Application and Admissions

Unless otherwise specified, all applications must be received by 5 PM ET on the day of the deadline.

Other graduate schools that are not listed below have not formalized a partnership with CPRL at this time. If you believe your school should be listed here, or if your graduate school is not currently a CPRL partner and you are interested in working with your school to join the CPRL, please email [email protected]

* CLS students will apply to CPRL through the Experiential Learning Common Application on LawNet.

** NYU Law students will apply to CPRL's clinic on CAMS.

To be considered for the CPRL scholar award and/or housing support, please indicate your interest in the CPRL Application

CPRL Scholar Awards:

All CPRL awards are distributed as awards of last resort and will always take into consideration any other educational aid which students have already been (or will be) awarded. The CPRL Scholar Award Application is optional.

Please carefully read the application requirements below, noting the next steps most relevant to you to apply for a CPRL Scholar Award:

• Students who selected no semester preference or a preference to participate in the Fall 2024 semester must
  1. Indicate interest in the CPRL Scholar Award in their CPRL Application
  2. Work with their home institution's Financial Aid Office to return a completed and signed Financial Aid Data Form by April 5, 2024, 5PM. The form must come from the home institution's Financial Aid Office and must be signed in order for your Scholar Award application to be considered complete.
• Students who have only selected a preference for Spring 2025 semester participation or later will be asked to reapply the semester before your anticipated semester of participation so that we can consider your most up-to-date financial aid package. Please indicate your interest in a Scholar Award on your CPRL Application, but do NOT submit a financial aid data form at this time. 
• Per our agreement with Vanderbilt Peabody, Peabody students do NOT need to indicate interest or complete a Financial Aid Data Form to be considered for a CPRL Scholar Award. If chosen to participate, an automatic $16,000 in optional tuition support is available based on post-graduation plans.

Housing Support:

Any CPRL applicant from a home institution outside of New York may apply for housing support. 

Check out our Housing Guide! 

Most non-Columbia students do not pay extra tuition to participate in the program. With the one exception noted below, the tuition and other financial arrangements students have with their home professional school remain intact throughout the course of students’ participation with CPRL. However, visiting students are required to pay to Columbia the same facilities, student activities, and health services fees that Columbia students pay, which is typically $1,100 in total. To account for this, non-Columbia universities and graduate programs with which CPRL partners typically waive their comparable fees for the semester in which their students are in residence at Columbia.

CPRL students receive a semester’s worth of course credits and often only enroll in this course or enroll in this course and one additional course of no more than three credits.

Students can expect to spend at least 40 hours each week on CPRL-related activities, spanning seminar, skills training, and the project. Over the course of the semester, students spend roughly 55 hours in seminar and 25 hours in skills training. At the beginning of the semester, project work typically involves 10 hours per week. As the semester continues, project work becomes full time (i.e., approximately 40 hours per week) as the time commitments for seminar and skills training declines.

Law students receive all the credits needed to meet the American Bar Association (ABA) experiential learning requirements.

The Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University is now accepting applications for a limited number of paid Summer 2024 internships and research assistant positions for students interested in US public education reform.

Summer Associates will serve as legal and strategy consultants on projects for client organizations that are working to make substantial structural changes that improve the quality of public education in the US, in particular for under- served populations. Summer Associates will work to define the client’s project and developing background knowledge; designing strategies to conduct due diligence and collect qualitative and/or quantitative information; drafting findings, recommendations, proposals, and/or reports with the CPRL team and iterating with the client; and presenting and disseminating final deliverables to client points and leaders. Past interns have worked with the Camden, Cleveland, New York City, Newark, and Washington, DC public school systems, state departments of education, education- focused philanthropies, charter-management organizations, and other education-focused nonprofits across the US.

Preference will be given to students who are interested in enrolling next fall or spring in CPRL's intensive upper-level, intensive seminar and practicum in Structural Change in Education Policy, a course that focuses on the governance, legal, managerial, leadership, policy and practical implications of structural changes taking place in US PK- 12 public education today and engages teams of students, guided by experienced engagement managers, in consulting projects for change-minded public education organizations.

Please note this position is fully remote. 

Your application must include the following 4 documents:

1. Your CV or resume
2. An unofficial graduate transcript
3. A cover letter, which should include an explanation what attracts you to CPRL and what skills, experiences, interests, and aspirations you would bring to the summer.
4. A work sample and short description:
   1. Please submit an existing work product you created recently that best represents the skills and strengths you would bring to our program. This can be a project, report, presentation, memo, paper, lesson plan, or any other artifact that you believe best exemplifies your capabilities. We understand that many work products may contain confidential or proprietary information and will be redacted accordingly before submission.
   2. In 250 words or less, attach an optional description of why you chose this work product, who the audience was, whether it was edited and/or includes contributions from anyone else (e.g., team members, advisors, etc.), and if so, the extent of their contribution, and any other relevant information for understanding your submission.

Questions? Email [email protected]