It appears there have been several inaccurate statements made about the Columbia SIPA MPA program - man this place is starting to feel like autoadmit where people just keep spewing out whatever information they have heard elsewhere regardless of its truth.
The MIA and MPA programs each have an acceptance rate of 30% according to SIPA itself. USNews rankings are very outdated (2004) and the MPA program has been growing. The rankings are ignored by most in the field because they are unscientific and weigh solely the views of deans in the public policy schools - this ultimately favors the biggest schools that have the most alumni out there at other universities serving in administrative roles and voting for their alma mater. This is exactly the case with Maxwell, a dean told me firsthand. To claim that he MPA program at. SIPA is weak based on this ranking is thoughtless. The faculty are almost identical for the MIA and MPA programs and the students take most classes together. Such faculty are tops for both IR and PA including a nobel laureate and other distinguished professors. Just take a look at the faculty page. Columbia has a solid political science department which also adds to the quality of the MPA program. Lastly, the MPAs have a higher employment rate than the MIAs.
So let's get the facts straight, to call the MIA program the gold standard and the MPA program far weaker is just not true by both statistics and common knowledge among those in the field.