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<p>If you go to Berkeley any day of the week (or weekend), you are going to find the campus and Sproul Plaza full of students and others. All of the areas near campus are constantly full of activity. There will always be students & other people making some noise (like playing music, or sermonizing or making speeches or canvassing). The city of Berkeley itself is very much a college town, and the Berkeley campus is a cultural center for the area - with Zellerbach Auditorium, the art museum, etc. drawing patrons from all over. There isn’t a time of day or night that the activity stops, and your life at Berkeley is going to be centered around the campus. The campus also is fairly large, with lots of open space & hiking areas in the Strawberry Canyon area in the hills above the main campus. </p>
<p>Columbia/Barnard have plenty of cultural activities of their own, but definitely not the cultural center of the town --and while the streets around campus also are filled with restaurants and cafes that are open at all hours, it is not student dominated. I have found the campuses to be relatively quiet in the evening – and even during the day when I may see many students sitting on the steps at Low Library, they are talking quietly or studying. There is plenty going on, but it is not the constant hubbub of activity that Berkeley is. </p>
<p>The city is a different story: NYC is everything you expect it to be. Berkeley is a somewhat laid back, quiet town, with not much going on other than a smattering of restaurants. Some nice parks, definitely a kid & dog friendly community – but not a major urban center. </p>
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Columbia and Barnard students have CUID’s – an ID card with a magnetic strip that provides entry to campus buildings. Barnard CUID’s give entry into all Barnard dorms, but not Columbia; Columbia CUID’s give entry into all Columbia dorms, but not Barnard. As a first year student at Barnard, you’d live on the quad and all those dorms are connected anyway – between the dorms and the underground passage you could probably manage to go to class and come home most days without ever going outdoors (convenient on cold winter days). But if you go to visit a Columbia friend in their dorm, you wouldn’t be able to just swipe into the building and go up the elevator – in theory you would have to call your friend and he or she would have to come downstairs to meet you. (I say “in theory” because while I don’t have direct experience, in practice in most places the way that you get inside a building with a security door if you don’t have access is to follow behind someone who does – and my guess is that you are far more likely to be entering together with your Columbia friend than stopping by at random times for a visit). Even if I am mistaken, I personally don’t see a problem with the idea that access to some buildings is restricted that way – after all, in real life you don’t just go barging into the houses of your friends when you visit. You ring the doorbell or hit a buzzer and wait for someone to let you in – so I don’t particularly see why it would be much of an issue on a college campus.</p>