graduate-students

While some students may apply for jobs and move on from academia after they graduate, others may be considering graduate school. If you’re looking to expedite that process and stay in New York after completing your undergraduate degree, consider applying to one of the following special programs offered by Columbia and Barnard. These programs allow you to start your Master of Arts or Master of Science requirements during your senior year, so that you can graduate with a B.A. or B.S. and an M.A. or M.S. in 5 years.

A few months after getting accepted into Columbia in 2017, I received a postcard in my letterbox—it was a simple “Welcome to Columbia! We’re so excited to have you join us!” written with a blue ballpoint pen. The idea that the small card had been handwritten by someone at Columbia for me, and that it had travelled across the Pacific Ocean to end up in my hands, thrilled me. No other university I had been accepted into had made such an effort, and as someone who wasn’t able to visit campus, each interaction I could have with the university paid dividends.

When Jenna Gould answers my phone call, it is with an apology. She is holding her baby as we speak, and while she believes that he won’t make too much of a fuss over the course of the next thirty minutes, she’s sorry in advance if he does. I hear a sleepy murmur behind her voice—the hushed kind that only a child nestling into his mother’s arms makes—and then he falls quiet, just as Gould predicted.

Faced with another remote semester, some students have found themselves confronting issues hands-on at home that would have otherwise been left up for theoretical debate and discussion in their classes.

I was sitting in my bedroom in Recife, Brazil, when the video of Columbia’s campus announcing I had gotten in opened on my computer screen. As I jumped up and down and stared incredulously at the image of Alma Mater, I still couldn’t believe it. In just a few months, I would be in New York, meeting people from all over the world and living the college experience I had dreamed of for years.  

Students and faculty erupted in protest this weekend after Columbia announced that it would require graduate students to return to the United States to keep their teaching and research positions regardless of their citizenship status. Following widespread criticism, the University has since announced that it is exploring other options to the policy, though no update has been released.

Student Financial Services started issuing registration holds for graduate student tenants on July 21, which barred them from registering for academic classes in the fall term until they paid their outstanding rent.

International students who are pursuing degrees in the United States will have to leave the country or face deportation if their universities are operating entirely online, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared on Monday. At Columbia and Barnard, which are both reopening with a mix of in-person and online classes, international students must be enrolled in at least one in-person class to remain in the United States and keep their visas.

When Columbia switched to online instruction in March, Eduardo Vergara Torres’ computer died. His aging laptop could not handle the bombardment of videoconferencing, and he could not afford to fix or replace it. Normally, this would be a major inconvenience for a Spanish instructor and second-year Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Iberian cultures—but in a world transformed by COVID-19, a broken computer spelled catastrophe.

Faced with unsustainably dire housing and work conditions, graduate workers at Columbia are now joining thousands of other workers who have responded to the economic and public health impacts of COVID-19 by going on strike. In over 20 departments, many primary instructors and teaching assistants are refusing to teach Zoom classes, grade assignments, and administer exams. Other graduate workers are participating in collective actions such as teach-ins, petitions, and socially-distanced protests, and several hundred workers have committed to not paying rent in University-owned apartments come June 1.