What are the best things about Columbia?

Im a high school junior looking to apply to Columbia next year. My tops are Columbia College or Barnard and Im trying to decide?! Help!

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/347790-helpful-columbia-threads-p1.html

I have a niece who recently graduated from Columbia and she tells me her classmates and friends from Barnard had better dorms, more class flexibility, more advisory support and more camaraderie. She loves Columbia, but told us for the money, Barnard is a better deal. I assume the tuition is the same at both colleges, but I’m not sure.

Barnard is way easier to get into + you still get a Columbia degree and a columbia.edu email

Columbia freshman here.


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Barnard had better dorms,
Doubtful from what I’ve seen. Gonna guess they are about the same, but East Campus for Columbia upperclassmen is amazing. Not sure if Barnard women can dorm there.

more class flexibility
Yes, Barnard has distribution requirements and a senior thesis instead of a Core.

more advisory support
Probably, not a huge deal.

more camaraderie
Yes, but being within Columbia, Barnard students cheer on Barnard and Columbia in sports, etc. We are all in clubs together, many Barnard women run the student activities that Columbia is famous for.

Barnard is way easier to get into
Still pretty competitive. Most competitive women’s college in the … world. Oxbridge also have 20% acceptance rates because you can only apply to one. Similar deal with Barnard, only women apply so its pool is different.

you still get a Columbia degree
Yes, most Barnard students put “Barnard College, Columbia University” on resumes, etc. Barnard is a very respected institution as it is, with a stellar alumni list, faculty, etc.

columbia.edu email
We share a mail system, but they get barnard.edu emails.

I assume the tuition is the same at both colleges, but I’m not sure.
I’m guessing financial aid at Columbia College and Engineering is better than Barnard.

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OP, if you’re applying RD, why not apply to both? I think you can only get a Bachelor of Arts at Barnard, so if you want a Bachelor of Science (in an engineering field), you have to apply to Columbia Engineering.
If you’re applying ED, it’s your call. It depends on whether the idea of a women’s college appeals to you or not, I guess.

The city
barnard girls

There is no comparison. They are completely different schools. One is a major Ivy League coed research university, one is a small undergraduate only liberal arts college for women. The facilities at Columbia far exceed anything available at Barnard from dorms to dining halls, to libraries, to labs, to gyms. Go visit. Columbia has one of the largest endowments in the nation, Barnard has the smallest of the seven sisters. Yes, students can take courses at each other’s schools. Columbia is the third most competitive school in the nation to gain admission only behind Harvard and Stanford. Barnard is not in the top hundred. There are huge differences between a large research university and a small liberal arts college. If you are female, you have the luxury to apply to both.

Barnard’s tuition is a hair higher than Columbia’s, and the housing is more expensive. Columbia has one of the most generous financial aid programs in the nation.

Your choice of major might be a factor. Barnard students have very close interaction with their faculty-- probably typical of many LAC’s, but it is different than the experience that Columbia undergrads get. My daughter graduated in 2010 but maintained close relationships with Barnard profs and deans well after graduation. But if you are leaning toward a major that will require taking most courses at Columbia, then your experience would have more of a Columbia feel to it.

At least for 2014-2015, Barnard’s tuition was a couple of thousand dollars lower than Columbia’s:

CC= $48,646 (* may or may not include additional student fees, web site is confusing) see: http://sfs.columbia.edu/tuition-rates-and-fees?year=All&school=9
BC = $46,040 (* includes $1740 comprehensive fee) - see: http://barnard.edu/bursar/tuition-and-fees

If you qualify for financial aid this might not matter, because each school will calculate the amount of your family contribution and that’s what you will pay. Columbia in general has the resources to offer stronger financial aid, but awards could still be different depending on individual financial circumstances.

Housing costs vary depending on different housing options.

You might find this article interesting – it reports the results of a quality of life survey undertaken at Columbia and includes results for all 4 undergraduate colleges:
http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2013/12/08/university-senate-releases-second-round-quality-life-survey-results

Barnard students reported higher satisfaction rates than CC students on all measures shown in the graphs, with a particularly stark difference when it came to academic advising. Of course this is subjective and could be influenced by many factors, including differences in response rates or pre-existing expectations – but if is something to consider.

You can dig into these results a little deeper here:
http://files.kevinchen.co/bwog/usenate-quality-of-life-2014-summary.pdf

For Barnard vs. CC comparsions, check page 9.

Full report is here:
http://files.kevinchen.co/bwog/usenate-quality-of-life-2014-report.pdf

Columbia is the better school overall. If you want an LAC that is all women, you should probably for Barnard. You can still take classes at Columbia and what not. The prestige of Columbia helps with certain jobs such as i-banking and management consulting and those opportunities probably aren’t open to Barnard kids. If you want any other career path, prestige does not matter as much. Columbia also has better fin aid, is coed, and you can say your in the ivy league if that is something you strive for.

If you want the undergrad-centric LAC experience, I agree Barnard is probably the better choice, but perhaps not as an all women college. When we visited there were a lot of male students on campus and my D attended a Barnard class, and said there were a lot of guys in the class.

I’m pretty sure Barnard kids compete in the Ivy League conference. We have a friend who is a Barnard student who fences on the Columbia team.

Folks, you do understand that Barnard College is a unit (albeit an independent unit; unlike Radcliffe, which has been official consumed by Harvard College) of Columbia University, don’t you? Columbia College is the LAC of Columbia University, just as Fu is the Engineering School of Columbia.

@arwarw I mean the 8 schools when you think of ivy league. Im talking academics rather than the sports they play. Some say that the ivy league is just that, a sports conference, but it obviously has connotations other than that.

Apply to them both. I know a number of women who did. The ones I knew all got into Barnard but not into Columbia, so that took care of any choice right there. Barnard has a unique relationship with Columbia that one does not see among the other ivies or other schools, so it’s difficult to describe. the one woman I know well who went to Barnard. did compete with Columbia students in sports and felt fully integrated with Columbia College. I believe there are some courses that Barnard students have to take at Barnard–there are some stipulations, but she did not find them restrictive to what she wanted to do.

Two of my roommates transferred from Barnard to my college. Never knew anyone from Columbia who transferred there.

Barnard is not really a unit of Columbia. It is a completely independent college with its own endowment, own faculty, and own admissions office and admissions requirements. It is a LAC affiliated with Columbia University. A LAC is a college with all or most of its emphasis on undergraduates, with limited research, and little to no advanced degrees. That is not what Columbia and FU are at all. They are divisions within a large research university with emphasis on research and graduate degrees. The majority of Columbia’s students are graduates. LACs generally possess no or limited graduate programs. Bryn Mawr has a similar relationship as this with Penn.

It’s possible that the OP is contemplating an ED application, which would require her to apply to and potentially commit to one or the other in October. I’m not a fan of ED at all – but if a student really had no strong preference, the better strategic choice (in terms of increasing odds of admission) would probably be to submit ED to Barnard.

My daughter took half or more of her courses at Columbia during her first two years, but once she was focused on her major, seemed to strongly prefer the Barnard classes. It might depend on major, but I think d. really appreciated the small seminar courses she was taking and the close relationship she formed with her thesis adviser during her senior year. She would not have had the same opportunities with the same major at Columbia.

Many of the intro courses were the same, however. Many courses at the colleges are identified with the letter “V” or “W”, which means that the same course is taught by profs at both school. Typically you might have the course taught by a Barnard prof in the fall – with the same class, same designation taught by a Columbia prof in the spring – or vice versa --or in some cases there are multiple sections of a course taught at the same time, with some sections taught by Barnard profs, some by Columbia. For my daughter’s major, the Barnard profs were very well regarded and often more popular choices for students than the Columbia profs.

But that does suggest another option for the OP to help her decide. If she knows her likely major, she might go onto Culpa - http://culpa.info/ – and look up the intro courses in her desired major, and read the reviews the students give their profs. Reviews on Culpa tend to be fairly detailed so they help give a a sense as to how students feel about the coursework and profs.

OP what major are you thinking about or possible career path?