Barnard: The Barnard Conversation Essay

200-250 words

Rooted in a history of trailblazing women, Barnard College is a collaborative community of care shaped by bold women with a multitude of perspectives. Choose one woman- historical, fictional, contemporary, or personally significant- whose views differ from your own. Imagine a conversation with her. What would you discuss? How might her perspective challenge or shift your own? Share how this new mindset could influence your approach to learning and engagement both in and beyond the classroom at Barnard.

What it’s really asking

Barnard wants to watch you think alongside someone you disagree with. Pick a specific woman, real or fictional, whose view genuinely differs from yours, stage an actual exchange, show where your thinking bends, and connect that openness to how you will learn at Barnard. Note: applicants to the Science Pathways Scholars Program for underrepresented minority and first-generation students may also submit a separate optional 300-word essay about their interest in science research.

Why they ask it

It is a women's college that prizes debate held inside a community of care. The prompt tests intellectual honesty (can you take an opposing view seriously?), specificity (do you have a real person and a real disagreement?), and fit (will you bring this curiosity into the seminar room?). It is hard to fake, which is exactly why they ask it.

Three ways in

Stress-test a belief you have never defended

Find something you hold that you have never actually had to argue for out loud, then choose the woman who would push hardest on it.

Mine a real woman in your life

Think of a coach, aunt, or boss whose worldview you bumped against, and reconstruct that actual disagreement, including what she said back.

Start from the question you cannot answer

Pick a fictional or historical woman whose famous stance unsettles you, and write toward the one thing she would say that you cannot easily counter.

✕ Weak opening

“Throughout history, women have broken barriers, and I have always admired strong women who stand up for what they believe in.”

✓ Strong opening

“I would tell Hannah Arendt that some things are just evil. She would raise an eyebrow and ask me to define the word.”

✦ Annotated example · Conversation with Phyllis Schlafly. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

I would want to sit across from Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who helped sink the Equal Rights Amendment, the one cause my grandmother organized for.¹For years I treated her as a cartoon villain, the smiling housewife who told other women to stay home. That was the easy version, and easy versions are usually wrong.I would ask her something I genuinely do not understand: how did a lawyer with a master's degree, a woman who out-argued senators, build her whole career insisting women belonged in the kitchen?²I suspect she would tell me her movement was not about staying small. It was about a kind of power I had dismissed, the power of organizing thousands of women who felt unseen by people like me.³I would still leave disagreeing with almost everything she stood for. But I would leave less certain that being right is the same as being persuasive.⁴That is the shift I want to carry into a Barnard seminar. I am good at building an argument; I am worse at sitting with someone whose conclusions repel me long enough to understand why they hold them. In a classroom of bold women who will not all think as I do, I do not want to win every table. I want to be the person who keeps listening after she already knows she is right, and who lets that listening change the argument she came in with.⁵

1Names a specific, particular woman immediately and signals genuine disagreement, exactly what Barnard rewards. Choosing the opponent of her own grandmother's cause raises the personal stakes.
2The question reveals she actually researched Schlafly's life rather than her reputation. Curiosity about a contradiction, not a gotcha, shows intellectual openness.
3She lets the opponent score a real point. This is the 'not a softball' move: granting that the other side understood something she missed.
4Holds her own position (intellectual courage) while admitting a real shift. The distinction between right and persuasive is specific and earned, not a vague 'we agreed to disagree.'
5Ties the lesson directly to learning and engagement at Barnard and to its community of women with many perspectives, ending on a concrete, humble image of how she will show up rather than a slogan.

Stuck? Start here

What is a belief you hold that you have genuinely never had to defend out loud, and who would be hardest on it?
Think of a time a woman in your life made you reconsider something. What exactly did she say, and what did you say back?
Which famous or fictional woman holds a view you admire but cannot fully accept, and what is the one question of hers you cannot answer?

Before you submit

Is the disagreement real, with the woman winning at least one point, rather than a disguised tribute?
Did I name a specific person and a specific view, and stage an actual back-and-forth, not an abstract theme?
Does my thinking visibly shift, and does the ending connect to one concrete way I will learn at Barnard?

Drafted it? Get an honest, admissions-style read, free.

Score my essay