Associate Director of Admissions Bernard P. Ireland says that the college seeks to admit an entering class of three equal groups; a third from New York City, a third from the rest of the metropolitan area, and a third from the rest of the nation. This ideal figure will mean a 15 percent decline in entrants from the city and surrounding areas.
Scholarship funds at Columbia are rather limited, for the College has been in a fairly poor financial position for some years. Slightly over 7 percent of the students--a far cry from the 25-30 percent ratio at Harvard. Yale, and Princeton--are receiving scholarship funds. Of the $136,000 awarded this year, the bulk of the scholarship money comes from the Ford Foundation, while Nationals and Pulitzers provide other funds.
Lack of adequate scholarship funds, combined with Columbia's high basic costs, gives the Bureau of Student Placement a tremendous volume of business. Tuition last year took a jump up to $790, while room, beard, and miscellancous items cost an estimated $1100.
The Bureau figures that at least 65 percent of the students at Columbia College are partially selfsupporting. More than one-fourth of the College is registered with the Bureau, whose registrants college and university piled up a half-a-million dollars in on-campus jobs, such as "board jobs," last year. Total estimated earnings for students during paritime work amounted to two million dollars.
Lacking Ivy atmosphere. Columbia tries, in a minor sort of way, to overcome the physical deficit with "tradition." Thus members of the freshman class are required to wear light blue beauies, until the freshman-sophomore rush. In this latter event the freshmen attempt to fight through sophomores who are defending a greased pole, and capture a dummy perched stop the pole.
Only once did the sophomore class born in defeat in this event. The class of '61 was the first and, to date, the last to rescue the dummy; Spectator reports that is was a class consisting mainly of World War 11 yeterans.
Another tradition involves the kidnapping of class leaders, which at times can have five consequences. Take last year for example, when two freshmen were whisked off to Alexandria, Virginia.
Columbia has a sort of counterpart to Radcliffe in Barnard College. Unlike Radcliffe, however, it maintains a separate faculty and a pretty thorough independence from its big brother. Barnard was named in honor of Columbia President Frederick A. P. Barnard, who, until his death in 1889, unsuccessfuly attempted to introduce coeducation or "joint instruction."
When in 1900, Barnard College was opened, it was declared the undergraduate college for women of Columbia University.
Columbia has consistently maintained a reputation for academic excellence. Unfortunately, it is set in big New York, whose noise and squalor are only partially compensated for by cultural wealth. But even if Columbia misses the Ivy atmosphere, it certainly is not lacking the Ivy intelelct