Yale College has a large number of prizes, which are listed and briefly described under Lectureships, Fellowships, and Prizes on the Office of the Secretary website. Most of these prizes are administered by individual departments and programs. The DUS is responsible for appointing a prize committee to evaluate the performance of students in competition for the department’s prizes. The prizes should be well publicized among the faculty of the department and the students in the major. If a prize is open to students from other majors, the DUS or the chair of the prize committee chooses and may announce the winner of a prize, but the Office of the Secretary of the University actually awards it. The winner’s name should be sent to the Secretary’s Office, 1 Prospect St (SSS), so that a citation may be inscribed, a check drawn, and both conveyed to the student.

Besides prizes given for excellence in a particular subject, there are also prizes for general scholarship and character administered by the Council of the Heads of College and by the Yale College Committee on Honors and Academic Standing. If you have among your majors a candidate for one of these prizes, it is wise for you to nominate the student in concert with the residential college dean, who will have information about the student’s activities outside the major. Among the most important of these prizes are the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize, “for the senior who, through the combination of intellectual achievement, character, and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring classmates with an admiration for scholarship,” and the Hart Lyman Prize, awarded to a junior “for character and achievement.” These are administered by the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing, and at the appropriate season the chair of the committee solicits nominations from heads of college, deans, and directors of undergraduate studies. DUSs in the humanities and the social sciences should also note the Wrexham Prizes in humanities, music, and social sciences.