<p>"It might just be that the general theme of this thread is civil/mech/material related though… its hard out there for computer sci/eng "
CS/SE is one of the easiest fields to get jobs/internships in. If anything, it’s keeping them that’s the trick.</p>
<p>You really have no excuse for taking an unpaid internship, unless you are really lazy. Especially in CS/SE. I have never heard of an unpaid internship in CS/SE, and I’d probably just laugh the guy off the phone / out the door if he suggested I do it.</p>
<p>If I can get a paid internship in this economy, anybody can.</p>
<p>They can offer unpaid internships because there exists people with who can’t get paid internships…like me.
and believe me they fill up, I think for the last one I interviewed for he mentioned that he interviewed also 30+ other candidates (in person)</p>
<p>then again theres 50 thousand students in gainesville</p>
<p>It probably depends on geographical location. By law, all internships are supposed to be paid, the intern must not perform menial tasks, and must be trained to work in the relevant area. In practice, there are a lot of people in unpaid internships here in the US. You can probably find the majority of them in the fashion and entertainment industry.</p>
<p>Is not common in a technical field exactly because of the technical knowledge required. But the moment there are 20+ people competing for 1 internship spot, if one of those people asks to do it for free, the other 19 are SoL. I don’t know how that would be handled legally.</p>
<p>Do internship companies look at the GPA after the fall or spring semester? Also if you want to intern in the summer when do you advise to start applying for internships?</p>
<p>In summary, interns can be unpaid if they’re training for their own benefit and are not working for the benefit of the company. In the context of the entertainment industry: if an unpaid intern worked at Saturday Night Live, and his job was to follow around and assist a writer (under close supervision), that would be fine. What an unpaid intern couldn’t do is actually write a skit for the show.</p>
<p>In engineering: let’s say you want to size a pump. An engineer can sit down with an unpaid intern, explain how you size a pump, can show the equations, and can work through the equations with the unpaid intern. An engineer cannot hand an intern a textbook and tell him to go size a pump.</p>
<p>In entertainment, having a “go-fer” that brings you coffee and picks up your mail is valuable to the company and meeting people and networking is valuable to the intern, so the unpaid internship system works. In engineering, companies want the intern to actually do value added work, and the intern actually want to do value added work, so the unpaid internship system usually doesn’t work.</p>
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<p>I’ve been hearing this “lack of internship” excuse from a lot of people in Gainesville. To me, the quality of the career services department is incredibly important in choosing a college, and it sounds like UF is doing a terrible job creating opportunities. I’ve been telling people this year to avoid UF for that reason.</p>
<p>It depends on the school and your year (students from top schools make more usually than students from lower tier schools, seniors make more than freshman, etc). It also depends on the field (oil and gas pays more than food, etc). However, a good range is $15/hr - $30/hr. A Junior/Senior really shouldn’t be making less than $20/hr.</p>
<p>It depends on the industry you’re getting into. I’ve heard that oil companies make a lot more than the average, and a lot of ChemE majors work for them. It also depends on the area. I made 15/hr in southwestern VA which went a lot further than 20/hr would have in, say, DC or LA.</p>
<p>wow, I’m pointlessly adding nothing here but my shock. $15-30 an hour for an internship sounds like a lot to me. Do engineers really make so much or is it just chemical? What about a mechanical?</p>
<p>I have a friend doing an internship at Conoco Phillips, making over $30/hr. Pretty ridiculous salary for an intern that doesn’t do that much work!</p>
<p>Also how’d you guys do transportation on your internships (say if its in another city/state thats 300+ miles away)? I know many rental agencies won’t rent to anyone less than 21 so yeah.</p>
<p>Most rental companies will lease to people 18 or older. Even if they require 21, you can have a parent co-sign the lease. Another good option is to look at nearby colleges to see if they’ll rent out dorms in the summer. In most student centers, you’ll also find advertisements from students that signed 12 month leases and want to sublet over the summer.</p>
<p>As for transportation, most people have cars.</p>
<p>A lot of car rental agencies now just add on a ~$5-10 charge if you are under 25 but over 21. </p>
<p>If the company you got into is good, it should provide you transportation from your home to the closest airport to the site. You should contact the HR to ask for other summer intern contacts. Most likely they would be looking for summer housing and roomates as well.</p>
<p>is it impossible to get an internship without any kind of research experience or anything related? i’m in the summer after my freshman year, working at the local pool. i MIGHT try to do research/work in a lab second semester (i’m taking 17 credits first semester and working at the dining hall… making money is kind of important since i’m tight on it but that is still questionable. i really want to do something more productive with my sophomore year summer (after being at home a little over a month, i know this). i know there is a career center and both a fall and winter career/internship fair so i have a bunch of chances and what not… i just don’t know how it’s possible to get internship experience before i get any experience?!</p>
<p>i have a 3.2 gpa but that’s pretty much all i have on my resume :\ i know this is far off in advance, but advice? i’m MSE but wanting to get into the biomaterials/biomed field, not that that matters (?)</p>
<p>$25-$30 an hour seems pretty standard for ME interns from my school. I got $25 an hour as a sophomore/junior, but a lot of it got taxed and went into paying for a car (which my parents had to lease for me since I wasn’t even 20 then). Some places like GE pay a little less (about $20) but provide housing, according to my ECE friend.</p>
but that is still questionable. i really want to do something more productive with my sophomore year summer (after being at home a little over a month, i know this). i know there is a career center and both a fall and winter career/internship fair so i have a bunch of chances and what not… i just don’t know how it’s possible to get internship experience before i get any experience?!</p>