Before you hear from Eloy, we wanted to remind you that SIPA’s Office of Admissions will have a skeleton crew for Admitted Students’ Day on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. (So you should only stop by if you’ve registered to attend a class and need to check in.)
I couldn’t make it to my own Admitted Students’ Day, as I was working in Brazil at the time. But as soon as I got to SIPA, I made sure to volunteer for the following one, and see what it looked like. And it’s just amazing!
It is a full-day event where students can meet with their future classmates (including other admits and current students) and chat about anything they want. It doesn’t matter how many blog posts or reviews you find on the Internet because there is nothing like meeting someone in person and seeing their excitement while talking about what they love at SIPA. Also, there is nothing like getting to know Columbia and taking some minutes to sit on Low Library steps and feel the sunlight while surrounded amongst other students.
At ASD last year, I started by welcoming students as they checked in that morning. I also joined admitted students and faculty over lunch while University Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, was sharing his view about the current state of the world. I’ll never forget how cool it felt to share the table with future colleagues and with Professor Akbar Noman and Professor Jose Ocampo (former Minister of Finance of Colombia and Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs at the UN). AND I had a table right in front!
If you are curious, check out Stiglitz’s talk below.
After lunch, I shared my favorite places at Columbia with a small group of admitted students while I took them on a tour around campus. We finished our tour just in time for the concentration and specialization lectures that afternoon.
At the end of the day, I joined everybody for the alumni panel and a nice evening reception on the 15 floor (aka the best view in Columbia) and we were able to talk a little bit more about SIPA life.
It was a fun day for me, but I bet it was way better for the admitted students. So it was no surprise to see a lot of people I met at the ASD coming for their first day of grad school a couple of months later. One of them even came to tell me I was the first person to greet him on ASD and that he was really happy to join SIPA!
Don’t miss the chance to have this first-hand experience at SIPA and Columbia! See you all tomorrow at ASD!
P.S. For those of you who can’t make it, you can watch the livestream here: https://sipa.columbia.edu/experience-sipa/news/sipa-live
