[45] Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City as a junior, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations[46] and in English literature[47] and lived off-campus on West 109th Street.[48] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 and a 3.7 GPA. After graduating, Obama worked for about a year at the Business International Corporation, where he was a financial researcher and writer,[49][50] then as a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group on the City College of New York campus for three months in 1985.[51][52][53]

Community organizer and Harvard Law School
Two years after graduating from Columbia, Obama moved from New York to Chicago when he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.[52][54] He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.