Pennies for your thoughts?
After several toilsome months of research and writing, graduating seniors are ready to reap the awards for their senior essays. But out of hundreds of students who have completed their essays this past year, only a handful will be formally recognized and rewarded for their work.
As some seniors apply for awards this month, they are discovering vast disparities in the number and size of essay awards given among the academic departments. Despite feeling relief after completing their essays, some seniors complained about small awards in traditionally esteemed departments, especially...
No, actually, $100 seems fair for a polisci essay.
My thoughts go something like this:
1. Those writing senior essays are students.
2. Students receive something called academic credit.
3. Academic credit comes in leiu of monetary compensation, with the idea being that someday, said academic credit will make one more employable.
4. Therefore, the entire notion of senior essay prizes is a more than a little silly.
5. Furthermore, complaining about the amount, whether $100 or $5,000, is completely absurd.
Undergraduate students in the social sciences may also be interested in the Undergraduate Research Paper Competition of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), of which Yale is a member. The submission deadline for 2009 is May 31, and there are awards ($1000/$750/$500) for 1st, 2nd & 3rd places in each of two competitions. "Paper topics can cover a broad array in the social sciences but must include analysis of a dataset currently held within the ICPSR archive or one of its topical archives" - so this is for papers with a quantitative analysis aspect. Further details can be found at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/prize/. Of the four 2008 winners, two were from Yale (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/prize/winners.html)!
--
Stefan Kramer
Social Science Data Librarian
ICPSR Official Representative
Yale University
stefan.kramer@yale.edu
amen.
@ #2:
and yours is worth $200, presumably because you had to slave all year and produce an essay roughly twice as long.
what a grand sum of money. congratulations.
Dear #6,
By your logic, yours should be worth $19.99.
Do the sciences have prizes? I've never heard of them. If not, why not?