Recent Alumna & Interviewer Open to Questions!

dolphins3636
Sat, 04 Dec 2010 22:16:57 +0000

lorrainedelis: Obviously since I am a lesbian, it’s never been a problem for me to room with a straight girl, but you have to remember…you don’t check out every guy right? Lesbians aren’t checking out every girl. It really wouldn’t be weird, I promise. I’m not too sure what you mean by “too LGBT” but again, college will be as much or as little of something as you want it to be. If you don’t want to get involved in LGBT stuff, you won’t have to!
I don’t know about the timing of on-campus interviews, but I know that alumna interviewers only get contacted to interview someone after their application is turned in.

shay33: I played rugby for the Columbia University Women’s Rugby Football Club, and I was in Everyone Allied Against Homophobia, the Russian Conversational Club, and the Columbia University Linguistics Alliance. I also volunteered as a pre-test counselor for the Gay Health Advocacy Project (it’s part of the Columbia University Health Services and does free HIV tests as well as counsels students about STIs and also deals specifically with LGBT issues). I was also a mentor with the LGBT family tree for the Columbia Mentoring Initiative which connected LGBT first-year students with LGBT alumni as well as current students. I also was paid as an undergraduate researcher through Columbia for a year.

There are many girls at Barnard who dance; Barnard has a really good dance program. I never took any dance classes but I wish I had! I wouldn’t be too concerned about becoming overwhelmed with activities- people understand how busy you can get so if you want to drop out of a club or something no one will look down upon you.

calmom: I really wouldn’t say that Barnard has a greater percentage of lesbians than any other school…

smartundecided: Barnard has an excellent writing program. Creative writing is housed within the English major, and I actually never took a creative writing class so I can’t really comment on it too much. However, Barnard has many famous writer alumnae, among them Jhumpa Lahiri and Anna Quindlen.

rebeccar: I’m a Jewish vegetarian, and never had a problem with the food. I don’t actually keep Kosher but I’ve heard that they have awesome Kosher food. You have to select the Kosher option when you get the meal plan so unless you chose that you aren’t allowed to eat the Kosher food. The vegetarian food was great, I had no complaints. There’s a HUGE Jewish population at BC/CU so they’re very good about that. You can also go eat at Hillel if you want- Cafe Nana is great!

jcdancer9: People will always say ignorant things like that about women’s colleges. (My theory about that is that people are afraid of strong women…) There is a large and vocal LGBT population at BC/CU. If anyone says something to you about it and it bothers you, just ignore them. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of! Straight women, gay women, bi women, rich women, poor women, white women, asian women, etc, all go to women’s colleges/Barnard. It’s a diverse group, and that’s what makes it great.

Raspberi & jcdancer9: It can be cheap, or expensive…It all depends on what you want to do. There’s plenty of free stuff to do in NYC, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Most people at Barnard are not seeing Broadway shows or going out to dinner every week. You will encounter rich Jewish girls. You’ll also encounter first-generation students who are paying for college themselves. Again, Barnard is very diverse and you will find a group that you can feel comfortable with, don’t worry!

lorrainedelis (again ) : The subject tests are about as important as the SAT/ACT is. It’s not as important as your HS gpa, but it’s somewhat important.

Sorry I took so long to reply to everyone! Grad school’s been keeping me busy… :)

Let me know if you have any more questions or if I didn’t fully answer yours!