Barnard Myths

calmom
Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:17:09 +0000

Parent, here:

Will there be any chances to socialize with guys?



Yes, all the time. Based on the pictures I saw of my daughter’s first semester, I don’t know if she realized that there were girls available to befriend. In fact, other than her roommate, I think pretty much all of her close friends were guys. She didn’t really get friendly with many other girls until her sophomore year, when she ended up in suite with some truly amazing women.



Are the majority lesbians?

Er, no.



Are the student snobby?

It depends. I guess I would have to say that there are some who are pretty snobby, but they aren’t typical.

My daughter is on financial aid & went to public schools, so she was not used to being around rich kids. There are some students at Barnard who are very, very rich – and some can be insensitive in their remarks. They probably aren’t deliberately trying to be snobby, but I think that they are simply clueless and don’t realize what it is like to live on a budget or have to worry about money. My son also went to an expensive private LAC for awhile, and found the same thing – so I really don’t think it is a Barnard thing. I think it is a something that will happen at any private college. Even though a lot of kids are on financial aid, at least half aren’t – and at $50K+ a year for tuition, you are going to get a sizable fraction of kids who are from wealthy families. Not all of them will make the adjustment to college dorm life all that well.



Would the coursework be extrmely difficult for those who graduated from a small, public school?

My daughter comes from a small public high school and has a better GPA at Barnard than she did in high school. I think she has found some of her classes very challenging, but the lowest grade she ever got was a B – and that was in upper level class her first semester where she was the only first year student. The only reason she got a B was that the messed up the first midterm simply because she didn’t realize how much depth was expected in written answers in a college midterm. Once she knew what was expected, she aced the other exams in the class.

My d. does say that she works very, very hard – but I think the key for her is that she is disciplined about her study habits, she doesn’t fall behind, and she seeks out help if she needs it. So I wouldn’t really say the course work is “difficult” so much as “demanding”.

My d. does feel that many students from private schools had better preparation; but I think that there are advantages to public school as well. I think coming from public school, my daughter was more self-sufficient and also more assertive about her needs. She was used to having to seek out opportunities on her own and speaking up for herself.



I’ve never visited the school. What is the campus like?

Very small, actually. You can actually get a good sense of what it looks like (from the outside) by going to maps.google.com – searching for “Barnard College” – and then use the street-view feature to drag the little person around to the areas you want to visit. Of course that’s not a substitute for actually being there, but it’s a start. Do keep in mind that because of the urban location, you end up spending a lot of time in the city neighborhoods near campus as well. The Columbia campus is somewhat larger than Barnard, but its not all that big, either – and so in a sense the whole city is the “campus”.