Barnard College
Barnard College is located in New York, New York. It is a private not-for-profit, 4-year or above institution.
From Wikipedia: Barnard College, officially titled as Barnard College, Columbia University, is a private women’s liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia University’s trustees to create an affiliated college named after Columbia’s then-recently deceased 10th president, Frederick A. P. Barnard. The college is one of the original Seven Sisters—seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that were historically women’s colleges. Barnard is currently one of four Columbia undergraduate colleges with independent admission, curricula, and financials. Students share classes, libraries, clubs, sororities, athletic fields, and dining halls with Columbia as well as sports teams. This is through the Columbia-Barnard Athletic Consortium, an agreement that makes Barnard the only women’s college to offer its students the ability to compete in NCAA Division I athletics. Students receive a diploma from Columbia University. Barnard offers bachelor of arts degree programs in about 50 areas of study. In addition to Columbia, students may also pursue elements of their education at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Jewish Theological Seminary which are also based in New York City. Its 4-acre (1.6 ha) campus is located in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, stretching along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets. It is directly across from Columbia’s main campus. Barnard College alumnae include leaders in science, religion, politics, the Peace Corps, medicine, law, education, communications, theater, and business. Barnard graduates have been recipients of Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Academy, and Peabody awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, MacArthur Fellowships, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Pulitzer Prize.
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Overview of institution
This, and the rest of the page, use info from the most recent year available, generally 2023.
Institution kind: Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts & Sciences Focus
Undergrad program: Arts & sciences focus, no graduate coexistence
Graduate program: Not classified (Exclusively Undergraduate)
Enrollment profile: Exclusively undergraduate four-year (see more details below)
Average net price for undergrads on financial aid: $26,009 (1.3 times the equivalent cost of Harvard).
Actual price for your family: Go here to see what your family may be asked to pay. It can be MUCH lower than the average price but also higher for some.
Size and setting: Four-year, small, highly residential
In state percentage: 28% of first year students come from New York
In US percentage: 91% of first year students come from the US
Graduation rate (within 6 years) for students seeking a Bachelors: 91.6% (this is what is usually reported as “graduation rate”)
Graduation rate (within 4 years) for students seeking a Bachelors: 87.2%
Percent of students seeking a Bachelors who transfer out of this institution: 4.3%
Student to tenure-stream faculty ratio: 17.9 (undergrads to tenure-stream faculty) [Tenure explained]
Student to faculty ratio: 11.2 (undergrads to all faculty)
Degrees offered: Bachelor’s degree
Schedule: Semester
Institution provides on campus housing: Yes
Dorm capacity: There are enough dorm beds for 2367 students
Freshmen required to live on campus: No
Advanced placement (AP) credits used: Yes
Disabilities: 25.00 percent of undergrads are registered as having disabilities.
Map
Comparisons
The sections below show this institution compared with others. The ones listed are ones it has identified as peers, who consider themselves peers, and/or who the federal government considers peers. If a comparison school has the same value as the focal school, its cell is grayed out. Arrows show where there is a signficant trend over time for a school. You can swipe across the table to see more of it; the focal school column is always visible.
- Barnard College lists these schools as ones to compare itself within federal IPEDS data, and they do the same back: Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, Haverford College, Vassar College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Sarah Lawrence College
- Barnard College compares itself to these institutions, but not vice versa: Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University in the City of New York, Princeton University, Brown University, New York University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University, Pomona College, Williams College, Colby College, Amherst College, Claremont McKenna College, Swarthmore College, Middlebury College, Davidson College, Wesleyan University, Hamilton College, Colgate University, Washington and Lee University, Grinnell College, Carleton College, Bucknell University, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, Trinity College, Dickinson College, Fordham University, Connecticut College, Teachers College at Columbia University
- These institutions compare themselves to Barnard College, but not vice versa: Hillsdale College, University of Richmond, Macalester College, Scripps College, Spelman College, St Olaf College, The New School, Rhodes College, Bard College, Wheaton College, Bryant University, Principia College, Stonehill College, Saint Peter’s University, Goucher College, Ave Maria University, North Central University, LIM College
Enrollment
General
Teaching
Tenure track faculty are those who are eligible for tenure. This includes both pre-tenure and tenured faculty. Once faculty get tenure, they are (generally) protected from being fired for intellectual reasons, helping to ensure their freedom in teaching and research. They can still lose their positions for misconduct, financial problems, not fulfilling their duties, or other reasons.
Non-tenure track faculty are not eligible for tenure. Some are hired one semester at a time, some have multi-year contracts. They typically have a higher teaching load than tenure track faculty, leaving less time for research or other creative endeavors. They are also easier to fire than tenured faculty. Sometimes they are external experts (a noted musician, a former senator) who are hired to teach some classes without the expected permanence of a tenure-track position.
Note that this chart uses US federal demographic data: it only has two genders and a specified set of ethnicities and races.
Having a low student to faculty ratio is considered a good thing by many, as it can mean more individual attention.
Geography
This has information on the location of the institution. See the about page for more information on what the metrics are and how they are calculated. The goal is to neutrally provide information: for example, some individuals want stringent gun control in an area, some want the opposite: the categories are meant to be descriptive.
Financial Aid
Graduation
Note these are bachelors graduation rates in six years, not four (this is standard). Sample sizes can be small for some demographic groups with few individuals in a school, leading to large year-to-year fluctuations and often extreme values for those groups (if there are two individuals in the class with a given identity, the possible graduation rates are 0%, 50%, or 100% depending on whether zero, one, or both students graduate within six years).
Library
Libraries are changing rapidly. Note that how institutions count digital collections may vary.
Diversity
The US Census Bureau has a diversity index that goes from 0 to 1. In their words, “A 0-value indicates that everyone in the population has the same racial and ethnic characteristics. A value close to 1 indicates that everyone in the population has different racial and ethnic characteristics.” This uses their formula, but with the resolution available for the federal IPEDS data (which does not separate for a given demographic group whether members identify as Hispanic or not). This metric is about heterogeneity within the population, not the proportion of the population that comes from historically excluded groups.
Following the practice of the census, the index is multiplied by 100 to give the percentage probability a random pair of individuals will have a different background. Most institutions argue that diversity is a benefit, so by default a higher number is listed as better, but there may be cases where this measure does not reflect the mission of a college (for example, 70% of the students at a tribal college or university may be American Indian: that could be low-scoring by this metric but should not be read as “bad” given the institution’s mission).
These numbers are based on the most recent year available, generally 2023, which predates effects of the US Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action. This has often changed, sometimes dramatically, the incoming student demographics at some institutions.
Overall diversity
Freshman profile
Demographic data for first time degree-seeking students. Note that this uses US federal demographic data: it only has two genders and a specified set of ethnicities and races.
Freshman geography
Test scores
SAT scores
ACT scores
Majors
This presents information on the number of majors and the median earnings one and five years after graduation for people who got a degree from this institution in that field. The earnings are for those who are working and not enrolled in further education. The earnings data (from the federal college scorecard) also has information on earnings for those categorized as ‘MALE’ and ‘NOMALE’ – for readability, these are recategorized here as “Men” and “Women”, respectively, which adopts the gender binary used in other federal data. “W/M earnings ratio” is the median earnings of women divided by men, as a percentage.