Columbia University

📚 Courses & programs at Columbia University

Columbia University is best known for Finance, Data Science, Journalism. Popular programs for international students include:

• MS Computer Science
• MS Data Science
• MBA
• MS Financial Eng
• MS Electrical Eng

Class profile: Highly selective intake.

✅ Entry requirements

💰 Fees & cost of studying

Plan your budget for tuition + living + health insurance + the visa fee. Compare funding with the free scholarship finder.

📝 Step-by-step admission process

1. Shortlist programs & note GRE/GMAT policy
2. Take IELTS/TOEFL + GRE/GMAT if required
3. Prepare SOP, 2–3 LORs, CV & transcripts
4. Apply online (Fall deadlines Dec–Jan)
5. Pay application fee; submit
6. Receive decision → I-20 → F-1 visa

📄 Documents checklist

• Academic transcripts
• Statement of Purpose
• 2–3 Letters of Recommendation
• Resume / CV
• GRE/GMAT (if required)
• IELTS / TOEFL
• Application fee
• Passport copy
• Financial proof (I-20)

🛂 Student visa & post-study work · USA

• Student visa: F-1 student visa
• Work while studying: 20 hrs/week on-campus during term; full-time in breaks
• Post-study work: OPT: 12 months (36 months for STEM degrees)

📅 Intakes & deadlines

All figures are indicative and change year to year — always confirm on the official site (columbia.edu) before applying.

How Columbia University compares in USA

The figures on this page mean little on their own. Set against the 30 other USA universities in our dataset, they say something more useful about where an application to Columbia University is likely to be won or lost.

• Selectivity. An indicative acceptance rate of about 12% against a median of 50% across the 30 other USA universities in our dataset. 7 of them are harder to get into than Columbia University. It sits on the more selective side of its national peer group, so meeting the published minimums is the floor rather than the goal.
• Rank in context. QS #23, against a peer median of #96; 5 USA universities rank above it here. Rank is worth exactly this much and no more — it is driven by institution-wide research output and reputation surveys, not by the department you would actually join, so treat it as a coarse filter and judge the programme on its own page.
• English bar. IELTS 7 against a peer median of 7. That is exactly the national norm, so a score built for this application should travel across your whole shortlist. Equivalents: TOEFL 94, PTE 65.

Programme areas: MS Computer Science · MS Data Science · MBA · MS Financial Eng · MS Electrical Eng. Entry requirements are set per programme, not per university, so the figures above are the institutional baseline — a competitive department inside an accessible university can run far tighter than the headline rate suggests.

Practical order of work for Columbia University: clear the English requirement first, because it gates everything and is the only part of the application you fully control; then confirm which of the Fall (Sep) and Spring (Jan) intakes you are targeting, since the typical deadline is Dec 15 (Fall) and funding decisions usually close before admission decisions; then build the application around one specific programme rather than the institution. Budget the application fee of $50–100 per programme, and living costs of $12,000–20,000/yr on top of tuition of $50–56k/yr.

Figures here are indicative and compiled for comparison. Acceptance rates in particular are institution-level estimates and move year to year — confirm anything you are deciding on against the university's official pages.