Students - SIPAFest

Student Support

Students come to SIPA from more than 100 countries but are united in their idealism, their boundless intellectual energy, and their dedication to creating a better future. Financial aid makes up a substantial part of the School’s budget, and while SIPA has increased student financial assistance in the last five years, we must do more. Students struggle not only with the cost of tuition, but also with New York City’s cost of living and the expenses of travel for much-needed summer internships and Capstone workshops that augment their classroom learning.

  • Expanding fellowship opportunities for students is central to the school’s mission and among the school’s chief fundraising priorities. Gifts to support fellowships provide critical resources to recruit and train outstanding students poised to become future policy leaders. Fellowships provide financial aid for SIPA students, some who would not otherwise have the financial resources to attend SIPA, and can be established with either current-use funds or endowed funds.

    For more information on supporting SIPA fellowships and student financial aid, please contact the SIPA Development Office at [email protected].

    Current Use Fellowships

    Gifts to establish current-use fellowships are fully expendable and have an immediate, short-term impact. Current-use gifts can be made annually or as part of a multi-year commitment, usually spanning five years. Current use named fellowships start at $35,000, which covers approximately half the cost of tuition for one student for one year.

    Endowed Fellowships

    Gifts to establish endowed fellowships are invested permanently in SIPA’s endowment, and ensure that a steady stream of income is available to provide support for SIPA students in perpetuity. Endowed fellowships start at $100,000 and can be paid over a period of up to five years.

    Some donors who establish endowed fellowships choose to make an additional annual gift for current use. This allows them to begin providing students with financial aid support immediately, while they are making pledge payments to build up the endowed fund. And now, as part of the recently launched SIPA Student Support Initiative − an effort to make a SIPA education more accessible by offering critical financial aid to our most promising students – “blended gifts” that include both endowed and current use gifts can receive a dollar-for-dollar, 1:1 match for the endowed portion of their gift. 

  • SIPA remains committed to ensuring that the very best and brightest students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented minorities can have access to the finest public policy and international relations education in the world. Today, more than 90% of our applicants report a need for financial aid. To help meet this overwhelming demand, SIPA recognizes the importance of working with our alumni and friends to increase financial aid support for our students. Financial aid to support SIPA students is vital in recruiting the best and the brightest students from across the globe and making a SIPA education possible.

    Make an online gift to the SIPA Student Financial Assistance Fund. 

  • This is a particularly acute moment for SIPA students whose lives continue to be upended by the challenges faced by all of us over the last several years. In addition to health and safety concerns, many are facing unexpected and severe financial hardships. Your gift to the SIPA Annual Fund in support of emergency student funding will provide immediate help and augment SIPA’s long-standing emergency student aid program. For fastest processing, we encourage you to make your gift online.

  • A core requirement for the Master of International Affairs and the Master of Public Administration, the Capstone Workshop is a live consulting project with an external client outside of SIPA. Each workshop partners a team of graduate students with a faculty advisor. The goal is to provide clients with innovative analysis and practical recommendations, while SIPA students have the opportunity to put learning into practice while gaining experience by working on a real-world problem.

    Thanks to the generous support of the Lemann Foundation, SIPA supports student-led efforts to address social and economic development for Brazil, particularly through social entrepreneurship and innovation. The program fosters a community of students, alumni, and participating entrepreneurs and experts at the forefront of fostering innovation and social entrepreneurship in Brazil and who may apply successful models from Brazil and deploy them elsewhere in the world.