Hi! So I was accepted into IC as a Cinema & Photography major and it happens to be my top school.
I didn’t think about it until reading a lot of reviews on the college, how is post-graduation, what is it like, and being in the real world now? I heard Ithaca is well rounded in giving students various amounts of internships and connections, but how true is this? And how is job placement for you after graduation?
First person feedback would be very helpful. Thank you!
Hello - congratulations on being admitted into Ithaca! Cinema and Photography is a great major, I have a lot of friends in the program currently and they all really love it.
I’m still currently an undergrad, so I can’t speak to the “real” post college world, but I can speak to the internships and connections piece.
Ithaca College, and the Park School especially, is very proud of it’s alumni network. If you’ve visited at all, you’ve probably heard about something called Spark. All incoming freshman are required to take Spark, and they bring in a lot of alumni. Part of Spark is also learning how to use and create a LinkedIn account. I personally am very active on LinkedIn, and I have a lot of alumni connections. There is also an IC alumni/student group on LinkedIn, so that’s another way to get talking to some people. Most/all of the alumni are very willing to help current Park students when they reached out.
We also have a person whose sole responsibility is assisting Park students with finding internships/contacting alumni. He is very helpful. I personally haven’t used his services yet, but he is very friendly and people rave about him and how helpful he is.
There is also an internship board we have. I believe this is exclusively for communications majors, but I’m not 100% sure about that. Pretty much, you can hope online and search for internships from the comfort of your dorm room! I actually have used this to look for a few opportunities for summer interning/shadowing, and I can personally attest that it is very helpful.
Other than that, we have Career Services, which helps the whole IC community with many things, internships included. Professors are often very helpful with finding internships and connections too. I have had a professor introduce me to some alumni on several occasions.
I guess the whole point of this giant body of text is to tell you that, in my experience, Ithaca’s ability to place you in diverse internships and introduce you to many different alumni does in fact live up to the hype. I hope this has helped you! Let me know if you have any other questions!