Connecting with Cornell Alumni: CUeLINKS and Cornell Dashboard
By: Sehar Mapara
The Cornell alumni community is one that spreads far and wide. Given the diverse range of industries alumni are involved in, connecting with them can be an extremely valuable resource for current students. Career exploration is especially useful as a way to connect with professionals who have similar career interests with you and learn more about their career paths and education experiences. There are two valuable resources that can be a great help for students to connect with Cornell alumni based on what they are looking for.
CUeLINKS
There are currently over 12,000 alumni who volunteered as knowledge sharers for the platform. The site will automatically suggest connections for you based on your profile, or you can search using various filters, making it very easy to connect and reach out to alumni. You can look for someone who went to a grad school that you are interested in applying to and discusses your own application strategy. Or you might look for someone with a shared identity like being a woman or person of color at work and ask the alum about their personal experience with that identity. The filter selection can also allow you to select specific conversation topics which can prompt connections based on a specific topic.
What sets CUeLINKS apart from other networking platforms such as LinkedIn is that Cornell alumni have opted into the platform to support current Cornell students. The connections tend to be more personal for that reason. For students, no matter where you are in your career search, Cornell alumni are willing to help you out. As for alumni, there will always be students looking for guidance and navigation and you could be the answer to their confusion. Imagine 10 years from now, you are in the workplace and receive a message from a student that is confused or stressed about their plans after graduation. Wouldn’t you want to share some advice on what steps they should or shouldn’t take?
The discussion page within CUeLINKS is a great resource to ask questions as a student, receive answers from alumni, and browse through ongoing discussions with other students. The intention is to generate conversation and get real answers instead of endless job opportunity promotions that you would see on the feed page of a site such as LinkedIn. Some of the topics that have been posted in the past are; “Seeking help in finding an internship this summer as an international student” and “How did you know you wanted to go to Law School?”. These posts received several responses from alumni and now are helpful to anyone who is in a similar position. Furthermore, if a student views an alum’s profile, the alum won’t be notified their profile has been viewed. This ensures a certain level of anonymity many students could feel more comfortable with. Check it out at cuelinks.cornell.edu!
Cornell Outcomes Dashboard
Are you wondering what are the top five states that Cornell Students move to after grad, or which industry had the most Cornellains? The Cornell Outcomes Dashboard showcases this, as well as information about what percentage of students pursue graduate degrees and what types. Stats such as these are especially valuable information for students who need some reassurance about their life after graduation or are simply curious about where the majority of Cornell students end up. The data on the Dashboard really emphasizes the concept of any person, any study because one can see that a major doesn’t determine a certain career path.
Ultimately, these resources allow students access to internal information and networks within the Cornell community. Exploring connections with majors and career paths opens up a wide range of opportunities for students that they may not have known about before. Whether you are a family member, student, or alum, these are two great ways to dive into the Cornell community.