What is Barnard's liberal arts curriculum like for undergraduates?

Barnard’s undergraduate curriculum is genuinely broad, and in practice it means you will take classes across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, arts, and quantitative reasoning before and alongside your major. Barnard students complete a set of general education requirements called Foundations, and those are designed to make sure you engage with multiple ways of thinking rather than staying in one academic lane from the start. You also have access to Columbia classes through the Barnard-Columbia partnership, which expands the range of subjects even more.

For exploration, Barnard gives students a lot of room early on. Many students do not declare a major immediately, and the college makes it easy to sample departments through introductory and seminar-style courses while still making progress toward graduation. The liberal arts model there is less about random distribution requirements and more about building skills in writing, analysis, languages, quantitative reasoning, and critical engagement across disciplines.

In practice, that could mean a student interested in political science also takes coursework in history, economics, literature, environmental science, or dance. Barnard emphasizes small classes and discussion-based learning more than a pre-professional, lockstep curriculum, so undergraduates are expected to ask questions, write often, and connect ideas across fields.

Another useful detail is that Barnard combines that broad liberal arts structure with access to university-level resources. So you get the close advising and undergraduate focus of a small college, but with a much larger course catalog, research options, and specialized departments through Columbia.