Barnard College has been a distinguished leader in higher education for women for over 100 years and is today the most sought after private liberal arts college in the nation.  Founded in 1889, the College was the first in New York City, and one of the few in the nation at the time, where women could receive the same rigorous liberal arts education available to men.  Its partnership with a great research university, Columbia University, combined with its setting in an international city, strength in STEM, and its unwavering dedication to the advancement of women, makes Barnard unique among liberal arts colleges today.

Barnard is both an independently incorporated educational institution and an official college of Columbia University—a position that simultaneously affords it self-determination and a rich, value-enhancing partnership.  Barnard students may take classes at Columbia and benefit from the University’s myriad academic resources, as Columbia students may do at Barnard. Barnard students may compete in Division I athletics through the Barnard-Columbia Athletic Consortium. 

New York City and its vast cultural and social resources provide an extension to the Barnard campus, used by every department to enhance curriculum and learning.  The City is an inescapable presence, inviting students with infinite opportunities to explore and experience (from access to the arts to working with social-change organizations to interning on Wall Street). 

The College draws accomplished, motivated, bright, and curious young women who seek a stimulating atmosphere and diverse community.  Barnard alumnae include pioneers like anthropologist Margaret Mead and Judith Kaye, the first female Chief Judge of the State of New York, along with prominent cultural figures such as choreographer Twyla Tharp, writers Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Gordon, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Anna Quindlen and Natalie Angier.

Mission Statement

Barnard College aims to provide the highest quality liberal arts education to promising and high-achieving young women, offering the unparalleled advantages of an outstanding residential college in partnership with a major research university. With a dedicated faculty of scholars distinguished in their respective fields, Barnard is a community of accessible teachers and engaged students who participate together in intellectual risk-taking and discovery. Barnard students develop the intellectual resources to take advantage of opportunities as new fields, new ideas, and new technologies emerge. They graduate prepared to lead lives that are professionally satisfying and successful, personally fulfilling, and enriched by love of learning.

As a college for women, Barnard embraces its responsibility to address issues of gender in all of their complexity and urgency, and to help students achieve the personal strength that will enable them to meet the challenges they will encounter throughout their lives. Located in the cosmopolitan urban environment of New York City, and committed to diversity in its student body, faculty and staff, Barnard prepares its graduates to flourish in different cultural surroundings in an increasingly inter-connected world.

The Barnard community thrives on high expectations. By setting rigorous academic standards and giving students the support they need to meet those standards, Barnard enables them to discover their own capabilities. Living and learning in this unique environment, Barnard students become agile, resilient, responsible, and creative, prepared to lead and serve their society.

 

Barnard History

Barnard College was among the pioneers in the late 19th-century crusade to make higher education available to young women.

The College grew out of the idea, first proposed by Columbia University’s tenth president, Frederick A.P. Barnard, that women have an opportunity for higher education at Columbia. Initially ignored, the idea led to the creation of a “Collegiate Course for Women.” Although highly-qualified women were authorized to follow a prescribed course of study leading ultimately to Columbia University degrees, no provision was made for where and how they were to pursue their studies. It was six years before Columbia’s trustees agreed to the establishment of a college for women. A provisional charter was secured, and Barnard College was named in honor of its most persistent advocate.

In October 1889, the first Barnard class met in a rented brownstone at 343 Madison Avenue. Fourteen students enrolled in the School of Arts and twenty-two “specials,” lacking the entrance requirements in Greek, enrolled in science. There was a faculty of six.

Nine years later Barnard moved to its present site in Morningside Heights. In 1900, Barnard was included in the educational system of Columbia University with provisions unique among women’s colleges: it was governed by its own Trustees, Faculty, and Dean, and was responsible for its own endowment and facilities, while sharing instruction, the library, and the degree of the University.

Barnard Today

From the original 14 students, enrollment has grown to over 3,000, with over 46,700 awarded degrees since 1893. The integration of teaching and scholarship occurs at an incomparable level at Barnard. Barnard's faculty of 259 women and men are teacher-scholars whose paramount concern is the education of undergraduate students and whose professional achievements bring added vitality to the classroom. This commitment to personal attention and high achievement provide the ultimate learning environment.

Barnard’s liberal arts education is broad in scope and demanding. The curriculum includes a series of general education requirements—a program of courses the faculty believes provides a stimulating and thorough education, while remaining flexible and varied enough to suit a student’s own interests, strengths, and talents. Classes vary in size. Those in which student participation is important are small. There are opportunities for independent study and students are often invited to work on research projects with faculty members.

In 2007, Barnard College and Columbia University amended and extended the longstanding agreement for cooperation between the institutions, an agreement which remains unique in higher education. Barnard stands as an independent college for women with its own curriculum, faculty, admissions standards, graduation requirements, trustees, endowment, and physical plant. At the same time, Barnard and Columbia share resources, thereby giving students open access to the courses, facilities, and libraries of both schools. Barnard and Columbia students also share in a wide variety of social and extracurricular activities. Barnard boasts 80 undergraduate clubs, and students have access to an additional 500+ student life opportunities at Columbia.

From its inception, Barnard has been committed to advancing the academic, personal, and professional success of women. Students benefit from an atmosphere in which over half of the full-time faculty are women, and women are well represented in the administration. The College is led by Sian Beilock, former Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology, Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives, and Executive Vice Provost and Officer of the University of Chicago. At Barnard, women are given the opportunities and the freedom to lead both in and out of the classroom, and to develop the skills that will equip them to lead throughout their lives.

Barnard’s unique ties to several of Columbia’s graduate schools and to premier New York City institutions, including the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Teachers College, give students an unusual range of educational options, including a number of joint degree programs.  At Barnard students can earn a bachelors and masters through one of our 4+1 programs within Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, The School of International and Public Affairs, The Mailman School of Public Health, The Harriman Institute and a quantitative masters at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Academic organizations within and beyond the University also offer vital opportunities for research, study, studio experience, internships, and community service.

Barnard has a high student retention rate, an indication of student satisfaction with the college experience. Barnard students also enjoy leaves for study, travel, and internships. By senior year, about three-quarters of students have undertaken an internship and/or pursued funded summer research across academic institutions, corporations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and in the arts. Every year Barnard admits about 100 transfer students who come to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to Barnard women.

Every year, Beyond Barnard collects and summarizes information about post-graduate study and employment. Within the first six months after graduation, 90% of Barnard graduates from Classes 2018-2020 were working or enrolled in graduate or professional schools. Full reports are available at Beyond Barnard's website.

Accreditation

Barnard College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215-662-5606. The Commission on Higher Education is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Commission on Recognition of Postsecondary Accreditation.

The Barnard Education Program is accredited by the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP) and approved by the New York State Education Department to recommend students who complete the program for Initial Certification in either Childhood Education (Grades 1-6) or Adolescent Education (Grades 7-12). For more information, please visit https://education.barnard.edu/certification.

The Campus

The Barnard campus occupies four acres of urban property along the west side of Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets. At the southern end of the campus, four residence buildings, Brooks Hall (1907), Hewitt Hall (1925), Helen Reid Hall (1961), and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Hall (1988), form an enclosed quadrangle known as the "Quad."

Barnard Hall (1917) is just north of the “Quad” and contains seminar rooms, classrooms, and faculty offices, and dance studios. The Sulzberger Parlor on the third floor is used for meetings and special events. The Julius S. Held Lecture Hall is also on the third floor.

Just north of Barnard Hall is the newly constructed Cheryl and Philip Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, opened in September 2018. Designed by the award-winning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the 128,000-square-foot building—with a base of five floors and a tower of eleven floors adjacent to Altschul Hall—is a distinctive place that convenes students and faculty, facilitates collaboration, and fosters dialogue. It includes a new kind of library, one that brings together current technologies and learning spaces in an interactive setting. Furthermore, it is a dynamic academic hub of the campus, linking departments and disciplines both physically and philosophically.

Further to the north, Helen Goodhart Altschul Hall (1969) and the Diana Center (2010) face each other across an open plaza. The 14 stories of Altschul Hall are devoted to the sciences. Herbert H. Lehman Auditorium is on the first floor. The Diana Center was designed by the renowned architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi and is the student center for the campus. 

Milbank Hall (1897) occupies the furthest northern end of the campus and houses administrative and faculty offices, classrooms, the Arthur Ross Greenhouse, and the Minor Latham Playhouse, a well-equipped modern theater. 

In 2003, the College’s four oldest buildings - Brooks Hall, Hewitt Hall, Barnard Hall, and Milbank Hall, were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In the immediate neighborhood, Barnard maintains additional residence halls, including Plimpton Hall, acquired in 1968; Eleanor Thomas Elliott Hall, formerly 49 Claremont Avenue, acquired in 1982 and renamed in 1992; Cathedral Gardens, constructed by Barnard in 2006; and 537 West 121st Street, acquired in 2019. In addition, three apartment buildings on West 116th Street, 600 (acquired in 1971), 616 (acquired in 1964), and 620 (acquired in 1968) are Barnard residence halls. The College also rents additional spaces at 601 West 110th Street.  

Columbia University is directly across the street on Broadway.