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Office
of Academic Resources
Committee
on College Honors
Information on Fellowships
The Committee on College Honors, which
is composed of three faculty members, three students, and Dean Phil
Bean (pbean@haverford.edu),
has three principal functions:
- chooses Haverford's nominees for
certain outside fellowships, notably Beinecke, Goldwater, Jack
Kent Cooke, Luce, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, and Truman. It also
provides guidance to candidates for the Fulbright Scholarship.
- makes recommendations to the faculty
on the awarding of two fellowships exclusively for graduating
seniors at Haverford College: the Clementine Cope Fellowships
and the Augustus Taber Murray Research Fellowships.
- makes recommendations to the faculty
regarding which graduating seniors should receive College Honors:
magna cum laude and summa cum laude (Haverford does
not award the distinction of cum laude). The Committee
interprets the criteria for College Honors as defined by the rules
of the faculty, and it establishes suitable procedures for the
selection of students (see below).
TOPICS ON THIS PAGE:
Expectations and Advice
for Scholarship Candidates
Internal Deadlines
Haverford College Honors: The Process
INFORMATION ON SPECIFIC SCHOLARSHIPS:
Scholarships
Requiring a Haverford Nomination
Other
Scholarships
General
Expectations and Advice
The national selection committees
for the Beinecke, Goldwater, Jack Kent Cooke, Luce, Marshall, Mitchell,
Rhodes, and Truman fellowships require the college to confer an
institutional endorsement, or an official nomination, on a limited
number of students.
Students who would like to apply
for consideration for these scholarships are therefore required
to submit the requisite application materials, including letters
of recommendation, to the Committee on College Honors (by way of
Dean Phil Bean, Chase Hall 205) by the internal deadlines summarized
below.
Please note
that Haverford's internal deadlines differ
significantly from those established by the national selection
committees (as published on the websites for those fellowships),
and that students are responsible for meeting the college's internal
deadlines.
Students interested in the Watson
Fellowship also need to obtain an institutional endorsement.
However, students interested in the Watson need to submit their
materials to Dean Steve Watter (swatter@haverford.edu),
Chase Hall 213.
The Committee on College Honors has
certain expectations which must be met if a student expects to get
full consideration for a College nomination:
- Applications must be complete
by the time the relevant internal deadline;
those submitted after those deadlines, or which are not complete
by the time the deadlines lapse, may not receive consideration
by the Committee on College Honors. If
you are experiencing difficulty getting your materials together
in time, please be in touch with Dean Bean (pbean@haverford.edu)
as soon as you sense that there may be a problem.
- Application essays will be thoughtful,
insightful, well-written, and tailored to the interests and objectives
of the scholarship for which the candidate would like to be nominated.
It is the experience of the Committee that the vast majority of
students, regardless of how accomplished they are, cannot write
compelling and authentic personal statements in the last few weeks
before the deadline.
- If students are applying for a
scholarship to study at a particular university, the Committee
on College Honors expects that they will be informed about the
institution in question and the specific degree program they would
like to pursue there.
- Students will be prepared to speak
insightfully about their experiences, their studies, their aspirations
and plans for the future, as well as current events, when they
are interviewed by the Committee on College Honors. Interviews
will play an important role in the decision by the Committee regarding
which candidates will receive Haverford's institutional endorsement.
Candidates for the Fulbright are
also required to submit their application materials to the Committee
on College Honors by Haverford's internal deadline (see below).
However, Fulbright places no limitations on the number of Haverford
students who can apply for consideration in any given year, and
while the Committee on College Honors invites Fulbright applicants
to an interview, the objective of these on-campus interviews for
the Fulbright is simply to give candidates advice regarding how
to improve their application materials.
Students who are interested applying
for any fellowship are strongly encouraged to contact recommenders
in a timely fashion; again, waiting until shortly before a deadline
is not helpful, as it only tends to make it more difficult for recommenders
to do justice to the students about whom they have been asked to
write. Those interested in applying for scholarships with internal
deadlines that fall in September or October are encouraged to contact
faculty recommenders before they leave in May or during the summer.
Students are also encouraged to provide recommenders with a copy
of their curriculum vitae, and to make sure that recommenders are
aware of the criteria of the scholarships for which they are applying.
Candidates for Fulbright and Watson are encouraged to give a copy
of their project proposal to their recommenders. Recommenders are
welcome to send letters to the Committee on Honors (by way of Dean
Phil Bean) during the summer for consideration in the fall.
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2008-09
Internal Deadlines
Application materials, including
letters of recommendation, for scholarships that require an institutional
endorsement must be submitted to Roxanne Clark, Chase Hall 205,
by the dates specified below, except in the case of the Watson,
applications for which need to to be submitted to Dean Steve Watter,
Chase Hall 213:
September 2, 2008
Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, Churchill
September 26, 2008
Watson
September 23, 2008
Fulbright
October 31, 2008
Luce, Goldwater, Truman, Beinecke
January 20, 2009
Jack Kent Cooke, St. Andrew's Society
March 3, 2009
Cope and Murray
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College
Honors: The Process
Each spring, the names of the top
15% of the graduating class, as measured by cumulative GPA, are
circulated confidentially among the Faculty, who are invited to
send written recommendations to the Committee on Honors for any
student on the list; the faculty are also invited to recommend any
student who is not on the list. After discussing these letters and
the transcripts of the students under consideration, the Committee
on Honors devises a list of nominees for the distinctions of magna
cum laude and summa cum laude, which is then submitted
to the Faculty for its approval.
The criteria used by the Committee
in doing its work are outlined in the Haverford College Catalog:
"Whereas distinguished performance
in the major is the criterion for departmental honors, the award
of college honors recognizes students whose work has been outstanding
overall. Special attention is given to study that goes beyond
the requirements of the major. Such study can be interdivisional,
as evidenced by superior work outside one's major division; interdisciplinary,
as evidenced by superior work in more than one department of a
single division; by superior work in several converging domains
of knowledge represented by an area of concentration or the equivalent;
or by other evidence of superior work beyond the requirements
of the major and the College."
Students will please note that the
criteria used in this process differ from those used in the choice
of recipients of other distinctions, like departmental honors and
election to Phi Beta Kappa, and it is therefore not unusual for
a student to be awarded some form of recognition of academic achievement
but not be chosen for College Honors. In addition, particularly
given the emphasis placed on breadth of study, it is not unusual
for students with high GPAs not to be chosen for College Honors.
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