Organizing your schedule, core and major requirements, GPA, credits, and the classes you want to take has now been made ridiculously easy!

College academics can have you feeling very lost. At Columbia, it’s often up to the student themself to devise a way to keep track of the classes they’re taking, their GPA, major requirements, and core requirements. With so much on all of our plates, figuring out the most user-friendly way to track our academic progress isn’t always the top priority. 

Luckily, Bwog has created a Columbia University & Barnard College Degree Plan Template for you to use. This template was originally developed by Isabella Dinatale (BC ’25), the great Barnard Orientation Leader who supplied her group with the preliminary version of this sheet. I’ve added changes to her template in order to include Columbia College, SEAS, and General Studies requirements as well. 

Below you can read a guide of the different tabs in this spreadsheet. 

  1. Yearly Schedules 

Here, you can compile a list of your classes for all four years. It’s pretty self-explanatory and involves a box that calculates the amount of credits you have at the bottom. 

Yearly Schedules tab

  1. Core Curriculum Tabs

Next, you’ll see four tabs corresponding to the core curriculum requirements for each of the four undergraduate colleges. In the Taken? Column, you can fill the boxes with green, yellow, and red shading to mark your progress. For the CC and GS Foreign Language heading and SEAS Calculus heading, you may have to add or subtract boxes depending on how many classes you have to take. Also, if you have a class that fulfills more than one of the core requirements, you can just list it twice in the sheet. 

Columbia College Core Curriculum Requirements
SEAS Core Curriculum Requirements
General Studies Core Curriculum Requirements
Barnard Foundations Requirements

  1. Major Requirements

This tab requires the most editing on your part. The sample template corresponds with the requirements of the Barnard Psychology major. Thus, you’ll have to change it according to your major. You can also add additional tabs as needed for extra majors, minors, or concentrations as needed. 

Major Requirements Template

  1. Classes I’m Interested In

Here, you can list all the classes you’ve considered taking. In addition to personally researching classes on the Columbia Directory of Classes and CULPA, I tend to make note of when someone tells me they’ve taken an amazing or terrible class (as well as had an amazing or terrible professor). 

“Classes I’m interested in” template

  1. Theoretical Yearly Schedules

This tab is the same as the Yearly Schedules tab, except its purpose is to experiment. While the Yearly Schedules tab is to be used for classes you’re actually taking, the Theoretical Yearly Schedules tab gives you a chance to plan out your four years. This way you’ll be far more prepared in terms of keeping track of your courses for the core and your major, as well as mapping out potential semesters to study abroad. 

Another quick note is that this template doesn’t include information about summer classes. If you’ve taken (or want to take) summer classes, it should be super easy to add them to your Yearly Schedules tabs. Happy planning! 

Template Screenshot via Emma Burris