Prospective Applicants

• Any career-related experience supervised by a staff member at the organization. It does not have to be a formal internship
• Research assistantship supervised by a Principal Investigator (PI), post-doc staff, or faculty member
• Volunteer experience supervised by a staff member at the organization
• Remote experience supervised by a staff member at the organization
• Students participating in CALS Global Fellows
• Students participating in the Cornell Psychology Dept. Summer Undergraduate Research program (SURF)

Information About International Experiences:

The Summer Experience Grant will cover eligible experiences, including those in international locations. Once approved for funding, students must:

• Pre-register their travel through the Cornell International Travel Registry. (Note: Students must prove they have registered their travel prior to the release of funds.); and 
• Self-enroll in Cornell’s online pre-departure orientation for international travel: https://canvas.cornell.edu/enroll/HJL3G3
• Cornell strongly discourages travel to elevated-risk destinations if other viable options are available. If proposing travel to an elevated-risk destination, students must complete a petition. Petitions are triggered by rules built into the Travel Registry. If your itinerary requires a petition, the Travel Registry will prompt you for additional information about and rationale for elevated-risk travel plans. It may take 2-4 weeks to obtain approval to elevated-risk destinations
• If you are an international student traveling to your home country, note that funding cannot be used to travel from Cornell to your home country and back

• Fee based programs – any program that charges tuition or a fee. This includes all fees related to the fee-based program. Exceptions may be made for programs in the performing arts, on a case-by-case basis
• Cornell programs:
  • Cornell in Washington
  • Cornell Urban Semester (Practicing Medicine, Practicing Health Equity)
  • Cornell Pre-Law Summer Program
  • Engineering Project Teams
  • Global Health minor programs
  • Harold Tanner Dean’s Scholars Program
  • ILR High Roads Fellowship Program
  • ILR Summer Research Fellowship Program
  • Milstein First-Year Summer Program in NYC
  • Most other college-based programs charging tuition/program fees (at Cornell or any other university)
• Research that is supervised by a graduate student. Research experiences must be supervised by a Principal Investigator or faculty member
• Personal research projects, such as an honors thesis, personal projects, research projects attached to academic credit, or personal entrepreneurial ventures
• Pipeline or insight programs which are meant to expose a student to a company, but where the student does not produce a work product
• Student or student-run entrepreneurial ventures
• Student organization related projects
• Summer courses at Cornell or elsewhere
• Any experience supervised by another student
• Work at an organization owned by a personal family member, or where you are directly supervised by a family member.  A family member may include, but is not limited to a parent, sibling, spouse, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or cousin.

If you believe that your experience should qualify, contact seg@cornell.edu to discuss.

In this section, you will provide details about the experience you plan to participate in this summer. It includes the organization name, your position, start and end dates, hours, and supervisor information. For those doing research, there are specific questions about how your research will be completed. 

Upload your Experience Confirmation as a PDF or JPEG file format. This should be a written confirmation of your offer for your summer experience from your experience supervisor or organization. It needs to include the following information: supervisor: name, phone, & e-mail; start date & end date; compensation: hourly wage, stipend, un-paid, etc.; hours per week; general duties; and work environment: in-person, remote, hybrid. It can be a screen shot of an email or an official offer letter. You do not need to have accepted this offer to be eligible for the SEG. When you upload your information, please save the file in the following format: full name + SEG Experience Confirmation (Ex: “EzraCornell-SEG Experience Confirmation”).

Essay Questions: 1500-character limit (approximately 300 words) per response. 

• What are your expected responsibilities in this role? Feel free to reference a position description but summarize your responsibilities in your own words.
• How does this experience fit with your career goals and interests? 
• What do you hope to learn from this experience? Examples can include, specific skills you hope to gain, career insights, interest in a certain academic field, etc. 
• For those eligible for the Dr. J.W. Landau Summer Experience Fund for Veterans, you will be asked a specific question about this award.

If you received financial aid, please send your 2025-2026 Financial Aid Summary as a PDF via Cornell’s Secure File Transfer to kmk44@cornell.edu. The summary should show aid received for 2025-2026. For this document, please save your document with your full name + student ID number + SEG Financial Aid (Ex:”EzraCornell-1111111-SEG Financial Aid”). Your summary can be downloaded from the  Student Center. 

To locate your Financial Aid Summary, after logging into the Student Center, navigate to the left-hand side of the screen to the “Finances” section. Click on the most recent “Aid Year”. Click on the most recent Aid Offer “Date”.

Upload the most recent copy of your resume in PDF Format. When you upload your resume as a PDF – please name your document with your full name + resume (Ex: “EzraCornell-Resume”). 

In this section you will calculate the total cost and explanation of that expense in the following categories for the number of weeks that you will be doing your experience. To see a full list of eligible and ineligible expenses, click here – Applicant Resources.

• Rent – Not to exceed $1,500/month
• Utilities – This can include electric, water, wi-fi, and cell phone service costs
• Travel – This can include travel to an in-person experience that is not in your hometown
• Commuting Costs – When calculating this expense, consider the difference between daily and monthly fares, and if a city has a student rate. For car commuting, you can calculate a rate of .725 cents/mile. To do this, use Google maps to determine the number of miles round-trip, multiply that by .725 and then by the number of days you plan on commuting
• Food or miscellaneous living expenses – allocate $110/ week for this expense. Note, this does include laundry and dry-cleaning expenses
• Professional or experience related clothing 
• Other expenses

In this section, we ask you to document and explain any sources of income or take home pay you may receive over the summer, either from the experience, other grants, a summer job, or family. This income includes sign-on bonuses, relocation stipends, housing stipends, etc. If making any income, we’ll want to know your take-home income with taxes taken out. Calculate estimated taxes here. 

After you submit your income, your projected expenses will be removed and you will see an generated number. If it is a negative number, you may not qualify for the Summer Experience Grant as this indicates your income is greater than your expenses.

You can use this space to explain any other information that may be helpful to the reviewer. This could include:

• Additional work/volunteer/academic/other endeavors that you will be involved in this summer 
• Extenuating circumstances 
• Any additional information about your funding needs 
• Any additional information you would like us to know when considering your application (Example: Doing an 8-week internship but only working 15 hours/week because I have to take care of my little sister 3 days/week.) 

This is the last page of the application to verify that the information provided is correct and accurate before it is submitted.

No. For the 2025 application period, we received over 800 applications. Unfortunately, we do not have enough funding for all students who applied; therefore, we prioritized students with financial need. We cannot disclose the reason(s) why a student was denied funding. All funding decisions are final.

Yes. If you are conditionally accepted, you are required to complete the International Travel Registry (ITART). Here are detailed instructions to complete the registry. After you complete this registry, please save your confirmation and then upload it to your application.

You are also expected to complete the free on-line Canvas course that reviews travel logistics, staying healthy, and safety abroad. To access the Canvas course: International Travel Pre-Departure Orientation, click here.

Your summary can be downloaded from the  Student Center. 

To locate your Financial Aid Summary, after logging into the Student Center, navigate to the left-hand side of the screen to the “Finances” section. Click on the most recent “Aid Year”. Click on the most recent Aid Offer “Date”.

No. The selection committee, comprised of staff representatives from all undergraduate colleges, reserves the right to question the method(s) used to arrive at any figure provided in the expenses and income sections of the application. We may adjust the amount of funding awarded to applicants accordingly. This may result in a decrease or increase in your funding award. 

The SEG application asks you to upload a written confirmation of your offer for your summer experience from your experience supervisor or organization. This is called an experience confirmation or offer letter. Please upload a screenshot of an email or an official letter that contains the following: organization name; supervisor name, phone, and email; start & end dates, compensation (hourly wage, stipend, unpaid, etc.); hours per week; general duties; and work environment (in-person, hybrid, remote). 

No. We set aside funding to meet the needs of strong applicants in all three application rounds. We encourage students to apply as soon as they receive an offer for a summer experience, but realize the timing of that offer can vary significantly. We know this based on different industries. Generally, students who apply during one of the later application periods are not at a disadvantage, but please be aware that if awarded, they will receive their funds at a later date – potentially after their experience has already begun.

SEG funds are intended to support unpaid or minimally paid experiences for students with high financial need. If you have extenuating financial circumstances that are not reflected in your current financial aid package, please tell us about those, in as much detail as you are comfortable sharing, in your application. 

In calculating grant requests, our system will subtract any expected income from your expected expenses. The maximum Summer Experience Grant a student could receive is equal to the total cost of their expected expenses not already covered by compensation from the experience, a part-time job, other grants, or any other expected income. If your confirmation email shows a negative number in the grant request, then your income exceeds your expenses, and you would likely not qualify for SEG funds. 

No. SEG is not a wage replacement program. SEG funds are used to cover specific travel and living expenses that students must detail in the budget section of the application. Summer Experience Grants are not meant to pay students directly for their work but simply allow them to not worry about food, rent, etc. while completing their experience.