UChicago vs Barnard?

tk21769
Thu, 02 Apr 2015 08:57:16 +0000

A lot of my teachers/my dad believes that Barnard is worth it and that the quality of education there is far superior to UChicago’s.

What’s their evidence for that? What’s their reasoning? I find that a very strange claim. UChicago is certainly not for everyone. There may be good reasons not to like it. I don’t think sub-par quality of undergraduate education is one of them. I certainly don’t think Barnard is clearly worth a big price premium over UChicago.

Now, Barnard is a LAC. I like LACs. One can make a reasonable argument that top LACs in general offer superior undergraduate education to top research universities in general. On the other hand, Chicago is probably one of the most LAC-like of any research university at the undergraduate level. The student body is relatively small. Average class sizes are among the smallest of any research university. In fact, Chicago’s average class sizes are smaller than Barnard’s.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/barnard-college-2708/academics
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-chicago-1774/academics

If Chicago is offering you much better FA than Barnard, that’s a good reason to pick Chicago.
Otherwise, visit both and decide which one offers the better “fit”.