Specifically, does Columbia require transfer students to take its extensive core curriculum? In my day, the core curriculum was nearly two years’ worth of requirements, after which students could take elective courses. (I attended in the 1970s, and I think I got to take one non-required course in my freshman and sophomore years.) So if someone like Barack Obama transfers in, does that mean he must complete the core curriculum and therefore take virtually no elective courses? Or does Columbia allow free substitutions of courses (i.e., a bonehead English composition course for the somewhat more rigorous “Freshman Seminar” course, any history course for the brutal “Contemporary Civilization” course, both of which were required two-semester courses in my day, and nearly wiped me out.) These particular course requirements may have changed but Obama transferred in only a few years after I graduated, so I imagine they were still on the books in some form.
The current school catalog should have information on this. At least, the catalogs for the college and universities I attended did.
There’s probably not a blanket answer; I’m sure where you transfer from has some bearing on it. Took English 101 at an Ivy? You’ll probably get credit for the appropriate core course at Columbia. Took it at a JuCo or community college? They may give you credit for a college class but credit you with an elective instead of that core course.
I transferred from a good-named university; lost a whopping one credit - thought I was golden…until I realized later on that they used up my electives & I was then taking 3-4 courses in my major & all 5 in my college per semester if I wanted to graduate on time. It was a bitch of a workload. Admissions was like car salesmen; they touted all of the benefits (I only lost one credit); not the downsides of their decision. Bastoids!
And that’s why I graduated with 140 hours.
They would not be completely exempt from the core curriculum.
The Core is the cornerstone of undergraduate academic life at Columbia. Even those transferring in with advanced credit should expect to take elements of the Core, if not all of it. Students are very rarely exempt from Core classes like Literature Humanities, Contemporary Civilization, Art Humanities and Music Humanities.
Although it’s not clear to me why students are very rarely exempt from those courses - it could just be that transfer students have very rarely taken equivalent courses at a prior institution.
Obama went to Occidental College as an undergraduate. Occidental now has a partnership program with Columbia Law School. It may be that even back in Obama’s day, the two schools were more closely connected than a random East and West Coast pair.
At least among public universities, there’s been a lot of pressure in the last few years by state lawmakers to make credit transfer more efficient and transparent. The default has long been exactly what you experienced – they’ll take all of your transfer credit but apply very little of it to core or major requirements. And it’s nearly impossible to know beforehand what courses you should take at a 2-year and expect to count toward your degree at a 4-year.
A lot of the work is institution-to-institution – e.g. if you take a specific course sequence at Community College X it is guaranteed to transfer and apply toward degree requirements at University Y. But there’s also a lot of push to standardize across 2-years and 4-years how credits transfer.
Of course, none of this is relevant to Columbia as a private institution – they’re only bound by their own policies on accepting and applying credit.