Columbia Mail delivered 10,178 student packages to residence halls in August 2024 – a 14% increase from last year's previous historic high of 8,896. The Mail team made deliveries to every undergraduate residence hall, including the Brownstones and East Campus.
In July, students were notified by Columbia Housing that they could begin sending packages to campus in early August for Columbia Mail’s pre-delivery program. Any package received before the mid-August cutoff date would be in the students’ rooms when they arrived for Check-In.
This year, Columbia Mail received and delivered 9,286 packages before the cutoff date — plus an additional one thousand packages received after the cutoff date that were still delivered in advance. 5,736 of the total packages (56%) belonged to First Years, with a total of 710 unique recipients. The remaining packages delivered – about 4,442 – were to upperclass students.
Among First Year residence halls, John Jay Hall had the most deliveries (2,121) and the most deliveries to a single student (65 packages). Among upperclass residence halls, Carlton Arms — the furthest hall from campus — had the most deliveries (760).
In Columbia Housing’s annual Check-In survey, the pre-delivery program received positive feedback from many students. Some of the open-ended responses included: