Columbia Mail Delivered Over 10,000 Packages to Student Rooms During Pre-Delivery

Columbia Mail’s pre-delivery program allows students to send packages to campus beginning in early August. The Mail team makes best effort to deliver packages received before the mid-August cutoff date directly to the student’s room, so that it’s there when the student arrives for Check-In. This eliminates the need for students to haul large or numerous packages from the Mail Center and greatly improves efficiency during Check-In.

October 01, 2024

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:

This program brings exponential value to the student experience. It means that students living in those locations do not have to come to the Mail Center to retrieve their bulk items, nor find a means of hauling them back to their building and navigate getting them into their rooms.  

“The success of the pre-delivery program has had a ripple effect on our operations,” said Mike Pagan, Assistant Vice President for Columbia Mail. “It started with a desire to improve the student experience during Check-In, but this year's growth has now had a cascading improvement in our operations overall – from infrastructure to the day-to-day service in the Student Mail Center.”