The committee meets yearly to monitor progress towards completion of thesis research. The typical time interval between entry into the program and receipt of the Ph.D. is five to six years, but it may be as short as three or four years for students with advanced academic standing. Go to Lincoln Center for the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, or chamber music at Alice Tully Hall, or opera at the Metropolitain. Discount tickets are available for many performances, or wait until summer, when the same programs come free to the city parks. Almost any film you might want to see, from the past or the present, is playing somewhere in the city this month.
Serious eating is also a part of the city's culture.
The city is a large delicatessen, with sections for each of the world's cuisines. Just south of campus there is good shopping and nightlife and a concentration of cheap and excellent restaurants. The campus on Morningside Heights is located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan Island. Virtually all students and most faculty live in the neighborhood, within easy walking distance of the campus. The campus itself is spacious and still quite faithful to the original design, now almost one hundred years old, but the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White.