48 Comments
Alma Has an LDAP Entry Too
Many of us are aware of the Columbia Directory, which gives that strange grad student you met at 1020 last night the ability to look up which undergraduate dorm room you live in or allows potential employers to find out that you’re not actually an anthroposophy major. What you might not realize is that this Columbia Directory, combined with another public LDAP directory, also maintained by Columbia, allows for a lot of information investigation.
If you log in and query Columbia’s LDAP directory, you can view a striking amount of information about yourself—for example, departmental affiliations, electronic permissions, all the classes you’ve ever taken, possibly the ID number encoded into your student card, and more. We’ve built a tool for you to check this out yourself:
Look Yourself Up
(this link and most of the rest in this post open in a fancy lightbox container)
But even without being logged in, there’s an awful lot of public information available. (Ever wonder how the ListServ hoodlums spammed the whole university?) We’ve decided to similarly look at everybody’s directory entry, but instead use it for your curiosity and compile a few goofy statistics. We’d also like to take this time to remind you now that it’s never too late to remove yourself from the directory.
Most Popular CC Majors (and most common names in that major)
- 1279 None
(most common name is Andrew) - 539 Economics
(most common name is Michael) - 331 Biological Sciences
(most common name is Sarah) - 305 Political Science
(most common name is Alexander) - 263 History
(most common name is Michael) - 213 English & Comparative Literature
(most common name is Rebecca) - 171 Psychology
(most common name is Megan) - 117 Anthropology
(most common name is Sarah) - 99 Philosophy
(most common name is Adam) - 99 Mathematics
(most common name is Alexander)
Most Popular First Names
- 886 Michael
- 783 David
- 616 John
- 542 Elizabeth
- 536 Daniel
- 528 Robert
- 527 Jennifer
- 455 Sarah
- 431 James
- 420 Matthew
Most Popular Positions
- 37613 Student
- 7540 Professor
- 2643 Assistant
- 2075 Fellow
- 1888 Scientist
- 1419 Coordinator
- 1387 Lecturer
- 1068 Director
- 955 Clinical
- 946 Retiree
Most Popular Schools
- 4338 Columbia College
- 4147 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
- 3064 School of Continuing Education
- 2656 Graduate School of Business
- 2047 School of General Studies
- 1859 School of Law
- 1618 Fu Foundatn Schl of Engineering & Applied Science:Grad
- 1414 Fu Foundatn Schl of Engineering & Applied Science:Ugrad
- 1405 School of International and Public Affairs
- 1195 College of Physicians and Surgeons: Medicine
Most Popular Email Domains
- 60203 columbia.edu
- 2539 barnard.edu
- 2432 gsb.columbia.edu
- 249 nyp.org
- 174 ldeo.columbia.edu
- 89 law.columbia.edu
- 82 london.columbia.edu
- 72 berkeley.columbia.edu
- 41 embagasia.com
- 36 mail.cumc.columbia.edu
Most Popular UNI Suffixes
- 1
- 2102
- 2103
- 2104
- 2101
- 2105
- 2106
- 2107
- 2108
- 2109
Other stats include most popular SEAS majors, precise position rank (as opposed to fuzzy, which simply collapses titles that match a Walt Whitman list), and bizarre UNIs. Columbia also publishes its own statistics. If you’re a data nerd and want to play with the stats and raw data yourself, here are some technical instructions. Let us know what you find in the comments.
Loading …
48 Comments
@Anonymous Why do I get this error when I try to do the LDAP search?
ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Local error (-2)
@Anonymous did you not follow the instructions to add the necessary line to your config file?
or did you not compile with openssl/gnutls/nss/whateverlib support?
@Anonymous Where’s Neuroscience? That major has been growing in popularity. Is it counting towards Bio or Psych totals?
@Anonymous Neuro is biological sciences along with bio and biochem
@question my info is withheld from the regular columbia directory, but not from this! how do i get myself removed from the more specific one?
@Anonymous You can’t.
But luckily you can only view it when logged in as yourself.
@I want to know who holds the title of “Able-bodied Seaperson”.
@Anonymous don’t forget about the ordinary seaperson.
@Anonymous it’s pretty awesome that columbia has a maritime division
cn: George G. Cereno
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Able-Bodied Seaperson
uni: ggc2111
cn: Gordon M Baxter
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades N
title: Able-Bodied Seaperson
uni: gmb2119
cn: Inocencio B Rimando
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Able-Bodied Seaperson
uni: ibr2107
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
cn: Jeromiel J. Webster
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Ordinary Seaperson
uni: jjw2144
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
cn: Leoncio R. Martires
postalAddress: Maritime Div LDEO$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Mail Code: 6
title: Ordinary Seaperson
uni: lrm2152
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
cn: Marcus B Nadler
postalAddress: Maritimr Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Ordinary Seaperson
uni: mbn2110
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
cn: Nicky R Applewhite
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Observation$Palisade NY 10964$
title: Ordinary Seaperson
uni: nra2107
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
cn: Petronio S Paragas
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Able-Bodied Seaperson
uni: psp2119
cn: Ricardo M Redito
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Able-bodied Seaperson
uni: rmr2143
cn: Salvador O Oboza
ou: Maritime Div Ldeo
postalAddress: Maritime Division$Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory$Palisades NY
title: Able-Bodied Seaperson
uni: soo2102
@... not only do they have a division:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/omo/langseth/langsethspecs.html
@Kenny Rogers Hey Bwog,
I dropped by earlier, but I couldn’t find what condition my condition was in. Can you fix this?
-Kenny
@hm Interestingly, 37613 students and 7540 professors is a pretty good ratio: about 5 students to each prof
@Curious What’s the major breakdown for SEAS?
@Anonymous I like the Britney Spears reference in the headline.
@"Sweet surprise, I could get used to, unusual you.”
I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE THAT SONG! Hahaha! Nice job picking up on that! ;-p
@is there some sort of meaning in our uni suffixes? why do so many people share them?
@tada http://www.wikicu.com/UNI
@more weird unis alpenwurst-symon
bregenwurst-nag
bregenwurst-nagios
mozartwurst-nag
pinklewurst-symon
weisswurst-nag
wienerwurst-nag
@Waxima Perez I can explain. These are my colleagues from the Food Studies Department, with whom I am working on the Masterpieces of Western Food pilot program, scheduled to be implemented as part of the Core Curriculum in August 2013. “wurst” is our code name. To learn more about the program, read here: http://culpa.info/professors/9989
@"look yourself up" how’d you know that that song from the big lebowski was stuck in my head?!
@anonymous this doesn’t list all the majors…
@Waldorf Graduate Steiner reference on Bwog!! Very cool.
@Jilted Religion Major No info on how many of us there are? It’s a small number, but I’d love to know.
@CC'13 there are 14 of us! the few the proud.
@yeah! yeah religion majors ftw!
chillin over in 80 claremont what what!!
-CC12 RELIGION
@Anonymous WOAH!
@Scott is such an Italian major name! They must have at least one Scott in the department.
@so is gianpaolo
@Wasn't working before but now, it’s fixed on Safari.
@lulz Cuits gonna love this
@Anonymous final remarks!!!!!!!!
@Anonymous woops…closing remarks.
@Yeah I’m an English major.
— Rebecca
@sick there are three people with just the first name “W.”
@Waxima Perez Lots of people decide to go by different names for lots of different reasons. My parents named me Waxima. It means ‘lavender blossom’ in our language, but I was teased so much in elementary school that I started going by ‘W’. When I got to college, some of my peers in Comparative Literature and French sneered at me for what they perceived to be an unapologetic homage to Georges Perec’s W, ou le souvenir d’enfance. I’m now a professor of Food Studies at Columbia (see http://culpa.info/professors/9989 to read about me), and to this day I still insist that my colleagues call me W. Don’t ask why a professor would be spending time on Bwog; I have my reasons.
@fishy i’m pretty sure you don’t actually exist
@Waxima Perez I eat, therefore I am.
@Rebecca is such an English major name
@Anonymous And megan is such a psych major name. XKCD anyone?
@Senior Math Major There are seriously 5 or 6 alex math majors in my year alone. It’s actually kinda creepy.
@Anonymous alex is a very common name…
@alum Umm, is that link safe? (i.e. submitting our UNI and password to a non-columbia.edu page?
@same thought I trust Bwog, but not unsecured websites when I’m on wifi in 209.
@Anonymous It uses JavaScript level RSA public key encryption, which is good enough to protect your passwords against people snooping wifi.
@if not Ask your CS friend to ssh in using the “technical instructions”
@BWOG?!?! did you just steal my info?! ur link is terrifying and not working.
@Anonymous Link fixed.
@Well... Whether or not it’s safe, BWOG is definitely breaking CUIT’s rules about collecting UNI’s by hosting that page.
My advice, go to columbia.edu and type your uni into the search box. The same stuff will show up in the left column but without the whole “bwog might be saving your password for later” mess.