48 Comments
Admissions Dean Jennifer Fondiller signed each of the 5,154 letters!
This week, accepted Barnard prospies for the class of 2015 are receiving their letters–and they will have to wait, because Barnard holds to tradition in sending out only paper acceptances. So much admissions hoopla going on!
And it was a notable year for Barnard. The college saw a 38% increase in early applications, from 397 to 550. The college also received 5,154 applications, more than ever before; up from 4,618 last year, for a gain of 12%!
This sets their admission rate at 24.9%, also the lowest ever, up down from last year’s 27.8%.
Dean Fondiller attributes the success to targeted recruitment worldwide and the opening of The Diana Center.
Photo by Adrienne Hezghia
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48 Comments
@Hovard ‘Columbia’ is a shorthand way to say ‘Harvard didn’t love me’.
@Anonymous If Harvard loves you so much, why are you commenting on a post about Barnard on a Columbia-run blog…?
@Anonymous As a potential BC and CC student, I decided that I’m going to BC. YAY!
@BC'11 Yep. SO proud to attend Barnard and not CC.
@CC'15 lol not even on campus yet and it seems to me the barnard debate will never end. my sis goes to barnard and from what i’ve gathered the only legit problem cc people see with bc is that many girls tend to brand themselves as columbia students. any other complaint is just stupid. but honestly, from a future cc perspective, i can say i understand the barnard girls. i mean, is it a little dumb of them to do so? lol yeah, but whatever man at the end of the day they still go to barnard and you still go to columbia. and no one can dispute they tend to be significantly more attractive than columbia girls… there are no losers in this equation
@Anonymous im a columbia student. some of the classes ive taken at barnard are jokes compared to the equivalents at columbia. fact!
@Anonymous When are people going to learn that admissions stats are extremely arbitrary. The fact that more people apply to particular schools does not necessarily make them better schools, or prove that their student bodies are smarter than others. So Columbia is more popular than places like Barnard, University of Chicago, and Swarthmore, and HPY have been (and still are?) more popular than Columbia. How does that say anything about the people actually admitted, though? Plenty of people apply to Ivies knowing they don’t have a shot. So can we all stop whining about and comparing these numbers now?
@Wait “Admissions Dean Jennifer Fondiller signed each of the 5,154 letters!”
That’s a lot of effort to say no. Did she want to make sure that every rejected student was sure that it wasn’t a mistake and that their inadequacy had been personally verified?
Why would someone put in hours hunched over a desk just to make sure people knew they weren’t good enough?
@Anonymous Perhaps she was letting every student who took the time to apply know that Barnard reviewed their application thoroughly and thoughtfully; personally, I think it’s a nice touch.
@Anonymous The idea that the majority of Barnard students claim they go to Columbia is absurd. If anything, aggressive and unnecessarily hateful commentary like this makes Barnard students perpetually aware of the distinction between the two schools.
In addition, suck it.
@So... Nearly 1 out of every 4 applicants get into Barnard..?
….
I had no idea..-_-
@CC senior girl Posted this on the Columbia post too. Realized there are more haters on here. Also realized that Barnard was not in fact as selective as Northwestern this year, but whatever.
Barnard students are, on the whole, a valuable part of our undergraduate community and while the admit rates are in fact different, it’s not like Barnard isn’t still a highly selective school . .. More selective than Vassar, Northwestern, and plenty of other awesome schools.
And really once you get into the %20 rate, you’re still talking highly achieved and talented and intelligent students — perhaps just not as strictly academic and beefy-resume’d as the Columbia crowd. But also let’s not pretend that being lucky enough to make the cut at CC or SEAS necessarily means that we were either the most or only deserving applicants.
Barnard’s existence pretty much only increases the kinds of resources and clubs and classes and events and such that we can all take part in, so on the whole I’d say it’s a plus to every Columbia student in every aspect except possibly heterosexual women’s romantic “chances.” Oh well. We’ll survive.
Basically the biggest issue I see that remains is that Barnard ultimately makes the Columbia University undergraduate experience more accessible for women than men. Which in 2011 is kind of silly and more than a little unfair. Yes, this allows Columbia to keep our gender percentages even in CC and SEAS combined, and yes more women tend to be applying to top schools anyway, but I’m not sure those are good enough reasons to justify Barnard’s all-women’s existence.
@Anonymous I really appreciate this well-thought out response. Genuinely. I want to try to respond as thoughtfully as you did in putting that post together. I think you raise an interesting point that deserves a real discussion that does not devolve into “Barnard sucks” etc etc, and I appreciate that you did not stoop to that level.
In response to your last point about justifying Barnard’s all-women’s existence, I would not say that it exists to keep the gender numbers even. Most universities nowadays have slightly to a lot more women than men (see: Sarah Lawrence), so I don’t think you can say that is something that is unique at Columbia and that Barnard is to blame. As for justifying our existence as an all-women’s college, that’s probably a discussion for another time and one that would be better had face to face. I think it is a discussion that does need to be had on campus, but one that can’t be had easily at the risk of offending everyone.
@Yes, but Personally, I never wanted the women’s college experience. I visited Barnard and fell in love, so I expected to love Columbia as well; I didn’t. After an infosession in a huge auditorium with hundreds of hopeful high schoolers at Columbia and another 20 person infosession where I was able to ask as many questions as I wanted at Barnard, I understood where I wanted to be. The only point about Barnard that concerns me is what many consider the fundamental difference between BC and CC–the single sex factor. I’m sure everything will be just fine, but I agree with you.
@Anonymous Haters gon’ hate!
@person HIPSTERS GONNA HIPST
@Hipster B How gauche.
We’re not a verb but a state of legitimate social angst in awareness of the current, hypermodern and creatively-dillutated zeitgeist.
P.S. Foucault.
@BC '14 Congrats to our newcomers! As BC ’13 pointed out (much more elegantly than I’m about to right now), the ranters like to rant, but mostly in the quiet and safety of their dorm rooms. We look forward to welcoming you to Barnard next year.
@BC '13 I, for one, would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to BC’15! You’ll love it here, I promise. There are far more amazing people here, both at Barnard and Columbia, than this disproportionate pool of commenters make the university seem. Really, I’ve never heard anyone say anything like this in the real world.
@bc14 That’s because those people don’t have enough balls to say it to our faces, so they’re forced to resort to hostile anonymous comments on Bwog…..well, one time a CC student did, so I had to give him an verbal beatdown and he never said anything again.
@BC '15 <3 I cannot wait.
@Anonymous “This sets their admission rate at 24.9%, also the lowest ever, up from last year’s 27.8%.”
…down from 27.8%?
@Conor Scandalous! Fixed, thanks.
@Anonymous It isn’t fixed on the front page of the blog, it is only fixed once you click on the actual post.
@BC Considering some of Barnard’s co-ed peer institutions (Middlebury, Williams) have acceptance rates that hover around 20 percent, 24 percent is pretty damn good for us if you take into account a narrower pool of applicants. Just sayin’.
@Anonymous ^Well this is awkward
@Anonymous Anyone ever noticed how Barnard women don’t feel the need to constantly criticize CC’s achievements? Get over yourselves already- you don’t do better than us in classes, you’re not better writers or artists, you don’t hold better positions in student groups, and you don’t have better lives. And we’re not still hanging on to our SAT stats for dear life.
@Anonymous It has nothing to do with that. If you’re so proud of YOUR achievements, then be proud of YOUR school and stop having a majority of YOUR students claim they go to OUR school.
Because they don’t.
@... well… that’s only freshman year. when we think it makes a difference.
after that.. we realize that being from barnard is better, anyway.
@Anonymous This is the only situation when I’d mention Columbia:
–“Where are you thinking about college?”
-“Oh, I’m going to Barnard”
–“Ah, I hear upstate NY is beautiful in the fall. My friend Dan just graduated; he loved it!”
-“Ha, you must be thinking of Bard. I’m going to Barnard College; It’s a small liberal arts college in New York City, but it’s all girls.”
–“I understand; it’s a small school.”
-“Is it in the bronx or something?”
–“No, it’s on the near the upper west side of Manhattan. It’s across the street from Columbia. We’re their sister school.”
-“Oh. I still don’t understand why you’d ever leave South Carolina.”
@Anonymous 10% of their women are ridiculously hot in comparison to Columbia’s ponytailed and sweatpantsed masses. It…balances things out.
@LOL So, 24.9% vs. 6.9%. How is Columbia vs. Barnard even a question???
@Anonymous That’s like comparing apples and oranges. Only women can apply to Barnard (and only women who want to go to a women’s college will), so the applicant pool is smaller and therefore the percentage admitted will be bigger to get a similar-sized class to CC and SEAS.
I would also argue that much of Barnard’s applicant pool is self-selecting, whereas lots of people apply to CC and SEAS because of the brand name of an Ivy League school without having an actual hope of getting in making the percentages smaller.
@hmmm So Barnard students are not looking for the Ivy League brand name? They do seem to associate themselves a lot with Columbia
@Barnard Alum As a proud Barnard alum, I’ll acknowledge that Barnard’s association with Columbia is beneficial (mostly in terms of the resources students otherwise wouldn’t have access to), but I came to Barnard because I wanted a world-class women’s college. Barnard has a great reputation and can stand on its own- which is why it has existed (and will continue to exist) for so long. We have our own President, endowment, trustees, etc. Yes, we have an affiliation with Columbia, but we are not Columbia students, and I am personally proud of that.
I love Barnard and had an amazing experience there. When people ask where I went to college, I am proud to say Barnard (not Columbia).
I’m probably setting myself up to get ripped apart here, but I want to acknowledge what a great achievement acceptance to Barnard is. Congrats, 2015, and don’t let the Columbians rain on your parade.
@As a Columbian girl I really respect Barnard students like you.
@Anonymous I think a lot of Columbians’ views of Barnard have been soured by a few bad apples. Yes, of course some girls out there will claim to go to Columbia, but most people I know feel exactly like this–proud to be a Barnard student. When people ask where I go, I tell them Barnard. I only mention that we’re “the women’s college across the street from Columbia” when people get confused and think I went to Bard. They’re both great schools…I don’t know why there always needs to be this great debate going on. Both schools provide wonderful resources to each other, and I think they’re both the better for that relationship. So congrats to EVERYONE who got accepted to the wonderful schools up in Morningside Heights.
@ok sure you believe that but assuming the number of women is equal to the number of men in this country…24.9/2= 12.35 almost double Columbia’s admit rate of 6.9
DUHHHHH
@Two tags I'd never... ..thought I’d see together:
Barnard, college competition.
@Anonymous 1/4 of those who apply get in. I realize that at columbia it’s more like 1/15, but I still call that competition.
@LOL Have a vagina? Have a 1200 SAT? Welcome to the barnyard!
@If you're gonna make a cheap crack... …make it a good one, son.
Like: We’re in a recession; marrying rich across the street is more important than ever.
@hm yay barnard!
@Lol Open a building and application rates go up (?)
Also, no one cares about you B.
@Anonymous lolBarnard
@bite me jackass
@was that a zefrank reference? Because if so I think I love you.
@sucky math hey so are these bitches legal yet?