I know that the location of a graduate school is an item on the minds of those applying, but I wanted to offer a bit of perspective. Many applicants for example might think that if they want to get a job at the United Nations, SIPA would be the best choice because the U.N. and SIPA are both in New York City.
While it is true that SIPA and U.N. are both in NYC and that many SIPA students do take advantage of this, it is also true that many of those who hold positions at the U.N. hold degrees from schools located outside of New York City.
Why am I bringing this up? Well it came to my mind when I received this email from our Career Services Office recently:
Stay Connected with Columbia During Your Summer in Washington, D.C.
Columbia’s Office of Government and Community Affairs will sponsor several events for Columbia students spending the summer break in Washington DC. In addition, they will maintain a listserv to help get the word out about these and other events and opportunities of interest.
An interesting item of note is that Washington, D.C. ranks second in terms of cities with the most SIPA alumni. It is probably not surprising that NYC is ranked first. Just like it is possible for students that graduate from schools outside of NYC to work at the U.N. (or any of the multitude of organizations in NYC) it is possible, and actually highly likely, that many of our graduates will work in Washington, D.C.
Last summer when I finished a recruiting event being held in D.C. I randomly ran into three current SIPA students that were doing internships in D.C. and two students that have worked in my office this year are both moving to D.C. shortly to start working full time.
D.C. is just one example of course, we have over 16,000 graduates living in over 150 countries across the globe. But as I stated in my pro-con entry a while back, NYC is a great place to spend two years of your life. I will warn you though, you might end up addicted to NYC like me.
