With summer around the corner, most students at NYU Abu Dhabi have already prepared for their three-month-long vacation. While taking summer classes is a popular option, many also choose to do internships and research in far-off locations or bigger cities like New York. Because of this, summer funding has become super competitive and is sought after by many student hoping for professional experience abroad.

“A lot of us feel, and I certainly feel, pressure to always do something over summer, to always have an internship … It’s pressure that we build on each other,” said sophomore James Gardner.

According to Associate Vice Chancellor, Global Education and Outreach & Vice Provost, Carol Brandt, there were initially no plans to facilitate or aid summer opportunities for students. It was the demand from the student body that encouraged the administration to develop the program for summer activities over the first spring semester in the history of NYUAD.

As a result of this interest, the summer funding program, which began just after the first academic year in 2011, continues to develop today. It allows NYUAD freshmen, sophomores and juniors to apply through the Career Development Center for the funding of up to 5000 USD per student toward summer internships and research programs.

The selection committee, which allocates the funding, changes every year and has included representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Research, several of the Academic Deans and Brandt. Summer funding is limited and competitive, as reflected in the application process itself.

“It was a very rigorous process. It wasn't the sort of application process where you could just sit around and apply on the night before the deadline,” said freshman Sahan Tampoe. “There were quite a few short-answer essay-type questions which require you to really think your responses through. I think it was fair.”

“Obviously, funding is limited so there will be applicants, particularly freshmen, who end up being unsuccessful, but what I gathered was that if you make a strong enough case in your application that the summer internship you need funding for will in some way be of benefit for your future career with enough evidence to back your point, chances that you will get funding are quite high,” added Tampoe, who received funding for his summer internship.

According to Brandt, the summer funding program prioritizes sophomore and junior students, because of the limited time they have left before graduation.

Gardner sees it differently.

“I’ve been assured ... it’s not based on year group; it’s really based on the strength of an application,” he said. “In reality it just happens that sophomores and juniors have more concrete ideas of what their major is going to look like [and] a more concrete idea of what their career is going to look like. And as a result they tend to write stronger applications.”

Not everyone is so optimistic about the way the summer funding application process operates.

“I didn't even apply for the funding because, on Student Portal, it says that freshmen will not be considered for research funding and that one must have declared a major in order to receive research funding,” said freshman Andrea Chung. Most students do not declare their majors before the end of their sophomore year.

Chung, who will be attending a film research opportunity in the summer, was ultimately unable to procure summer funding and is picking up the tab herself.

“Later I found out several freshmen who are also attending ... received research funding. I was, and still am, very dissatisfied and frustrated that the administration did not adher[e] to its own rules, so I emailed the undergraduate research manager to ask for an explanation,” said Chung. “They said the guidelines state freshmen ‘usually’ won't be considered and does not say they ‘will not’ be considered. In the end, there is nothing else I could do except for suggesting them to make the guidelines clear in the future.”

The CDC declined to make any conclusive statements about general trends in the summer funding application process for the purposes of this article. Currently, they have not publicly released any statistics about summer funding in past years.