I’ll give it a go…
First, to orient out-of-towners, Columbia is located in the northwest of the island of Manhattan in NYC, directly west of Harlem (and bordering a park and the Hudson River to its West side) in a neighborhood called Morningside Heights. While the university expanded to many buildings outside of its core campus in the city grid over the years and is expanding north of the main campus (plus has its hospital and sports fields meaningfully further north, though with easy access form the subway), the core “campus” that you see in all the pics is compactly contained inside one side block across (between Broadway and Amsterdam) and 6 blocks long (between 114th St and 120th Street (excluding the law school and a few buildings East of Amsterdam accessible by a bridge over the street). (For those unfamiliar, streets are much wider East to West than they are long North to South, so the 1 block wide is really the equivalent of roughly 4 blocks tall). This is the same Broadway that continues through the famous Times Square and all the way downtown. Amsterdam becomes 9th Avenue further south.
This makes it an extraordinary compact core campus for a university the size of Columbia, while still retaining a true campus vibe despite being in Manhattan. NYU by comparison is downtown but has no traditional campus.
How to get to Columbia
It depends how familiar you are with NYC and/or how adventurous you are. Columbia has a subway stop directly next to the campus on the 1 line (it’s been there over 100 years). The 1 line runs North to South on the West side of Manhattan from downtown to the tippy top of the island (the Columbia sports complex is at the last stop). This includes running under the NY Port Authority (buses), Penn Station (Amtrak, NJ Transit and Long Island Railroad and 6 subway lines), as well as close connections to the PATH and ferries downtown. (If you are coming from Metro North or JFK or LGA by subway, it’s a little more complicated as you’ll need to transfer or walk further.) The 1 is a “local” train that makes a lot of stops. Expect +/-20 minutes from Penn Station to campus or vice versa. There are more express options that require either switching trains or walking the last bit but that’s more complicated.
This subway is definitely how the students will primarily get around once acclimated.
However, if you are unfamiliar with the NYC subway system and are not excited to try it, there are plenty of parking garages near campus, including one directly across from the largest first year dorm on 114th St. So driving is possible. If coming from NJ, it will likely have you cross the George Washington Bridge which is conveniently close to campus from the north. I suggest using Google, Waze or the nav systems of your choice. Parking in NYC is expensive though you can save some by pre-buying using a parking app like Spot Hero or Park Whiz.
And of course there’s always Uber/Lyft/Cab, etc.
Where to Stay
There are almost no hotels in walking proximity to the campus, relatively speaking. However, this is NYC, so there are hundreds or more hotels within a few miles south of the campus, accessible by subway, cab or Uber/Lyft. Columbia has deals with a few on the upper west side and in Harlem, listed here:
https://www.iserp.columbia.edu/business-office/preferred-hotels
These are fine. That said, personally I would recommend staying further south of these closer to all the action of Manhattan. It’s really a minor difference of subway ride length to stay within walking distance of hundreds of amazing restaurants, shops, Broadway shows, etc., with hotel options that vary from world class 5-star to relatively economical 2-stars, with an abundance of well-known chain 3 and 4-stars, and dozens of very nice boutique options. I find TripAdvisor useful for research if you’re unfamiliar and don’t have a preferred chain.
Where to Eat
This is impossible to answer because NYC has the highest concentration of restaurants in the country, so there are literally thousands of options. Whatever your preference, there’s good options. I would go by word of mouth or a site like Google or TripAdvisor. The best places to eat in Manhattan in general are not within walking distance of the campus, which is why students soon start venturing south for recreation once they get acclimated. That said, there’s plenty of relatively decent options nearby.
While far from the best food, if you’re looking for a talking point, two blocks south of the campus on Broadway (and 112th St) is Tom’s Diner. This tiny classic diner with so-so food has the distinction of being famous twice over, both as the outside setting of the famous “Seinfeld Diner” from the TV show (good Instagram moment) and as the inspiration for Suzanne Vega’s most famous song (of the same name) which was supposedly written there when she was a student at Barnard.
What to expect on a campus tour
In my opinion, expect to be disappointed on the official tours. The problem is that security on campus is exceptionally tight – there are guards at every building that only let students, staff and in a coupe cases alumni, through. So the tour is mostly outside talking about buildings but not going in them like most colleges do. So no dorm tour, no going into the real part of the library (other than the entry vestibule), no seeing a classroom, no seeing a dining hall, no seeing the gym (which is actually underground directly below the campus), etc. Sure, you will hear some info, but you can visually do exactly the same tour just by showing up and walking around. Still, the outside of the core campus is iconic, having been used in countless movies and show and photoshoots, so that’s worth something.
They do do dorm tours for accepted students in the spring, but not as part of prospective general tours.
Security
As noted above, unlike most other campuses, security is legit here inside any building. For the most part, don’t expect to get in anywhere. Though the student store is in the basement of the student union but with a separate non-security zone entrance from Broadway. I would say this is what to expect from an urban campus, but I’ve done tours and walked around informally at UCLA, USC, etc. and even there security is nothing like at Columbia. That said, the security visibility is all inside – the outside is generally open to the public with no overt sense of being watched, etc.
Dorms
You will probably only see the inside of a dorm room or hallway if you are on an accepted student tour or already enrolled. Dorms for first year students (and some older students but far fewer) are clustered near each other on the South side of the core campus in buildings that are 10-15 stores tall (none are new or modern, though they are adding window unit AC to most that don’t have it during the summer of 2023).
There’s a lot of pros to first year housing. First, a large capacity of the dorms are singles, but there’s enough doubles that most (not all) students get their preference simply by ranking as first a building that is most singles or mostly doubles. There’s also some mini-suite options where students are in a handful of single and double rooms that collectively share a private common room and kitchen. So there’s something for everyone.
The first year housing is also incredibly close to most campus dining, the main library, the student health center and the main student activity center, with distances ranging from in the actual dorm building itself to at most a 1-2 minute walk. The housing is also no more than about 5 minutes away from most undergraduates classrooms. So everything is convenient.
The thing to know is unlike many colleges where housing options generally get better as you matriculate into higher grades, at Columbia the first year housing is often better than sophomore housing. There’s only one core campus dorm that’s has a meaningful concentration on non-first year students, so unless you are an RA, the odds are you will be bumped out of core campus into the nearby city grid where the housing is intermingled with private apartments and shops after year one. And that single you loved as a first year, enjoy it because you’ll likely be in a double sophomore year.
Facilities
The campus is attractive and the facilities are top notch. But just realize that Columbia has easily the smallest Ivy campus despite one of the largest Ivy student populations. When you compare it to something like Princeton or Cornell, it’s shockingly small physically. It is land locked in the grid of Manhattan that has grown up around it, which is why it is technically in its fourth location and has only been there since the late 1890’s despite existing as an institution since 1754. Fun fact, the location of the last campus before the current one was in midtown Manhattan and when abandoned and sold became what is now known as Rockefeller Center (think the ice skating rink, the annual Christmas tree, NBC, Radio City Music Hall, etc.) Imagine if Columbia was still there.
More recently they have started building a new min-campus 10+ blocks north of the main campus, with non-school buildings in-between.
In my opinion, one of the results is relatively less facilities than you would expect of a school with over 30,000 students. There’s only a few dining halls, a relatively small student center, etc., when compared to their peers.
(Side Bar: This land limitation has had an impact on Columbia’s history. In the 1960’s they tried to build a new gym directly to the East of the campus in part of adjacent Morningside Park, which separates the campus from Harlem. Both Harlem residents and many Columbia students and faculty objected because it was removing public park space from the Harlem community and would have had a separate entrance for Harlem community members several floors below the student entrance (the park is a steep hill with Harlem lower than the campus), with restricted acces preventing most co-mingling. Those opposed dubbed it “Gym Crow” in reference to Jim Crow and segregation. Eventually student activists took over some campus buildings in protest, the police and guard were called it and it was violently ended (and is the subject of various movies, books, etc.). While the pretests were forcibly ended, it did lead to the resignation of the University President and the termination of the new gym. They later instead built it entirely underground beneath the campus itself.)
Location
The flip side of the compact campus is that as the school likes to say, NYC is their campus. The general vibe and expectation is students don’t sequester on campus but branch out to the entire city when unwinding, eating out, etc. That’s an unparalleled “college town.” This is why half of the new student orientation activities revolve around exploring NYC or NYC arts and cultural institutions. NYC is unquestionably an amazing place where anything is possible.
In my opinion, I significantly prefer the true core college campus vibe of Columbia over the just-part-of-the-city-grid vibe of NYU (or comparably GW in DC, among others). I think it gives the best of both worlds – a true campus but also minutes away from everything. That said, NYU fans would say that its location downtown is much closer to the action and that’s true.
The school is directly buffered on both the East and West sides by public parks (Riverside on the west and Morningside on the east). And the NW corner of Central Park is also a short walk. With any of these places, one should have a major urban center “situational awareness” and caution. Don’t go out alone after dark in these parks and never be oblivious to the people around you. There has been a couple well publicized murders of Columbia students in Morningside Park relatively recently, one about 4 years ago and another almost exactly two years later (very unrelated circumstances).
I generally don’t feel unsafe in NYC. But, again, it’s above being vigilant and valuing not being alone and isolated (safety in numbers; most personal crime is opportunistic).
