To the Editor:
Recently The Daily Pennsylvanian published an article about the winners of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship ("4 win Cambridge scholarships," DP, 3/22/05), and although I was happy the DP was covering the story, I was a little disappointed with the result.
I think the writing and quality of the article itself was fine, but the coverage was missing several key points. As much as I might appreciate the publicity, the article essentially didn't cover the other winners at all, and I wanted to point out that they deserve as much attention as I got in the article, if not more. For instance, Phil Geheb has been nobly teaching at a secondary school in Philadelphia for the past couple years, gaining experience in education and working toward the graduate study he wants to pursue at Cambridge.
I have the feeling that I was the only one really covered because I replied by an arbitrary deadline. The candidates are usually pretty easy to contact if you know whom to ask, too, and this brings me to my second point.
In talking with a member of the administration, I discovered that Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships here at Penn had not been contacted at all during the article coverage. In fact, the organization was not even mentioned in the article. I just want to emphasize how important these people are in the application process.
Due to the remarkable efforts of Dr. Art Casciato, Cheryl Shipman, Linda Wiedmann, and the rest of the CURF staff, many of us were able to polish our essays, complete our applications and practice for interviews despite significant crunches in deadlines.
Carl Pfender
College '05
