If your parents income is less then $40K with no significant assets you will be a full ride at Columbia as it would be at almost all of the top 20 universities that meet full need without loans. It would also include travel and other incidental costs. Run the NPC’s at all of them and you will come out with an EFC near zero, still you will have to do work study and work during the summer to make the $5K or so that you would be required to contribute.
Columbia aspires to be a great college for low-income students. There is no parental contribution for Columbia College and SEAS students with family incomes under $60,000 (not $40,000). No loans are included in their financial aid packages, only grants and work-study. Sadly, these policies are not applied to General Studies and Barnard students. While Columbia could/should do more, there are exceptionally few colleges that provide more “generous” financial aid or supports to help low-income and first-generation students succeed and graduate.
That being said, Columbia does ask all students receiving financial aid - including those with $0 parental contribution - to make a “student contribution” from work-study jobs and savings from summer earnings. The student contribution ($2400 for freshmen rising to $3000 for seniors) is supposed to cover some of the parts of the cost of attendance that are not billed/collected by Columbia. It isn’t a line item on the bill from Columbia like tuition, room, board, and health service fees. But, it is intended to cover most of a student’s books and personal expenses that they manage themselves. This forces some students to economize on their meal plans or avoid buying books so they don’t have to work as much. This also creates a serious problem for students who contribute their earnings to help meet the needs of their siblings and parents. If they use part of their work-study income or summer savings to support their families, they may not have enough for their own food and school needs.