NYU friends. </p>
<p>Now maybe because she is not hoping for romance it is easier for her to meet guys -- she isn't scrutinizing their qualities as future husbands, or expecting them to make commitments -- she's just hanging out and doing fun things. For example, she went to a Yankees game with a guy friend from Columbia last week. (She says she can buy baseball tickets through Barnard for $5 each.... and she says going to Yankee stadium for a game was really cool.) </p>
<p>I guess that's a good hint in how to meet boys: in general, baseball tickets work better to attract them than ballet or theater tickets. ;)</p>
<p>hmm well there's always someone who doesn't love it. I'm wondering how someone can go days without seeing a male though, when they could simply walk across the street, down the sidewalk.... or hop onto a subway and be at nyu or absolutely anywhere in all of nyc...</p>
<p>My daughter was accepted to NYU as well, and she had originally focused on NYU in part because we simply thought her chances of being accepted there were greater. She fell in love with NYU when she first went to vist Barnard, but was staying with a friend in an NYU dorm. But when she came out for admitted student events, she realized that she loved NYU for the social life - (and the boys) --, but that the academic environment was far better at Barnard -- NYU students complained of large classes, long lines, lots of difficulty just getting the courses they wanted. She could see that Morningside Heights could not in any way compete with the attraction of the Village -- but she realized that she could have the best of both worlds with Barnard. She told me that the thing that really cinched the decision of her mind was when NYU students told her that they liked things so much there that they never left the Village.... she didn't want to be at a college where she "never left" the campus area, no matter how great. She wanted to have the full east coast/NY experience.</p>
<p>When I ask my daughter what she is doing for fun or entertainment, she is all over the city. There's Lincoln Center, there's the museums..... After she was there about 2 weeks she told me things were going very well and she was starting to feel very comfortable about going places alone on the subway. OK, as her mom I don't want to think about her all alone on the subway -- but the point is that if her friends are doing something in midtown or lower Manhattan, she has no problem getting to wherever they are going. She introduced her new Barnard friends to NYU friends, and the other Barnard friends also had NYU friends, so now she has new NYU friends -- and there just seems to be a lot of socializing. I am sure that there are also things to do in and around Morningside Heights -- I think the bigger barrier to my daughter's social life is that she is also trying to keep up with her classes, so a lot of times she is invited to go out somewhere and she has to say no simply because she has reading to do. She feels she has a handle on it all -- she says she is keeping up with all her reading and assignments without a problem -- but she has expressed some worries about some of her friends -- so my guess is that my d. is spending most of her weekday evenings studying rather than playing, and probably isn't even thinking about Morningside Heights as being a source of entertainment. </p>
<p>That's not to say that Barnard is perfect for everyone. My d. is proactive and assertive -- she simply is not the type of person to sit around her room waiting for something to happen. </p>
<p>So maybe the Barnard decision requires a student to look at herself and her personality to decide whether the environment is a real fit. Obviously, for a student who wants more of a ready-made social life, then co-ed living has its advantages. Also, although Barnard is a college with its own self-contained campus, that campus is very, very small. It only covers 4 blocks, from 116th to 120th, and NY City blocks between the numbered streets are very short. Of course there is also Columbia, but even that is physically small. If you restrict your life to on-campus and the immediate neighborhood, I think you might start feeling claustrophobic. For a student who really wants to have their social life as well as academic life center around the campus, maybe a more traditional suburban campus setting would be a better choice.</p>
<p>hey
I think you raise a good point calmom. it's def not for everyone and even some of my friends ive talked about it to just aren't "city people" they say and want the traditional campus/college fee outside a city.</p>
<p>personally, I've been into the city very often. I lived for a month in brooklyn this past summer at Pratt for an art program. i was able to balance that work and also go out several times a week to nyc. i love traveling on the subways and learning the city, and feel independent in that way, and also i am experienced a bit too with the subways. so i see myself as someone who would definitely explore a lot and be proactive, study wise and socially/city wise.</p>
<p>The internships thing is ridiculous... I think at last count, 60% of BC students do at least one internship before graduating. Almost everyone I know that did at least one did more than one. And you're pretty much guaranteed funding for at least one.</p>
<p>I scoff at the babysitting comment. <a href="http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/internindex.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/internindex.html</a> I interned for a major economic think tank & worked on a project for the Mayor's council on working women, friends have interned at most major NYC museums, independent galleries, non-profits, there are the usual boring finance jobs, etc. My friends and I almost all found our internships through career development or postings in our departments, usually put up by alums or former professors looking specifically for Barnard interns.</p>
<p>As far as the rest of her complaints, she's right about Morningside Heights. But strange that she'd complain about bars being full of frat boys and not seeing guys for days at a time. Still, I think the "I had mostly male friends in high school" thing is a pretty common experience, and I still had male friends and ALSO found female friends with the same experience. I don't know anything about theater, so she might be right there, too.</p>
<p>There is a tendency for disenchanted people to blame the environment for their own individual shortcomings: i.e., she can't find a good internship, therefore it means there are none to be found. </p>
<p>I do think that everything I have read about Barnard indicates that it is full of (or produces), strong-willed, assertive women. My daughter fits right into that -- but I can see some students being overwhelmed, and obviously the best internships will go to the students who are the most proactive in seeking them out. I mean, one student might be simply stopping by the career center once a week to see if there are any new listings, whereas another might be initiating contact with various profs and using them to network. So I can certainly see where the perception of what is available may differ depending on personal style. But I don't think the problem goes away with another school -- although it might go away if the student chooses a less competitive environment overall.</p>