J.D. Admissions | Columbia Law School

Morningside Heights

A Neighborhood, A City, A Home

It is no accident that the University’s full name is “Columbia University in the City of New York.” The pulse of the city is interwoven in a Columbia education, and Columbia occupies a central and influential position in the life of New York. Indeed, New York City is Columbia’s laboratory. 

Columbia Law School students benefit in innumerable ways from their immersion in the vibrancy of one of the world’s most important cities. New York is the world’s center of law practice. The sophistication and expertise of its practitioners not only add resources to the Law School, but also make available a wide variety of career choices to those who remain in the city and become part of a career-expanding background for those graduates choosing to live and work elsewhere. New York City also is the world capital of publishing, international finance, culture, the arts, and communications. Yet as an urban center, it is representative of the many problems, hopes, challenges, and opportunities facing individuals and societies around the world.

Columbia faculty and students value highly the diversity, the unpretentiousness, and the safety of Morningside Heights. Some visitors and newcomers to Columbia who had envisioned faculty and students commuting an appreciable distance to the University are surprised to discover how family-oriented the Morningside Heights neighborhood is. In reality, it’s a small college town nestled within an international capital.

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