Liberal Arts Experience at Barnard

“What’s liberal arts college?” is one of the questions that always come up to me during family gatherings since liberal arts is still a rather foreign concept for many people living outside of the states. Probably similar to many of my relatives, my understanding of liberal arts before coming to Barnard was simply the curriculum by which students would take courses from different subjects often not so much related to their major. Now after spending more than a year at Barnard, however, I have learned so much about liberal arts and how it influences almost every aspect of my experience here at Barnard.

First of all, the liberal arts curriculum completely reshaped my academic experience at Barnard and my overall understanding of learning. All Barnard students forge their academic path with Foundations--a rigorous yet flexible curriculum composed by various course requirements (more details here). Coming to Barnard with an undecided intended major, I spent my first year taking classes on many different subjects and improving my college-level writing and speaking skills at my First Year Writing/Seminar classes. After taking introductory sociology, education and some psychology classes, I found my academic interest in psychology and education which I later decided as my major and minor. There is a lot of flexibility in fulfilling the various requirements, so I felt zero pressure to also try something completely new (a list of courses offered that fulfill requirements here). Because of the language and P.E. requirements, I started to take Korean and modern dance which happened to become my new interests. To provide students with sufficient time of discovering their academic interests, Barnard does not require students to declare a major(s) until the second semester of their sophomore year, which means there is plenty of time to try out several areas before making a decision. The numerous courses offered might be a little overwhelming for some first-year students, but your faculty advisor and class dean are always available for help. My first-year advisor Dean Kuan Tsu always welcomed me to her office and talked through my schedules with me whenever I felt overwhelmed, and I managed to challenge myself by many new choices with her support.

Like the help I got from my advisor, all the resources and opportunities available to me are another advantage of a liberal arts college. Similar to most undergraduate liberal arts college, Barnard has a small campus with only around 2,700 students and a student-to-faculty ratio of 9:1--leading to 75% of classes with 19 or fewer students. Most of my classes taken at Barnard were small seminars, and professors of my larger classes were also very approachable. Because all research led by Barnard professors is done with undergraduate students, many students including my friends were able to participate in research. A common stereotype of liberal arts colleges is that they don’t have strong science programs, but this really seems not true at Barnard where students are offered with such opportunities to research and the school’s support on women in STEM.

Another crucial aspect of my liberal arts experience at Barnard is the close community, and this is my favorite part of being at Barnard. Starting from the orientation, I rarely felt lonely at Barnard--I am surrounded by the best people all the time. As an introverted person, I made so many good friends from orientation, classes, dorms, and sometimes elevators, and a lot of conversations started with a simple question: “are you also from Barnard?” As an international student, I really enjoy how the Barnard community always makes me feel so comfortable and included that I stopped worrying about being far away from home.

Lastly, what’s unique about Barnard that other liberal arts college does not share is the connection with Columbia--a big research university right across the street. For those who couldn’t decide between liberal arts college and university, studying at Barnard provides the opportunity of both experiences. Many Barnard students including me tend to enjoy Barnard classes and community more than that of Columbia, but it’s always good to be able to make friends, take classes, join clubs, and experience the feeling of being in a big university once in a while.