<p>A friend's son attends our large public U. He had a great internship between his junior and senior year of college. His friends were able to get similarly wonderful work experience. My friend feels that one does not get these opportunities at many small LACs. She says that her friend's daughter has been unable to get an internship through the career center of a well known small LAC. There aren't any job fairs, and the job connections, in this economy anyway, are just not there through this LAC. This does not seem to be the case at our large public U. I would love to hear your children's personal experiences with internships and jobs within the last 12 months.</p>
<p>Last year no matter how much I told my freshman son that internships started appearing in January or February he waited till April. He ended up working for the same company he'd worked for before. The work was boring, but at least it paid well. This year he went to a big job fair in September and had several nibbles, though no offers as far as I know. There will be another job fair in February. They've got recruiters on campus all year and links to off campus recruiting as well. (He's at Carnegie Mellon.)</p>
<p>American has internship visits, job fairs, and campus recruiting all year round.</p>
<p>My Ds (CS majors) have both done internships and have found the particular ones through campus connections (career fairs, prof recommendations) at their large state Unis. However, one of the Ds also landed an internship just through the website of the company. </p>
<p>If someone's at a college with not very good connections (small career fairs, etc.), then they can still do some of their own research and apply through the websites of the various companies. Many of them have a special section in their 'Careers' section for college interns. Another option would be to find out when a large public U is going to have a career fair and go to it to speak to the people at the booths.</p>
<p>NEMom:</p>
<p>You hit a magic number of 5000 posts on this one!!</p>
<p>Oh, now I am so special! It just means that I have been posting for 3.5 years. </p>
<p>Now ucsd, back to the subject at hand, my friend's point was that large public Us have better avenues for landing an internship and job than some small (and more expensive) private LACs. During times when the economy is sailing, it might not be as much of concern. When people are losing jobs (today) it is something that is much more important to me.</p>
<p>Large universities do have some pluses - they often have more major choices, more elective choices, more class time choices, more research opportunities (depending on the place), more students from many backgrounds, and sometimes more recruiting since some companies will go visit the places with a larger number of students to maximize their opportunities for time spent. </p>
<p>However, when it comes to internships and job opportunities, people need to look beyond their college's career center - especially, as you pointed out, if it's a small ineffective one.</p>
<p>For internships in particular, I would say it also depends where the college is. Small companies and not-for-profits will often recruit from their most local colleges because that is the cheapest and easiest option, so if you are at a school in an urban area you might hear of more opportunities than somewhere more remote.</p>
<p>If your school doesn't have a good careers center, you can find opportunities for yourself. You can find information on a lot of company's websites, and you can contact them and ask even if they are not advertizing any internships at the time. It doesn't hurt to get you information out there so they have you in mind if anything does come up. Also, some schools post information online for anyone to access, regardless of whether they attend the school or not (Columbia, for example, has an amazing online calendar of recruiting events held in NY, although some of the events are only open to their students). You can also find out if your school is in one of the careers networks. My school is part of a few networks that also include LACs and there is also the Liberal Arts Careers Network where about 30 LACs have got together to share internship and job advertizements, information about companies, and alumni contacts. So all is not lost if you don't attend big public U, you just maybe have to be a little more proactive in your searching.</p>
<p>I had an internship this past summer which I found myself (although my school does have a an excellent careers center). I first applied for it in November, so I guess it pays to start searching early too if you are having to do the work yourself.</p>
<p>tli83, thank you. I did not know that 30 LACs have their network. That's interesting.</p>
<p>My H actually found one of his jobs through a friend who had access to a job board through her school. So, even though he did not have great access to jobs through his school, a friend was able to access job postings for him.</p>
<p>alot of summer internship jobs are gotten through luck and perserverance (and yes sometimes a family connection). D's friend who is communications major at Syracuse found a summer internship through the Public TV website (PBS website in NYC). So even a communications major at SU has to fend for herself to find a summer internship. Though I am sure being an SU Communications major helped her get the internship.</p>
<p>There is a very decent book on summer interships- published by Peterson or Vault which may give your son some ideas as to what companies hire summer/semester interns. It's a good place to start.</p>