Photo: MPphotography2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
School data & stats
Outcomes
Cost
Community
Overview
The City College of New York is the founding campus of the CUNY system, educating generations of New Yorkers in Harlem since 1847 and historically nicknamed a ladder of opportunity for the city's immigrant and working-class students. Its Gothic Revival campus, built largely from Manhattan schist quarried on site, stands out visually against the surrounding Harlem streetscape, and the school carries a long and genuinely remarkable record of alumni who went on to win Nobel Prizes.
Academics
Engineering and architecture are longstanding strengths, taught through the Grove School of Engineering and the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, both respected well beyond CUNY. The Sophie Davis biomedical program, now part of the CUNY School of Medicine, offers a structured, accelerated path toward medical careers for students who commit to it from the start. The sciences generally are well regarded, and the academic culture rewards students who arrive motivated and self-directed, typical of a demanding, commuter-heavy public urban campus.
Campus & student life
Most students commute from across New York City, so residential dorm culture is less central than at a traditional four-year college; social life is organized more around clubs, cultural and affinity organizations, and the surrounding Harlem neighborhood. The historic Gothic campus, including the landmark Great Hall in Shepard Hall, a historic auditorium and gathering space, is a genuine point of pride and visual identity unusual among public urban campuses.
Getting in
As part of CUNY, admission emphasizes academic record and is considerably less essay-driven and holistic than at private research universities, though selective programs like the Sophie Davis pipeline and the engineering and architecture schools carry their own additional application requirements, sometimes including a separate application track applied for alongside general CUNY admission.
After graduation
Engineering, architecture, and science graduates move into New York's technical, design, and healthcare sectors in large numbers, and the Sophie Davis pipeline sends a meaningful share of its students on to medical school. The alumni network includes a striking concentration of scientists, including several Nobel laureates, relative to the school's public commuter-campus profile.
Worth knowing
The Sophie Davis/CUNY School of Medicine pathway is a distinctive, structured route into medicine worth knowing about specifically for a student set on that career from high school, since it changes the whole shape of the undergraduate years toward that goal.
Admissions
Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)
Applying
ccny.cuny.edu ↗High school coursework
Recommended4 years of English (composition and literature) · 3 years of math (algebra, geometry, trigonometry; 4th year preferred) · 3 years of social studies (4th year preferred) · 2 years of a laboratory science (3rd year preferred) · 2 years of a single foreign language · 1 year of visual or performing arts
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