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 Psychology Dept. Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program

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.

• Student Assembly Summer Experience Grant – The maximum award for Student Assembly is $5,000.
• Summer Experience Grant – This award is open to undergraduates from all Colleges. Students may receive up to $5,000, due to the generosity of alumni donors.
• The Dr. J.W. Landau Summer Experience Fund for Veterans – This award was created in 2021 to support veteran students pursuing unpaid or minimally paid summer experiences, such as internships and research. This award is available to undergraduates who have served at least one year of honorable service in one of the US military branches. Up to $3,600 will be awarded each summer.
• Vicki Saporta Social Justice Internship Fund– This award is open to Cornell undergraduates who will work in nonprofit organizations, domestic or international, that pursue progressive agendas, including, but not limited to, women’s rights, women’s reproductive health and rights, human rights, workers’ rights, organized labor, immigrants’ rights, environmental conservation, gun control, animal welfare, and labor unions. The intern role itself should involve active engagement in the organization’s focus. Preference is given to ILR students. The fund was established by Vicki Saporta BSILR ’74.

Undergraduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences will be considered for A&S specific awards. A&S funds have a maximum award of $6,000/student. Students residing in university housing (at Cornell or elsewhere) and/or students on financial aid with high need may exceed the $6,000 limit. These applications will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Students should ensure that their budget form and application are detailed and thorough.  

In addition to funding available for all eligible experiences there is funding available for:

• students on financial aid
• first-generation college students
• Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) participants
• students who are traveling internationally
• experiences at Weill Cornell Medicine
• experiences in the field of journalism/communication, with a preference for students from The Cornell Daily Sun
• experiences in think tanks/government in Washington, DC (funded by the Berger Grant). Students wishing to be considered for the Berger Grant must have a faculty member complete a short recommendation survey

The ILR School provides funding to both BSILR and MILR students. While MILRs are not eligible for the university-wide undergraduate funds, they are eligible for some ILR alumni-funded awards and should apply through the SEG application (click here to view the ILR Alumni Funding Canvas course). BSILR students who apply to the SEG will be considered for all university-wide funding and for ILR alumni-funded awards. ILR undergraduates and MILRs do not need to specify for which awards they wish to be considered, as staff reviewing the awards will consider them for any funding for which they meet the eligibility criteria.

Brooks School Student Opportunity Grants: This donor-sponsored funding is designed to give Brooks School students additional access to unpaid opportunities in the field of public policy and public affairs. Any current undergraduate or professional master’s student enrolled in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and in good academic standing is eligible to apply. Each funding opportunity will support multiple students across all programs. The total number of awards will depend on the size and nature of requests. Each student is eligible for only one internship grant and one research grant during their time at the Brooks School for Public Policy. To learn more, please visit: Brooks Student Opportunity Grants Page

The Dyson Summer Internship Funding is a collection of funding awards provided by alumni donors, which provide financial support for students to participate in summer unpaid or minimally paid career-related experiences.

The goal of our Dyson Summer Funding is to help financially offset the cost of participating in summer internships and transformative experiences. The funding supports students with living expenses (including security deposits), daily transportation, and food so that these essential career experiences are available to all Dyson students. We encourage any student who needs financial support to complete this application.

The maximum amount of funding available per student is $2,500 so that we can support multiple students. If you have extenuating circumstances and need additional funding, please provide additional documentation in your application.

The Human Ecology Alumni Sponsored Internship Funding is designed to aid students’ participation in unpaid or minimally paid career-related summer experiences. This does not apply to credit-bearing programs. The funding is meant to help students who would not otherwise be able to take on this type of opportunity. Deadline to apply is Saturday, March 15, 2025. 

Please e-mail Deanne Maxwell at dhm8@cornell.edu with any questions.

Due to the typical size of the applicant pool, Engineering students who have a Cornell-based summer research experience with a Cornell faculty member (either at the Ithaca campus or Cornell Tech) are highly encouraged to apply to the Engineering Learning Initiatives Student Grant Fund (ELISGF) rather than the SEG to maximize your chances of being funded. Please note the ELISGF has an earlier deadline than SEG.

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 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 2024-2025 Financial Aid Summary as a PDF via Cornell’s Secure File Transfer to mpl94@cornell.edu. The summary should show aid received for 2024-2025. 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.  Please know that you will receive an e-mail confirming the receipt of your PDF.

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. 

• 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 .70 cents/mile. To do this, use Google maps to determine the number of miles round-trip, multiply that by .70 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. If making any income, we’ll want to know your take-home income with taxes taken out. Calculate estimated taxes here. 

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 2024 application period, we received over 600 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.

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. 

Students who are offered an award based on an experience from the organization designated in their original application, but then accept an experience from a different employer not detailed in their proposal, must email seg@cornell.edu and then submit a new application. Based on a review of the new application which provides details of the new experience, the committee will either: 1) alter the award; 2) make a new award; or 3) withdraw the award.  Students who were approved for funding for an experience are not guaranteed funding if they change their experience.

If the experience ends prematurely, student awardees must e-mail seg@cornell.edu. Funding may be pro-rated according to time worked and we encourage students to secure an alternate experience. You may be responsible for returning funds if they have already been dispersed. This decision will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Once grants are awarded, students will be asked to submit paperwork to finalize the acceptance of their award. We work with appropriate offices so students receive their funding as quickly as possible.

Yes! All currently enrolled, matriculated undergraduate students enrolled in a degree-granting program at Cornell are eligible.