<p>Columbia is a large urban University with a large workload. I fear it may not have the sort of communal attitude/warmth amongst the student body as a smaller school might have. Is it particularly hard to have a social life or a group of friends at Columbia?</p>
<p>Is community a prerequisite for groups of friends? It doesn’t seem so at Columbia. You’re certainly right that Columbia doesn’t have the kind of campus-wide community that you’d find at some LAC in the middle of nowhere; the students tend to be very independent. But this doesn’t mean that you won’t make friends; everyone I know at Columbia has a close group of friends and people to hang out with. People are very social, but not communal.</p>