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Decision Update: Please Read Carefully

Posted by Columbia SIPA

· Friday, March 5th, 2010

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As the title of this entry indicates, I hope you will read this message carefully as I explain where we are in the application review process. My goal is to answer questions you might have, assuage any fears, and give you the detailed information you need regarding the release of decisions.

First, as I have stated before on the blog, we do not publish all of our admission decisions on a single day. The structure of our Committee and the coordination involved causes us to spend more time on some applications than others. How long it takes to review a file is largely dependent upon scheduling and coordination among the Committee members and it should not be a cause of concern if you have to wait longer than some other individuals to receive a decision.

I know this is easy for me to say since I am not the one waiting to receive a decision, however because of the coordination required, neither I nor my staff can tell you the exact date when you will receive your decision. Our goal is to release decisions as soon as possible, but if you email or call with this question, our answer will be that we are working as quickly as we are able and you will be notified by email once a decision has been posted.

I am happy to share that the Committee has finalized decisions for approximately 40% of those in the applicant pool. A group of those decisions was posted late Thursday and another group will be posted today (March 5^th). When a decision has been posted an email will be sent to the address you listed when filling out the application.

The process of releasing decisions can be described as “rolling” in the sense that as decisions are finalized and approved by the Committee, we will post them and send out email notifications. As hard as it is to wait, we kindly ask for your patience as we work as quickly as we are able.

If your admission decision is favorable, I ask that you pay special attention to the Welcome Page that is referenced in the admission letter. Admitted applicants are likely to have many, many questions and the purpose of the Welcome Page is to provide answers.

The Welcome Page contains information on a variety of topics including, but not limited to: housing, Admitted Student Day, Orientation, visa processing for international students, and our summer math tutorial.

Thank you for your attention and we look forward to rolling decisions out as they are finalized.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips

Tags : Admitted Students Day, Application, application tips, decision, housing

Status Report

Posted by Columbia SIPA

· Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

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This is an update on where we are in the process of completing fall 2010 applications for review. This picture shows how busy our printer has been in the past few days. It has basically been going nonstop as we have printed several thousand applications that can range from 10-20 pages each. And this picture only shows the applications printed, not the thousands of letters of recommendation we have received as well.

pilesfiles

The process of manually reviewing files and matching them to letters of recommendation (which live in a separate module of the same system) moves a little faster for applicants that chose to submit everything on line. If documents have been mailed (or letters of recommendation for that matter) the process takes a while longer because we must search for the documents missed during our print cycles.

In rare cases we are unable to read the transcripts uploaded to the site and for me I would say this represents only 5% of the applications I have reviewed so far. If we are unable to read a document we will contact you. As a reminder, if you uploaded your test scores and/or transcript(s) and they are showing as not received this is normal. There is no need to email us concerning receipt. We manually check to make sure the information was submitted and and then will check it off as “Received – Not Official.”

As a reminder, when we complete your file for review you will receive an email from our office. In the meantime, we ask for your patience as we work as quickly as we can. There is really no reason to worry, if there is an issue we will contact you.

As stated in previous entries, it can take us up to 10-15 days to go through the process of completing files. When a file is completed has no bearing upon an admission decision. As of today we have completed about 30% of the applications submitted and the more time we spend, the faster things move along. Phone calls and emails have also started to subside which will help us to move more quickly.

I hope this window into our world helps you to understand the processing in our office.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips

Tags : Application, application tips

Now What?

Posted by Columbia SIPA

· Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

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So you have submitted your application and you are patiently waiting for us to match documents to your application and manually confirm that everything has been received – remember, this can take up to 10-15 business and we will reach out to you if we need additional information. You will receive an email when your application has been sent to the Committee.

As much as I can understand the desire to contact our office and request confirmation of individual documents, we ask that you please resist this temptation. We have a process set up and things move much faster if we stick to our system. If we believe applicants have made a good faith effort to submit documents by the deadline and there is a hang up of some sort, we will work with you.

So the question you may be asking yourself is, “Now what?”

The answer for most of you is to not just wait – there is more to do if you want to increase your chances of making your goal of attending SIPA a reality. More on that in a bit but first some notes on our time line.

We will have our first batches of admission files ready for distribution to the Admissions Committee in the third week of January. It takes four to eight weeks for a file to run through the review process. Our goal is to have the majority of our decisions made and available on the application Web site by early March.

About 80% of our admission decisions are posted to the application Web site on a single day. Can I target the specific day? No, but if you stay tuned to this blog I will provide updates. We do not post decisions as they are made and we do not want to wait until all decisions are made to send out notifications. Approximately 20-25% of applicants selected for admission will be set aside for the SIPA Fellowship Committee to review. This takes an additional one to two weeks so some applicants may have to wait an additional period of time for a decision. Decisions are made know to applicants on the application site. You will receive an email from us when your decision is ready to view.

Applicants who are admitted will have the opportunity to participate in an online message board in order to interact with current students and we will host an Open House for admitted applicants on Tuesday, April 13th.

A concern for most of our applicants is how to pay for all of the costs associated with attending graduate school. Tuition, housing, food, travel, books, and all of the associated costs for a two year program can be well over $100,000.

Some applicants have already obtained funding commitments through government agencies, private foundations, and other scholarship programs. If you have not obtained funding it is certainly not too late to start looking and my highest recommendation is that you make the process of searching for funding a part of your weekly routine.

The more time you spend looking, the more you increase your chances of obtaining funding that does not need to be repaid. While it is not a perfect analogy, think about retirement. When is the best time to start saving for retirement? The answer is . . . as soon as possible. It is not wise to wait until late in your life to start saving for retirement.

Similarly, the time to start searching for graduate school funding is as soon as possible. That means if you have not already incorporated scholarship research into your routine you should start today. Just like you may plan time to go to the gym or watch your favorite T.V. show, you should set time aside on consistent basis to look for funding opportunities and fill out applications.

The Internet is certainly the easiest way to get started. Search engine queries and RSS feeds should be at the top of your list. If you do not know what an RSS feed is, see this previous entry. We have our own RSS enabled, searchable scholarship database to assist you as well – click here to access it.

You can also network. Talk to people who have gone to graduate school, former professors, and to work colleagues. If you are U.S. citizen become familiar with federal aid options as well as options available through your state of residence. If you are an international student you can start researching opportunities here. General search engine queries will reveal sites such as these: Gradview and Education Database.

I know it might be easy to simply sit back and await an admission decision in March, but if you are interested in increase your chances of obtaining funding that does not need to be repaid, the time to start looking is now.

Finally, please do yourself a favor and print this diagram and place it somewhere where you can see it on a daily basis. The bottom of the diagram shows that you should be at step 3 and you can review steps 4 and 5 to know what to expect.

On the top, steps A-G are meant to help provide you with information that will help increase your chances of making attending SIPA a reality. A thumbnail photo of diagram is below, but click here for the full diagram.

ScreenShot355

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips

Tags : Application, application tips, deadline, decision

A Busy Day . . .

Posted by Columbia SIPA

· Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

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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.

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips

Tags : Application, application tips, deadline, processing

The Latest News . . .

Posted by Columbia SIPA

· Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

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I want to provide a quick update on a few things based on my work in the office the past few days. I have been doing a bit of everything related to processing applications. Here are a few personal notes on some of the tasks, under the theme, “I am always amazed . . . “

. . . at how dry my hands get when opening mail (and we get a lot).

. . . at how extremely hot printer parts get. Note to self: When you are printing thousands of application documents and there is a paper jam, do not just randomly grab metal parts . . . touch them first to determine if they are white hot.

. . . at how quickly our email in box fills up. We get it close to zero, step away for a few minutes, and upon returning it is once again filled with messages.

. . . at how many countries and schools are represented in our applicant pool each year. Last year we received transcripts from close to 900 different colleges and universities from over 100 countries.

Now to some information that really is important to you.

First, I cannot emphasize enough that it is not important for an application to be marked as complete in our system the day after the deadline. What is extremely important is that all of the required information is received in our office or uploaded to the server by the deadline. Thus, it is completely normal for an application record to remain incomplete for two to three weeks after the deadline. We have several thousand printed documents and mail to get through and Admission Committee meetings do not start until late January.

Please do not let the fact that it will take us time to match and track everything concern you. The date an application is completed in our office has no bearing upon an admission decision. When your file has been forwarded to the Committee, you will receive an email from our office.

Second, please remember that when you submit Part 2, transcripts and test scores are not automatically marked as received. The personal statement and résumés are tracked as received immediately because we rarely have problems with the submission of these documents. But as far as the transcripts and test scores, we need to make sure that the correct information is entered and legible. Thus we will perform a manual check and then code them into the system as appropriate.

Third, as much as we would like to respond to individual requests concerning the receipt of documents, this does not allow us to work efficiently and quickly. Each person in the office has a job and we are set up as a sort of assembly line. If one person in the system tries to go around the process and look for a specific document, it slows the process down and complicates matters. As much as I can understand emailing or calling to ask for the status of a specific document, we would much rather you wait to hear from us.

I know the stress that accompanies admission deadlines. As someone with a graduate degree I have been through the process as an applicant, and as an administrator I have been through close to fifteen years of deadlines. We strive to provide the best service possible and by far the best thing you can do is follow this blog for updates on the process.

Rest assured that if we encounter a situation where a document is missing, we will work with applicants if we believe a good faith effort was made to supply the necessary document by our deadline date. There is no need to send a document a second time to us unless we reach out to you first (we will do so by email if necessary).

Thank you again for your attention . . . it is now time for me to find some hand lotion . . .

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Categories : Admissions, Application Tips

Tags : Application, application tips, deadline, document