<p>Don’t get me wrong, Cornell’s Career Services is a great resource center. And I have to admit that I probably have not taken full advantage of what they have to offer. But I’m a little irked at the fact that schools like Yale and Harvard really seem to go out of their way to pad their students’ resumes. I mean, it seems like almost every other school out there allows their students to apply for the Phi Beta Kappa status as a junior. And it seems, especially at Harvard and Yale, that there are like 5 prizes per department for students. But I don’t see that “advertised” anywhere at Cornell. </p>
<p>So I ask you: are there any? I’m sticking mainly to Arts and Sciences, but out of curiosity, I would like to know. Like a prize for best essay in english or history or something. Or something even greater?</p>
<p>The Knight Institute (the folks that organize the writing seminars) probably hands out thirty cash prizes to undergraduates every year. And I suspect that there are a lot of departmental prizes that aren’t listed in the issue.</p>
<p>And the Career Services office does a pretty good job of prepping students for external scholarships – like the Fulbright, Goldwater, etc.</p>
<p>It really comes down to alumni interest, as those are who ultimately endow these types of prizes. For instance, I’m currently trying to endow a $500 prize for outstanding empirical paper in the field of labor economics, and am more than half way to my $10k goal. Obviously, Harvard and Yale do a little bit better than us in this regard.</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong…but I thought students cannot apply for Phi Beta Kappa. I thought CAS determines the minimum GPA for that year and seniors who are above it are eligible for induction to the society.</p>
<p>No dew, the way you described it is exactly how cornell’s office operates. Other schools have different ways about selecting the students, hence, my complaining :-). </p>
<p>Cornell’s fellowship office is great–we get a handfull of scholars each year. Unlike certain others, our motto is “be yourself,” which, honestly, I think is the best advice and assistance you can give to a potential applicant. Yet it seems that other schools’ offices must be doing something right (Harvard with an average of 3 or so rhodes per year), what with those contrived mock-cocktail parties and endless prepping. I think it is a trade-off: when you do win from Cornell, albeit more occasionally, you’re standing on your merits, personality, vision, etc. alone. The other schools turn the process into a trivial beauty-pageant of how to hold your wine-glass (or so I hear), grooming you to become the perfect and infallible candidate.
/rant</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think a lot of these prizes are publicized all that well. For instance, I believe the biology department hands out a lot of prizes, but you never seem them advertised. So you may just not know about them. If you are the type of person who scours through emails, glances at every flyer and billboard, and reads the Cornell Chronicle every week, you will learn about them.</p>
<p>The faculty know what to look for, and award the prizes appropriately. A lot of times it is a pretty discrete process. I was awarded $1500 my junior year from a department in Arts and I don’t think it was published or announced anywhere. Likewise, a good friend of mine won a $5k award her senior year, and that wasn’t published anywhere either.</p>
<p>It only takes $5k to endow an academic prize. So ask your professors to come up with some prizes. Or raise money through your student organizations to endow a prize of your own. $5k is pretty small potatoes when it takes $3M to endow a professorship.</p>
<p>i’m thinking whatever academic awards you get would have to be listed in next years fin Aid application…and would be discounted from the loans portion of your fin aid…</p>
<p>dont forget that there are plenty of scholarships available to collegestudents…check out fastweb.com (i think)</p>
<p>i got 150 dollars for what isn’t an easy award to achieve. i guess i shouldn’t complain about the money, since the actual award will look great on a resume, but still, it seems like cornell can give out more than the price of a science textbook for a prize like that</p>
<p>but at least looking through the chronicle link, i got to see me name in there for it, which i didn’t even know was there!</p>
<p>The U.S. government can also pay the President more than $400k a year, but it doesn’t. The purpose of the prize is to motivate students to work hard, not to bestow upon them lots of cash.</p>
<p>I don’t care about the size of the award granted–knowing you’ve actually accomplished something in your field is the largest benefit of winning an award. I just think that given the size of the student population and number of departments we have, there should be more of a focus on recognizing student contributions.Yet the fact that they are so obscure definitely takes away from part of that purpose.</p>
<p>Well, at a certain point it becomes prize inflation. You dilute the importance of a prize if you award more than a handful a year. I actually feel ILR awards too many prizes, but I am helping to endow a prize in labor economics because I feel it is an oft-overlooked (but very important) aspect to the school.</p>
<p>But write a letter to your department chair, your college’s associate dean for undergraduate study, and the vice-provost for undergraduate education. I’m sure they will answer back.</p>
<p>it’d still be nice to get more though, though i’m also just nervous about what my financial aid will be - i mean i got more for an award sponsored by my elementary school - comparing cornell to elementary school, just seems weird</p>
<p>is there an area where the biology department awards are listed, if any? i can’t find it - they can do a better job advertising</p>
<p>I wasn’t a biology major, so I don’t know. Off the top of my head I can think of the Keeton Prize and the Hughes Fellows. There is also the Honors Program in Biology, which is a pretty big deal.</p>
<p>Email the Director of Undergraduate Biology.</p>
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<p>I suspect that your elementary school isn’t very ordinary. </p>
<p>Personally I think one of the biggest differences between Harvard/Yale/Princeton and Cornell is the amount of money and resources for awards such as these. A high percentage of recent grads from these schools receive alumni grants to study abroad or pursue non-employment endeavors. </p>
<p>For whatever reason, the same can’t be said of schools like Cornell or UPenn. This is what makes these schools a lot more egalitarian and open, if you ask me.</p>
<p>yeah, honors seems like a great program for bio. as for my elementary school sponsored scholarship, my school district is just a public school district, though highly ranked in my state, but still ordinary. and yeah, the egalitarian nature of Cornell is one thing that makes it so great</p>