At a Glance
Columbia admits 3.9% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Debt at Graduation
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$36,069
average debt at graduation
Columbia graduates carry an average of $36,069 in debt.
Merit Aid
Not reported by this school — some schools award aid based on need alone, without merit scholarships.
Getting In
Columbia admits 3.9% of applicants.
Columbia University's Early Decision applicants are admitted at more than 5x the rate of Regular Decision applicants — 13.2% vs 2.8%. Note: ED is binding — you commit to attending if admitted.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 44% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 17% of the class submitted
94% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Columbia University rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
57.6% of Columbia classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Columbia, 57.6% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2024–25, Section I-3 (class sizes)
6:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
90%
Men in fraternities
9%
Women in sororities
13%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Columbia's student body is 28.1% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Columbia graduates 83.1% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Columbia graduates 83.1% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Columbia
83.1%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $89,472
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2024–25, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
96%
Overall 6-yr rate
94%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
98%
98% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in New York.
Columbia's Morningside Heights campus is the inverse of a downtown NYC school: a gated, six-block Beaux-Arts quad designed by McKim, Mead & White, built around Low and Butler libraries and the path between them known as College Walk. Step past the 116th Street gates and the surrounding city — Riverside Park and the Hudson to the west, Harlem to the north, the rest of Manhattan a short subway ride south — is there when you want it, but the campus itself has walls and a clear edge, unlike NYU's Greenwich Village campus a few miles downtown.
Notable Alumni
Alexander Hamilton
First U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and a principal author of the Federalist Papers. He attended King's College (Columbia's original name) from 1774 until instruction was suspended by the Revolutionary War in 1776, then left to join the Continental Army as an artillery officer.
Class of 1776
Franklin D. Roosevelt
32nd President of the United States, elected to four terms and the only president to serve more than two. He attended Columbia Law School from 1904 to 1907, passed the New York bar before finishing his degree, and left without graduating.
Class of 1907
Barack Obama
44th President of the United States. He transferred to Columbia College from Occidental College in 1981 and graduated in 1983 with a B.A. in political science.
Class of 1983
Warren Buffett
Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful investors in history. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia Business School in 1951, studying value investing directly under professor Benjamin Graham.
Class of 1951
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
New York, NY
Best For
Traditions
The Core Curriculum
Started in 1919 as a single course, Contemporary Civilization, the country's first general-education requirement of its kind. Literature Humanities was added in 1937, and every Columbia College student still takes both, plus University Writing and Frontiers of Science, regardless of major.
Primal Scream
At midnight on the Sunday before each finals period, students throw open their windows across campus and scream at the top of their lungs to blow off exam stress — a tradition that has run for decades and continues today.
Bacchanal
Columbia's annual spring concert, a day-long outdoor festival mixing student acts with a professional headliner, timed as the campus-wide release valve before the final stretch of the semester.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from New York
Bear Mountain State Park, New York
About 1 hourHudson Valley hiking and lake swimming, reachable by car or by a Metro-North train from the 125th Street station a few blocks from campus.
Fire Island, New York
About 2.5 hoursA car-free barrier island beach reached by LIRR train from Penn Station to Bay Shore or Sayville, then a short ferry.
Boston, Massachusetts
About 4 hoursA common weekend trip to visit friends at other Northeastern schools, by car, bus or Amtrak.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
About 20 minutes from campus
For international flights: John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) — about 45 minutes by car, or about 50 minutes by subway and airtrain from 116th street.
Pro sports nearby
- New York Yankees MLBAbout 15 minutes by direct subway from 125th Street away
- New York Knicks NBAAbout 25 minutes by subway away
- New York Rangers NHLAbout 25 minutes by subway away
- New York Giants NFLAbout 50 minutes by NJ Transit train and shuttle away
Career Proximity
Columbia sits at the north end of Manhattan's internship map rather than the middle of it, but the subway erases most of that distance — Midtown, Wall Street and Columbia's own affiliated NewYork-Presbyterian hospital complex are all a direct ride from Morningside Heights.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- JPMorgan Chase
- Goldman Sachs
- NewYork-Presbyterian
- McKinsey & Company
- Condé Nast
Midtown and Wall Street Manhattan, both a direct subway ride from Morningside Heights
Who Thrives Here
Columbia admits 3.9% of applicants overall and 13.2% through early decision (it offers no early action round). Unlike Cornell and Yale, it has not reinstated a testing requirement — the SAT or ACT is read if submitted but not required. What shapes a Columbia education more than anything else is the Core Curriculum: every Columbia College student, whatever their major, takes the same required Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization sequence, a program that started in 1919 as the first general-education requirement of its kind in the country and still anchors the first two years. The campus itself is the inverse of NYU's a few miles downtown — Columbia's Morningside Heights quad is gated and Beaux-Arts, built around College Walk between Low and Butler libraries, physically set apart from the surrounding city rather than woven into it. 90% of undergraduates live in university housing and Greek life is a modest presence (9% of men, 13% of women). The aid is real — Columbia meets 100% of demonstrated need — but that phrase is easy to over-read: graduates who borrow still leave owing an average of $36,069, because meeting need in full includes loans in the package rather than replacing them all with grants. A family should read their own award letter for the grant-to-loan split rather than assume full need met means graduating debt-free. Teaching runs tight at 6 students per faculty member and 57.6% of classes under 20, and 83.1% of students finish in four years against 96.0% within six.