Archive for Application Tips – Page 52

Business As Usual . . . and then Some

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Monday, January 10th, 2011 
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, roughly 50% of the applications we receive each year are submitted within 72 hours of the deadline.  This year was no different, in fact the percentage was a bit higher than normal.  63% of you applying for fall 2011 consideration submitted your application within 72 hours of the deadline.

Regarding letters of recommendation, 28% of the writers submitted their letters in the 72 hours preceding the deadline.

Our printer is running really hot and my fingers are already starting to dry out from handling the batches of paper.  We are in for a few long weeks of processing and look forward to getting the files out for reading near the end of January.

For updates on when decisions will be posted (they will not all be posted at the same time by the way) and a host of other matters, stayed tuned to this blog.

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Categories : Application Tips
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Financial Planning – Now, Not Later

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Friday, January 7th, 2011 
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I know what you are thinking . . . the January 5th admission deadline has passed, now I can kick my feet up and wait for my admission decision in March.  While this might be one possible option, it is not the option I recommend.

It is no secret, attending graduate school can be expensive.  The time to look into financing your education is not after you get an offer of admission, it is now.  It is a terrible feeling to get an offer of admission and only then realize you might not be able to attend due to financing.

My advice is that if you have not started already, that you set aside time each week to research issues related to the cost of graduate school and the payment options available.

There are many kinds of aid available including:

  • Institutional funding provided by SIPA
  • External Scholarships (i.e. Fulbright, Pickering)
  • Federal Loans (for U.S. citizens and permanent residents)
  • Private Loans
  • Work Study
  • Grants
  • Sponsorship funds from agencies/organizations

Most SIPA students utilize a combination of resources to make attending possible.  Each year students bring in several million dollars of funding that does not need to be repaid by researching and applying for funding.  My feeling has always been that applicants should spend twice the amount of time researching financial aid as is spent on the process of applying for admission.  I covered this topic in a past post entitled The Rule of Two.

I highly encourage you to review the entry but the analogy used is one that you might have heard before from a teacher.  It is not uncommon to hear a teacher say that for every hour spent in the classroom, at a minimum a successful student will spend two hours outside of the classroom.

My feeling about admission and financial aid is the same. At a minimum, one should spend twice as much time researching financial aid options as researching admission to a program.  While SIPA does allocate around $6 million each year on fellowships for students, a limited number of first year students receive funding (around 10-15%).

With this in mind, it will benefit you to research costs and other sources of funding so that if admitted you have a plan.  Not having a plan and not having done research is a strategy that most often leads to frustration.  Here are some tips to get you started:

• Check out SIPA’s own fellowship database. We search for scholarships for you and post them to the database.  The database is not SIPA specific.  As we search for and hear about funding, we make the information available to you.

• Use RSS technology to deliver news to your email account or RSS Reader.  RSS allows for news to be delivered to you without having to go look for it every day.  As an example, Gmail accounts have something called the “Alert” tool and I am sure other providers have the same capability.  All you have to do is put in text for searches and a search engine will perform the searches daily and deliver news to your email account.  You can type in search terms like “Graduate School Scholarships” or “International Affairs Scholarships.”  You can also utilize an RSS reader.  RSS readers are free and if you do not know what an RSS reader is, click here for a YouTube tutorial.

• Talk to people you know who have gone to graduate school and find out if they were able to find scholarship opportunities.

• Contact people that have written you a letter of recommendation and have them make multiple copies of the recommendation letter and give them to you in sealed envelops so you are ready if a scholarship opportunity arises and there is a tight deadline.

• Start to familiarize yourself with the cost of living in New York City.  SIPA is only able to provide housing for approximately 30% of our students and most students must find housing the city.  A great resource to get started is Craigslist.  I recommend signing up for an email feed for NYC apartments.  Following rental trends will help familiarize you with costs around the city.

• Familiarize yourself with the payment and billing options available to SIPA students.  You can get started by visiting the Columbia University Student Financial Services home page.

I will not say the process of searching for funding and familiarizing yourself with costs is easy and it can take a considerable amount of effort.  However, the sooner you start to look the more doors you will possibly open – figuratively and literally.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips, Paying for SIPA
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After D-Day

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Thursday, January 6th, 2011 
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Just a few highlights and things to consider on this day after the deadline day for our two-year, full-time programs . . .

First, as a reminder, the default status for some information on the application (i.e. test scores and transcripts) is “Not received.”  Even if you uploaded the correct documents and input the correct information it may read “Not Received.” This is normal.  We manually review each application to check for accuracy and readability so do not let this status shock you if you log into the system.

Second, if the PDF you view does not seem to match what you entered, do not panic.  As long as the information you entered was correct it will display correctly on the PDF we print in our office.  We use a different PDF and there are some bugs in the applicant preview PDF that we have not been able to correct.

Third, I completed the review of my first batch of applications and 43% of those I reviewed had submitted everything online and I was able to read everything (i.e. no blurry transcripts).  This is great because we can now file these applications and they can patiently await being assigned to Committee members for reading.  Individuals with a completed file will also receive an email from us within 48 hours letting them know the application is complete.  48 hours is our standard window from changing a status in the system and generating an email to an applicant.

As a reminder, reading will not begin for approximately three more weeks.  Thus do not panic because you have not received a completion email from us, at this point in time less than 10% of applicants have received a completion email and this is normal.  In the 24 hours prior to the deadline last year we received well over 1,000 applications.  It will take us several days just to print the applications, let alone review them for completion.  Thus it might be up to three weeks until you receive a completion email.

What of the 57% of my batch that were incomplete?  Well, we set them aside and continue to work through the batches as quickly as we are able.  Those in the 57% category likely submitted documents via postal mail.  It is much faster for us to sit at our desks and work through batches quickly than run around the office looking for matching documents.

Why wait to start our search?  Well at this point in time we would rather not go looking for something and come up empty handed.  If a letter of recommendation was mailed, it may be sitting in huge stack of mail that has not been opened right now.  It is not a productive use of our time to start looking for documents until we are caught up on our mail and we will not be caught up for a while because we received a lot of mail in the past few days.

Now that the deadline has passed we ask for your patience.  You are welcome to follow the tracking of your application online yourself, full instructions are here.  Unfortunately we cannot respond to emails about the receipt of individual documents because we have a great deal of unopened mail and hundreds of applications that have not even been printed yet.

I guess that will be my final note in this entry.  It is going to take us at least a week to print everything so if you log in and your application has not been printed, do not panic, trust that we are working as quickly as we are able.

Thank you for your patience and continue to follow the blog for updates.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips
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Visualization

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 
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I want to continue to provide applicants with an idea of how our process works in the hope that it will allow for relaxation to take place as we work as quickly as we can to complete files so that they may be forwarded to the Admissions Committee for review.

Please read this paragraph slowly – it is rare that an application is marked as complete by the deadline.  We receive several thousand applications in a matter of days and it takes us several weeks to review applications for completion.  It is best to wait to hear from us – if we need something we will let you know.

In an effort to provide a bit of insight into the enormity of the work involved in processing applications, I offer the following picture:

Starting with the rear of the picture near the IFEP bin, 7 stacks of paper are visible.  We call these stacks “batches” and each batch consists of applications that have been printed (in the picture the batches are in various stages of completion). Batches typically range from 100 to 300 pieces of paper and each piece of paper has information on both sides.  Each piece of paper will be manually reviewed to check for completion and to make sure the information submitted is readable (sometimes transcripts come out blurry for example).

A person in our office will take a batch and start to work through it – remember there can be up to 600 pages of information in one batch and we will print a few hundred batches by the time the process is complete.  Think about the time involved in simply flipping through 600 pages of information, let alone reviewing each piece for accuracy and completion.  Our hope is that every document we require was submitted online because if so, we can complete a file more rapidly.

If when going through a batch a document is missing, we then have to begin the matching process.  This involves going through mail that has been sorted into filing cabinets.  In the picture, you can also see a stack of mail in front of the first batch. As you might imagine, it takes a bit of time to work through batches and to complete the review, matching, and tracking process.  And to be honest, if a piece is missing we will typically set the file aside to work on later and continue working through the batch because we can move faster this way.

My hope is that by explaining this is twofold.  First, I hope applicants will realize how difficult it is to respond to inquiries regarding receipt of individual documents.  We know the stress associated with applying but encourage you to trust our process and wait to hear form us once you have submitted your application.  With several hundred batches and mail in various stages of processing, it is next to impossible to respond to a request about the receipt of a particular document.

Second, with hundreds of batches to work though, it can take us several weeks to complete a file.  Do remember that when a file reaches completion is not a huge concern.  Because of the way our Committee structure is set up we will not start to distribute files for reading until about three weeks after the deadline has passed.

Rest assured that we will work as quickly as we are able to get through all of our batches, and if we need additional information or clarification we will email you.  Also, when a file becomes complete we send out an email.  If you wish to review how you can track your application online, please see our Tracking and Communication entry from last week.

Thank you and Happy New Year!

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips
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Email

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 
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Along with processing applications a major job these days is answering email.  Email is actually our preferred method of communication because it offers us a digital trail to follow.  While you might be tempted to call, and calling is okay, in the long run an email might be more effective when you have questions regarding your application.

In addition to providing us, and you for that matter, with a traceable communication chain, we can answer emails at all hours of the day and you do not have to wait for us to get back to you via voice mail.  We certainly check our voice mail and respond as quickly as we are able, however on the efficiency scale voice mail is far below email.

Let us say you call and leave a voice mail.  Let us also say that our phone is ringing non-stop.  What this means is that we will answer the phone as quickly as we are able and we will likely not check voice mail until after or before business hours.  This means that if you call and get voice mail, you are likely to receive a delayed response due to the fact that is impossible to keep up with voice mail when the phone is ringing all of the time.

Unlike the phone, our email box is always open and ready for your message.  Many people in the office can view the same box and it is much more efficient for us to deal with.  Those of you that have emailed us know that we have an auto-response that indicates we will try to respond within five days.  Our goal is to respond must faster than five days, especially during the time around the application deadline.

On this topic, the University I.T. department scheduled maintenance on the email servers for January 3rd.  The message to us stated that systems updates, hardware repairs, and general maintenance would leave email unavailable for extended periods of time on January 3rd.

I am sure it seemed like a good time for the I.T. Department because of the holiday break, but it was not the best time for our office considering the deadline is almost upon us.  So if our response has been delayed we apologize.  We will keep checking for email availability and answer questions as soon as possible.

One more side note – please resist the urge to copy multiple parties on the same email (this is often called “CCing”).  Please only send emails to one address.  Copying multiple parties on the same email can lead to confusion and slower processing time.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips, SIPA
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—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs

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