Since its founding in 1889, Barnard has been a distinguished leader in higher education, offering a rigorous liberal arts foundation to young women whose curiosity, drive and exuberance set them apart. Ours is a diverse intellectual community in a unique learning environment that provides the best of all worlds: small, intimate classes in a collaborative liberal art setting dedicated to advancing women with the vast resources of Columbia University steps away—in the heart of vibrant and electric New York City.
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 the love of learning.
As a college for women, Barnard embraces its responsibility to address gender issues in all of its complexity and urgency and 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 capabilities. Living and learning in this unique environment, Barnard students become agile, resilient, responsible, and creative, prepared to lead and serve their society.
On our leafy four-acre campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, our world-class faculty of teacher-scholars educates more than 2,500 inspired and intrepid undergraduate women—women who, as a matter of course, have gone on to achieve great things. Throughout our history, Barnard graduates have made their mark as leaders in the arts, business, government, and science, and as activists for causes too numerous to name.
Over one hundred and twenty-five years ago, Barnard was the first College in New York City—and one of the few in the world—where women could receive the same liberal arts education available to men. Today, Barnard is one of the most selective academic institutions in the United States and remains devoted to empowering extraordinary women. With the unparalleled opportunities of our cosmopolitan setting, our academic programs' strength, and our ongoing commitment to diversity, we continue to do what we have done from the beginning with a keen eye to the future. Barnard women change the world and the way we think about it.
In 1887, a small group of determined women decided to create a college for women in New York City—a goal they described as being akin to "an enchanting castle-in-Spain … at once utterly desirable and tragically impossible." They were inexperienced but smart and fearless. As such, they succeeded in founding a truly unique and special place—a premier liberal arts college for the best and brightest young women around.
When you enter the gates at 117th Street & Broadway, you will find our green four-acre campus in the heart of Manhattan Columbia University, with all its resources, steps away from the incredible mix of students, hailing from nearly every state and dozens of countries, studying everything from American history to invertebrate zoology, from Buddhist Ethics to environmental law and the diversity of ideas and culture that imbues it all.
Barnard's president and the administration join forces with committed faculty and staff to ensure that the women who come to Barnard leave here even stronger and more resolute than before, ready to tackle the world, change the world, and choose excellence in all that they do.
For over 125 years, Barnard has embraced and enhanced its original mission on behalf of young women—to thrive on the highest academic standards, to promote intellectual risk-taking and curiosity, to foster resilience, agility, and creativity, to strive for diversity and inclusiveness in all its endeavors, and to prepare our graduates to flourish in the world.
Founded in 1889, Barnard was the only College in New York City, and one of the few in the nation, where women could receive the same rigorous and challenging education available to men. The College was named after educator, mathematician, and tenth president of Columbia College, Frederick A.P. Barnard, who argued unsuccessfully for women's admission to Columbia University. However, the school's founding is mainly due to the rallying efforts of Annie Nathan Meyer, a student, and writer who was equally dissatisfied with Columbia's stance and staunchly committed to the education of women. She joined forces with a small group of her peers to petition the University Trustees for an affiliated self-sustaining liberal arts women's college. In two years, she accomplished what she had set out to do.
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