In observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, our offices will be closing early on Friday, January 18th at 3pm. We will also be closed on Monday, January 21.
Archive for January 2013 – Page 2
In order for your application to be considered “complete” and ready for review, we must receive all the required documents, which include your resumes, recommendation letters, and transcripts. We prefer documents be uploaded through the online application. However, we have received a number of inquiries on what to do if you have trouble uploading these documents to your online application. If the advice you received from the application technical support team (presuming you contacted them) was insufficient and you continue to have problems uploading your documents; you may email the documents to us ([email protected]) as an attachment.
If you need to mail us documents; it is preferred that they be mailed together to expedite the process. But we understand that it may be easier to just mail documents individually (such as recommendation letters) too. Regardless, if you mail us a big packet or a small envelope, please have it sent to:
Columbia University – SIPA Office of Admissions and Financial Aid420 West 118th Street, 4th Floor
Mail Code 3325
408 International Affairs Building
New York, NY 10027 USA
All documents must be in English or accompanied by certified translations. Please make sure these documents arrive to us by the application deadline, February 5th, in order for your application to be considered complete. Please also note that this is our heaviest processing period so it can take up to two to three weeks to process information that was sent by mail.
You may track the receipt of your documents online (by logging into your online application) without having to call or email our office.
We are still busy processing (i.e. matching hard copy and soft copy materials) the applications that were submitted by the first MIA/MPA application deadline…. and since our deadline this year was moved to February 5th, the processing will not stop for weeks to come.
Each year we think of new ways to motivate the troops (besides the promise of bringing in a great class at the end, and all the jolly ranchers and mint candies you can eat); we think of other ways to stay motivated especially when we are greeted at the door with stacks of applications to process in the morning. This year one of our PA’s came up with the SMILEY. It keeps track of our daily completion processing goals. Cute eh?
You may be wondering who is applying to SIPA this year. With a few weeks left before our final application deadline, here is a snippet of who submitted an application to the SIPA MIA/MPA program by the first deadline…
Approximately 55% of you indicated you are a citizen of a country other than the United States –over 90 countries are currently represented in the applicant pool (the most coming from China, India, South Korea, Japan and Mexico). Thirty-two percent of U.S. citizens identified themselves (those who reported this information) as not white/Caucasian. And of all the applicants who submitted by January 7th, 62% are women.
First apologies to all the recommenders who experienced trouble submitting a reference letter on your behalf. Our application system allows little flexibility to bypass its requirements and thus has created headaches for some. Hopefully, next year it will be better but for now, it’s what we must endure.
For security purposes, it requires that once the system is initially accessed using the information provided, it will prompt the recommender to create an entirely NEW password in order to enter the system. This is (clearly) not a very intuitive method and unfortunately we have little control over this. If the recommender uses the original password, s/he will not be able to access the recommendation form. Also, we recommend using Internet Explorer as the browser; for whatever reason there are less access issues when using IE.
If you or your recommender is unable to receive the technical support needed to get through the system, then please have the reference sent as an email attachment to [email protected]. We will update the applicant’s file once it’s received and processed.
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your participation during this process!
"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
