Columbia is an Ivy League university with a traditional residential campus based in New York City. Columbia College and The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science offer over 100 areas of study—more than 80 through Columbia College, the traditional undergraduate liberal arts college, and 17 through Columbia Engineering. All students enroll in Columbia’s Core Curriculum, one of the nation’s oldest and most renowned Core programs, consisting of courses that not only expose students to a variety of perspectives and fields, but also prepare them for any career they pursue. 

Preprofessional Advising assists students interested in attending professional schools such as law, medicine and public health. Columbia offers various special joint degree programs: Combined Plan Program with Columbia Engineering, Columbia Juilliard Program, International Affairs Five-Year Program, and Public Policy and Administration Five-Year Program. The Center for Career Education assists students in finding jobs and internships in New York City and around the world, annually posting more than 71,000 positions on our LionSHARE online database.

Students at Columbia have unparalleled access to all that the university and New York City have to offer. On-campus housing is guaranteed for all four years, providing a familiar home base from which students can launch into countless adventures. Discover a new interest by joining one or more of Columbia’s 500+ student groups and clubs, or get involved with one of the school’s 31 NCAA Division I athletic teams. Take advantage of research opportunities from among 200 research institutes and centers, such as the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) Program and the Student Research Program. 

A few notable facts about Columbia: 86 Nobel Prize winners are Columbia alumni, faculty or former faculty; more than 40 Columbians have competed in the Olympics; the FM radio was invented in a lab on campus; Columbia’s alumni include 5 Founding Fathers, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and 34 Presidents and Prime Ministers, including former President Barack Obama, ’83CC; more than 100 Pulitzer Prize winners are Columbia alumni.

Fun Fact: Columbia undergraduates come from all fifty states and more than 100 countries.