What are the options for off-campus housing near Columbia University for a graduate student ? Would also like yo know about campus life and general safety in the area.
Columbia Housing has a Marketplace page with lots of apartment listings. Once you have a login, there is also a page where you can look for roommates. Columbia does have dedicated housing for Grad Students in apartments. It can be hard to qualify and hard to get and it’s not the cheapest option, but many prefer it because you have a standard landlord.
It is NYC… but the area around Columbia is generally fine. South of the campus (Upper West Side) is great. If you go farther north into Washington Heights, a lot of people would suggest staying west of Broadway, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. Much of the area around the Columbia Medical Center is good, and there is a free shuttle that runs from there to the main campus. Some students do like living in the closer parts of Harlem. Your preferred location is going to depend a lot on your budget, how close to the subway you want to be, and your tolerance for noise.
Campus life itself is pretty quiet. There’s plenty to do, but the big nightlife areas for young people are in Midtown, Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn – somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour away. The Columbia neighborhood is more about restaurants than bars, and fairly conducive to studying.