Barnard College- A Welcome Anomaly in US Higher Education
Before I attempt to shed light on the Columbia-Barnard relationship, however, let me just say that I do not regard Barnard College to be inferior in any way to Columbia University. With a regular decision acceptance rate that hovers between 12-15%, it is as selective as most of its ivy league and ivy plus counterparts. Many of our female students- Barnard is a women’s college- prefer the more intimate setting of a liberal arts college and readily choose to apply to Barnard over Columbia. Barnard is rarity amongst liberal arts colleges in that it offers a close-knit, campus-based community experience, whilst being smack dab in the middle of the country’s largest metropolis, New York City. As all of our students know, we’re huge fans of liberal arts colleges, but feel that too many of them are not appropriate choices for our student base of international applicants given their remote locations and general inaccessibility. Barnard is a no compromise choice that offers students the best of both worlds. Simmons, Sarah Lawrence, Occidental, and the Claremont Consortium are other colleges that are able to offer this balance.
Now, with regards to Barnard’s relationship with its big brother Columbia, one needs to first understand the educational history of the United States. At the time Barnard was founded in 1889, there was a dearth of higher education intuitions for women that provided the same level of academic rigor found that was found at the all-male colleges that were prevalent in the nation. Barnard was named after Frederick Barnard, the tenth president of Columbia College, who was a well-known proponent of allowing women to study at the College.
In 1900, Barnard became a part of Columbia University and became known as “Barnard College of Columbia University.” Its graduates all received Columbia degrees, but Barnard maintained its own faculty and facilities. Barnard students could take undergraduate classes at all of Columbia University’s undergraduate colleges and vice versa. It thus became the women’s college of Columbia University, much like Radcliffe College was the women’s college of Harvard University.
So yes, Barnard is a part of Columbia, which is an ivy league school and its slightly easier to get into than Columbia, but its applicants are looking for an altogether different experience than applicants to Columbia University. Hence, since 1900, Columbia has three undergraduate schools or colleges- Columbia College, Barnard, and the The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Barnard is the only one with it’s own campus, facilities, faculty and admissions department. It is also the only one that men cannot apply to:)
So far everything things makes sense, right? In 1983, things start to get a little wonky. This was the year Columbia finally decided to go co-ed. Unlike its ivy league counterparts who simply integrated their women’s colleges into their undergraduate colleges, Barnard’s president, Ellen Futter fought hard to keep Barnard independent so as to give female applicants who wanted to study at Columbia a real choice between studying in a smaller, liberal arts college or studying in a larger university setting.
Hence, to this day, Barnard retains a separate campus, faculty, and facilities. Students at Barnard College are essentially dual citizens of Barnard and Columbia and they can choose to take classes at both facilities. Also, Barnard has a separate set of core curriculum requirements and its core courses are taught at the Barnard’s own, picturesque Morningside Heights campus.
So Barnard is its own animal- an ivy league, all-girls, liberal arts college that is located in the heart of New York. Most Barnard grads wouldn’t have it any other way.
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