Deadline Advice COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog

Deadline Advice COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog We are rapidly approaching the admission deadline (January 5th, 2009) for our two-year, full-time MIA and MPA programs and the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid is a flurry of activity.   As expected our phone is ringing, postal letters are arriving in massive quantities, and our email box is full us as soon as we clean it out.   The purpose of this post is to give you a few pointers during this busy time of year for our office. The first pointer has to do with email.   If you email our office we please ask that you send your message to only one email address.   Some applicants will copy several accounts or personal addresses on a single message and this can lead to confusion and extra work in our office.   We highly recommend that you use our main account for your inquires.   The address is: sipa_admission@columbia.edu. The second pointer has to do with phone calls.   If you call and get voice mail, rest assured that we will answer but it may take us some time.   If you call and cannot get through, please do not call another SIPA office and ask to be transferred.   If you do leave a voice mail please realize that with the heavy phone traffic it may take us some time to get back to you.   If you do leave a voice mail and call again, it is helpful to let us know that you left a voice mail so we know that your question has been answered and can cross the voice mail message off of our call back list. The third pointer has to do with mail.   As documented a in previous entry we receive hundreds of pieces of mail per day.   We try to keep up but each year we will open mail and update test scores and other documents after the deadline passes.   As long as the documents were received prior to the deadline they will be considered on time.   Please understand that we are not able to respond immediately to inquiries about the receipt of individual documents due to the extremely large volume of mail we receive. We are very excited to begin the review process and appreciate your understanding regarding this issues.   Thank you in advance for your patience.