The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/interviews/)
Today, we cover Cornell University’s unique preliminary exam system. Known as “prelims,” these exams differ from the traditional, one-time midterms at other undergraduate institutions, serving as assessments leading up to the final exam.
Cornell students interacted with admissions representatives from across the country at Cornell Career Services’ Postgraduate Fairs to gain insight on graduate life and applications.
With student organizations beginning to hold in-person gatherings, many report difficulties with the University’s new space usage and event registration policies.
To be honest, any situation that gives me more time to critically think and less time to make a fool of myself in front of a whiteboard, I am supportive of.
We come to Cornell told that we are the best of the best, scoring in the 99th percentile in standardized testing and consistently top of our high school class but what happens when the best of the best are living in a microcosm? The answer is rejection. Yesterday, I was rejected from two professional fraternities within a 12-hour period, and this morning when I arrived downstairs to have breakfast with my sorority sisters I was greeted with a similar air of rejection followed by stories of disappointment. I realized that a common feature of the Cornell experience is rejection. We all experience it in nearly all avenues of our daily lives.
As the fall semester begins to wind down, fall recruitment season also nears its end. For some, this could be a time of joy as they receive offers to their dream company, while others continue the search in hopes of having better luck with the next cover letter they submit. Because of such a focus on the outcome of the recruitment cycle, both candidates and employers appear to have less consideration for the process through which an offer is extended. Firms rarely ask for feedback regarding their process despite many candidates having strong opinions about a particular employer’s recruitment method. One particular practice in the candidate vetting process has been particularly off-putting: one-way video interviews.
If you haven’t noticed yet, some companies have already fired up their recruiting engines for next summer’s internships. Along the way, students, especially current sophomores, have scrambled to attend recruiting events, network and hopefully be asked to interview for a coveted position for next summer. Interviewing for an internship can be incredibly stressful for students, especially when they have to balance it with schoolwork, extracurriculars and a social life. For instance, one of my friends dropped a class because it was interfering with her networking session, and as a fellow business student, I was sympathetic. A lot of business students feel pressured to prioritize to put interviews which seems incredibly backwards.
Semi Chellas is a writer and co-executive producer for the acclaimed television series Mad Men. The Emmy-nominated writer studied English at Cornell as a Mellon fellow, and on March 10 will be returning to campus to speak at Klarman Hall. In anticipation of her lecture, “Telling Secrets: Notes from the Writers’ Room,” the Sun had a chance to speak with Chellas about her experiences writing for Mad Men and her opinions on the television industry in general. The Sun: What are the day-to-day operations like working in the writers’ room? Semi Chellas: There were about 10 to 12 people in the writing room, including two advertising people — i.e. not advertisers for the show but people who worked in advertising — [including] one that worked in advertising in the 60s.