How important are internships for an Economics major?

College Majors Business Major
1

Hi everyone,

This is my first ever post on this website so I apologize if it’s in the wrong place or something like that.

I’m a current college student double majoring in Economics and Political Science (the second major isn’t adding extra credits, it’s fully made up of required elective slots) but have a bit of an odd situation. I am on track to graduate in a total of 3 years, instead of the usual 4 years. This was necessary because my father agreed to pay for all my college expenses for 3 years, but not 4 (he wants to retire from his job which he really dislikes and his retirement happens to be scheduled right at the end of my third year). Without having a job, he is no longer able to contribute financially towards college expenses, and like I said he hates that job so is not willing to stay one extra year for any reason.

Staying a fourth year would put me into about $15,000-$20,000 worth of debt between living expenses, tuition, books etc. so it doesn’t really make sense to do that when I can graduate in three years completely debt-free instead. (Taking 18 credits most semesters with higher level math classes mixed in, including during Summers, for three years straight is hard. I do not advise doing this unless you absolutely have to).

As a result of this situation, I’ve found myself in a bit of a bind when it comes to internships. I know people are generally supposed to do an internship or two to give themselves work experience to put on a resume and all that… but with such a tightly packed schedule I’m finding it extremely difficult to find a place for even one, let alone multiple internships. It’s not even the time dedicated to it that would be the problem, I could just sleep less to make more time if I had to. All the internships seem to want people there during normal business hours, which makes sense, but since I have classes during business hours even during the summer, and most are not available as night classes… I’m kind of stuck.

How important are internships in the grand scheme of things for getting that first job out of college?

Would I be completely screwed if I graduated without ever having taken an internship? (I’ve also never had a real job, just straight from high school to college, so I basically have zero work experience).

I could probably find some sort of part-time night job at some point just to give myself a little job experience, but I don’t know if employers would even care that someone worked part-time at McDonald’s or whatever for a semester or two when they don’t have any applicable internships on top of that.

What should I do in this situation? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

2

It will likely take you longer to find that first job without an internship. What type of internship/career job do you want?

3

I would primarily be interested in something related to commercial banking or finance if possible for the private sector, and on the public sector side an internship or job with a government organization in their budget department or related type of thing would be ideal.

I am open to more generic business type of internships/jobs as well, like marketing, management etc.

My goal is to get a few years of work experience and then go for an MBA with a specialization in Finance or Accounting if possible one day, to get into the more managerial aspects of business/finance/banking etc.

If I were starting over again I probably would have picked majors in Economics/Finance instead of Economics/Political Science… but by the time I realized my interest in finance it was too late. My university requires a very long list of pre-requisites for business degrees like finance so it was impossible to switch over by that point. Economics is technically in the college of social sciences so did not require all those business pre-requisites.

4

How about three and a half years and find time to work for pay or have a paid or unpaid internship that last summer. Graduate in December.

5

I have considered that as well, but that would still result in taking on about $10,000 in debt that could be avoided otherwise. Even with a paid internships profit factored in, it would be a substantial loss of money just for one internship. I would essentially be paying $10,000 in order to work for someone else potentially for free if I can’t find a paid internship.

This has become the issue… internships are important… but not being in a significant amount of debt is important too. Even if I can’t find a job for a while, I would at least have no debt… if I took on debt for the internship, and still could not find a job… then I’d have no income at all while having to find money somehow to pay back student loans. That sounds like a very dangerous situation to be in.

6

I would do what I could to avoid debt, especially since you are considering eventually going on for a MBA (which I assume your father will not pay for). No number of internships would guarantee you a job in banking/finance.

What I would consider doing is: 1) speak to some professors to see if you could do some kind of research work with them and have it count towards college credit as that could give you some experience outside of a normal classroom situation ; 2) see if you can do an internship during the school year or summer and get college credit for it; and 3) make an appointment with career placement to try to get an assessment of your opportunities.