Columbia with Barnard sororities

Columbia2009
Mon, 12 May 2008 03:39:52 +0000

With regard to the point about cross-registration’s being very mixed, I would say that that’s true… but I’d also qualify it by saying that it’s very easy to figure out whether a class is “Barnard” or “Columbia” (they’re broken down by each school’s department on the directory, except in cases when a department is exclusive to either Columbia or Barnard). Also worth noting is the fact that, in some disciplines, there are equivalent courses offered by both schools in the same semester (a bio. course, or an American lit. course), so students can choose which to take. In one sense, that just means that there are more options (although they’re sometimes restricted–Columbia American Studies majors have to take Columbia’s intro, whereas Barnard American Studies majors take a different intro sequence), but it also shows how equivalent departments at Columbia and Barnard act independently of each other, even though they’re affiliated and work together a lot of the time. The synergy between the two schools is complementary in some ways and redundant in others, as would be the case with any affiliation, I imagine.