It’s actually drastically different!
For one, yes, there are two “First Year” courses that every freshman will take - a college-writing course, and a seminar - however my daughter didn’t think of those being redundant at all, because there are “many different ways to skin a cat” (or, maybe “peel a potato” for the vegetarian readers 
), but she found it actually helpful to know up-front which way Columbia/Barnard wanted their papers written etc.
But Barnard’s “Foundations” (Foundations < Barnard College | Columbia University) are actually just thematic areas that one has to “touch upon” by taking any number of courses of one’s own choice; many will satisfy more than one area of “exploration”, and possibly even apply to your major/minor. While the web site might read like it’s a list of “required courses” - they are NOT.
Per example, my daughter satisfied her “Thinking Technologically and Digitally” by choosing a very applicable Computer Science class that developed an interactive experiment for a Psych lab. Typically you will find course offerings that are very much in line with your areas of interest (or related to a minor/major) that also happen to tangent one or two “foundations”.
In comparison, some colleges with a “core” curriculum mandate a rigid list of specific courses to be taken, possibly even specific pieces of literature to be studied - regardless of students’ interest in that particular course or this particular book.
Consequently, my daughter felt bad for her stressed-out Columbia College friends, majoring in Economics, who were stuck having to take THE “Music Humanities” class, while she was satisfying her “Courses in Sciences” and/or “Thinking Quantitatively and Empirically” by taking a fascinating class on planetary movements, observations and calculations.