Archive for January 2010 – Page 6

A Busy Day . . .

Today is sure to be a busy day.  Last year close to three hundred people submitted applications on the deadline day and close to 1,000 submitted applications in the five days leading up to the deadline.

My staff and I are committed to answering questions as quickly as we are able and as a reminder, email is the best way to reach us ([email protected]).  We left last night and the email account was caught up and upon turning on the computer this morning it was filled with messages again.  This is a good thing and do please use our email account if you have questions.

To me keeping our email box clean is almost like a video game, but instead of racking up points our goal is to get to zero – as in zero messages in our in box.  We will continue to do our best and appreciate your patience as we try to keep up.

If you have not, it would be a great idea to review the past 5 entries on this blog – they provide a great summary of the processing in our office and should put you at ease concerning submission and tracking of information.

As a reminder, it may be up to 10-15 days before we send you a message letting you know that your application has been completed for forwarding to the Admissions Committee.  This is normal and we just ask that you keep checking the application site and make sure the address [email protected] is added to your safe sender list.

We manually check each application and if we need any additional information we will contact you via email.  As much as we understand that applicants want immediate responses to questions about the receipt of documents, the massive volume we are dealing with right now does not allow us to perform searches for individual documents. We have a sort of assembly line set up and we are working as quickly as we can.

Thanks for your patience and we look forward to completing all of the applications submitted.

When is the Deadline?

One of the questions that has been burning up both our email and phone is, “When exactly is the deadline to submit my materials for the MIA, MPA, or MPA-DP program?”  The answer:

11:59:59 P.M on Tuesday, January 5th – Eastern Standard Time in the United States.

So at the stroke of midnight in NYC on January 5th, please have Parts 1 and 2 submitted.

Happy New Year!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year and provide a bit of insight into what faces our office on Monday after our office was closed for the holidays last Thursday and Friday.  As I type this it is late Sunday night and I just could not resist taking a peek at the Office Email Account.  Since we closed the office on Wednesday we have received close to 400 emails and although I did not check our voice mail box, it is a safe bet that it is full and needs to be cleaned out.

Upon returning to the office on Monday my staff and I will do our best to respond to all of the email and voice mail, and I am pretty sure our phone will ring constantly and we will be visited by every express mail courier known to man on Monday and Tuesday.  On top of all this, history shows that over 1/3 of applicants each year submit their application within 72 hours of the deadline and we will be printing thousands of pieces of paper in the coming week.

I am sharing all of this to give you an idea of the pace of activity in our office around the deadline and to provide some advice.  While we do take our deadline seriously, we also understand that there are sometimes extenuating circumstances and the crush of inquiries around the deadline does not always mean that we can respond right away.  Knowing this, we will work with applicants who we believe have made a good faith effort to submit their application and all of the associated documents by the deadline.

My number one piece of advice is that if you have a question or concern, please email [email protected].  We are able to respond to email in a much more efficient manner and it also provides a sort of paper trail for us to follow (I realize emails are not paper, it’s just an expression that old people like me who went to college when there was no Internet are attached to).  Emails are much easier to track and respond to than voice mail, we can answer email any time, not just during business hours, and you can send an email any time regardless of what time zone you are in or what continent you might be on.

We appreciate your patience and look forward to reviewing your application.  If in doubt about anything, make sure to submit Parts 1 and 2 of your application by the deadline (January 5th) and if you have concerns about anything please send us an email.

"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."

—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs

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