Usual promotional fare of school-sponsored admissions blogs, one might expect. We’ll have to look forward to what Cornell students can put out in terms of blog content… The school seems particularly well-intentioned with these blogs. Here are the mission objectives:

The student voice is largely missing from Cornell’s web site and, in this project, we have a golden opportunity to bring it to the forefront

• Draw attention to Cornell in the “blogosphere” and bring us up to par with our peers in academia
• Supplement the work of Undergraduate Admissions and Campus Relations by sharing information about life at Cornell with potential students and their parents.
• Share the Cornell story with the world.

They are, as usual, compensated:

Assuming that each student makes a minimum of two blog entries per week (one entry per week during breaks), they are eligible for a total of $50 in gift cards per month. These cards may be distributed in either $50 or $25 increments and must be chosen from the list of approved retailers below. Students will receive their cards no earlier than the last Monday of the month.

They can use these gift cards at College Town Bagels, iTunes, the school bookstore, etc. The “man” in this admissions-sponsored blogging setup purports to allow free reign in terms of content; that remains to be seen. Certainly there will be a certain level of professional self-censorship. For this reason, though I do look forward to these blogs as a valuable source of cornell-related information from a fresh perspective, unofficial Cornell blogs–namely, The Unofficial Cornell Blog, which tipped me off to these–will still have their place in my heart.