Choosing a Women's College

Congratulations to all of you newly accepted students!!

What an exciting time. I assume many of you who have been accepted are deciding between several schools. I imagine that while you must feel such a sense of relief at being accepted, you still face the challenging, and stressful task of trying to figure out where to spend the next four years of your life.

It’s daunting to make such a big decision based on maybe one campus tour, or at best an overnight visit.

I thought I would try to help by illuminating one aspect of Barnard that is hard to get a sense of in one visit: Barnard as a women’s college. The reason I chose to write about Barnard as a women’s college, as opposed to any of the other identities of Barnard was that for me, my only major reservation about coming to Barnard was that it was all women and the aspect of Barnard which has changed me the most (and which I least expected), is Barnard as a women’s college.

I have always had guy friends, enjoyed having male classmates, and been interested in dating (well, I haven’t always been interested in dating, but since about 7^th grade…). I worried that coming to Barnard would prevent me from having these experiences. This has not been the case. Here at Barnard, approximately half of my closest friends are guys who go to Columbia. I have taken some classes here that are all women and others that are over 50% male. Dating has been a non-issue.

At the same time, I have been truly humbled by the experience of attending a women’s college. The experience that perhaps best captures my growth at Barnard was during my research job this past summer at the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital Neurological Intensive Care Unit. Every physician in the unit was male. I am sure that as a first-year student, this situation would have just added to my timidity and insecurity. Instead, coming out of two years of all-women pre-med classes, I worked in the unit with a sense of confidence and determination. Confidence, because I have classes with capable women who will someday become physicians in units like the one I was working in, and determination to prove the capability of women by someday becoming a physician-- and in the mean time determination to represent the capability of women in science (even as an undergraduate).

---As a quick side note, sometimes when I meet a guy who tells me he is premed. I am taken aback because having been in all-women pre-med. classes I forget that men can also be pre-med.—

Perhaps the best way to capture the experience of the all-women aspect of Barnard is that each student can pick and chose how much of a women’s college experience she wants to have. You can work out during women-only hours at the Barnard gym or lift weights on the second floor of Columbia’s predominantly male weight room (I do both). You can join the Barnard organization Well-Women which tends to be all female, or you can write for the Columbia Spectator which is both male and female. I think the only unavoidable consequence of going to a women’s college is an increased sense of self-confidence and pride in being a women. The rest of your women’s college experience is up to you.

On a final note, please feel free to write in with ANY questions!

-Anna