<p>I'm in a bind: I can study a language I like (and go abroad for a year to that country), but forfeit getting an internship in the summer. </p>
<p>Is it worth it? I have had no job experience in my life, and I'm a sophomore. Utlimatly, does that one (hypothetical) summer internship matter? Or should I learn the language and culture Ive come to adore?</p>
<p>To me it is no question: Go abroad. If you would be abroad during the summer before your junior year, it’s even more clear that you should go abroad!</p>
<p>Internships can be helpful when you look for jobs during the fall of your senior year, but they are not so important that they act as prerequisites for jobs. And the reality is, you have an entire life to be a slave to the corporate empire (not a bad thing!), but this is probably your one and only chance to spend a year in which your only objective is to learn a language and culture.</p>
<p>Dude…what major are you? And where do you go to school? If you’re in anything related to Business, Economics, or Finance, uh…you better have an internship this upcoming summer. The internship you have this summer will give you something to talk about during fall recruiting during junior year, which would hopefully be fruitful and lead to a junior summer internship, which would consequently lead to a full time offer in your fall of senior year.</p>
<p>If your internship is going to be something like tutoring, volunteering, or basically a not very meaningful internship, then I would just pass it on and study abroad.</p>
<p>BTW chrisw, the reality that he will have his entire life to be a slave to corporate America is a false premise. What makes you think he will get a job in the first place? Technically, you can spend all your time learning a language and culture when you are unemployed, like tons of my classmates and acquaintances who decided to do other random things in college that weren’t career orientated. Ouch.</p>
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<p>You’re kidding, right? Internships don’t just fall out of the sky, and the ones that do don’t usually land in the laps of sophomores. Sophomores present little value to companies except to expose people to those companies early enough that they will feel some kind of loyalty when it comes to full time recruiting or to show universities that the companies “care” about developing younger students. To suggest that an internship prior to your junior year is anything more than a “nice-to-have” is ludicrous. Even a junior internship is hardly a prerequisite for full time job searching.</p>
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<p>Someone who has the presence of mind to ask the question the OP asked strikes me as someone who will be organized enough to lock down a job before graduation.</p>
<p>Hmm… you suggest that, since I wanted to enter corporate America after graduation, I should have joined a business fraternity, done internships each summer, majored in business and joined a few entrepreneurship clubs. My how I went wrong in college! What was I thinking, using undergraduate education to explore my own intellectual interests (instead of focusing purely on the practical), studying abroad during the summer before my junior year (instead of finding a mystical “good” internship for a rising junior), performing research for a political science professor (instead of playing the stock market), spending 25+ hours a week doing the glee club (instead of spending 25+ hours a week doing entrepreneurship clubs), joining a social fraternity (instead of a business fraternity), waiting tables over my summers (instead of finding “meaningful internships,” which I tried and failed to do), and doing other random things in college that weren’t at all career oriented. I should make sure that the two companies that gave me offers during my senior year (including my current employer, for whom I’ve worked for nearly two years) and the company that gave me an offer last spring all know that I didn’t do any of the things you say I needed to do during college, so they can all retract their offers.</p>
<p>Oh, wait, that’s right. I forgot. Businesses don’t care about what you’ve done except as it relates to what you can do in the future. Do you appear to have the potential to add value? If yes, you make it through to the next round; if no, you don’t get a job.</p>
<p>You do, in fact, have a whole life to work in the corporate world, but the opportunity to study abroad is a unique one, and I have never heard of someone regretting a study abroad experience. Fluency in a language, by the way, is an EXTREMELY marketable skill, so study abroad can be quite career oriented, if you choose to make it so.</p>
<p>Why are you raging?</p>
<p>OP should at least try to find an internship of some sort. He just said he literally has no work experience in his life. His resume is empty. That’s so sad. If he can’t find an internship during the summer, find one during the school year. Internships don’t fall from the sky, but you have to proactively apply and groom yourself to be eligible for one. Traveling abroad doesn’t really help in that category. In respect to learning a foreign language, yeah it’s useful, I agree, but only if it’s in a language like Mandarin, Spanish, etc. And let’s face it, who the hell actually studies abroad for the real purpose of becoming fluent in a language for career purposes? The point is to have some fun, get an easy A, and learn some culture.</p>
<p>I don’t know what major he is, so it’s hard to say in terms of his career. If he’s a biology major and is pre-med or pre-health profession, an internship might just not matter. Go study abroad then, and go volunteer at a hospital or go on a medical mission the year afterward. All you need is your MCAT and GPA anyways.</p>
<p>If he is going to law school, go study abroad, all that matters is GPA and LSAT.</p>
<p>If he is an engineer or business major…hmm…he should at least attempt to get an internship. I know a handful of people that got internships in the summer between soph-junior year. The smart ones got great internships, but others got smaller ones like smaller investment firms, smaller sized accounting firms, etc, smaller sized engineering companies. Their positions were like Accounting Clerk, or Quality Assurance, or Research Intern. Either way, it gave them something relevant to put down on their resume.</p>
<p>When junior year fall recruiting came along, and companies like Deloitte or Amazon come on campus, the people I knew often made it through at least the first rounds of interviews because they had relevant internships. Candidate A had Accounting Clerk with ZYX LLC, a small company of 10 accountants in TownsVille, while Candidate B only had a job at Starbucks over the summer as a barista. Obviously, Candidate A has an advantage because he can at least say in the interview, “Hey look, I wanna go into accounting. I did this summer internship. I learned some things like cash, generated aging reports, etc.” ZYX, LCC wasn’t a big awesome firm, but it was something small and gave Candidate A some experience. My point is, if he is in a field that like engineering or business, OP isn’t doing himself a favor by delaying the process of not having work experience. He needs something to put down on his resume that isn’t Starbucks.</p>
<p>I didn’t suggest anything, you’re putting words into my mouth. But from my point of view, I think a person can accomplish a balanced college social life with a career orientated agenda. I, for one, did that. I joined a social club that I was heavily involved in throughout my 4 years of college and I had my bros that I always hung out with on Thursday nights. But at the same time, I did well academically and pursued internships when possible. I had 3 internships in college, including 1 summer internship. That crap helped a lot when I was looking for my first job - I got 2 decent job offers 1 week before graduation when it was all said and done.</p>
<p>If I had the time for it, yeah, I probably would have studied abroad and I’m sure I would have enjoyed it. But looking back, I didn’t have time for it, and I’m glad I didn’t have to sacrifice anything that would have otherwise hurt my prospective employment in exchange for a few months of fun.</p>
<p>Chrisw, I don’t doubt you’re a smart guy. You went to UPenn, so you’re obviously brighter than your average Joe and I’m sure you were able to balance a lot of things, including getting internships, studying abroad, getting good grades, and having a social life. That’s great. The OP is asking, “Should I spend my summer doing an internship, or studying abroad? Oh btw, I have no work experience ever.” To which I respond, well since you have nothing on your resume, IF you are able to get an internship, then do that instead of studying abroad. If you can’t find anything, then go study abroad. You go to college so you can get a degree so you can get a job/career. Everything else should be secondary on your list of priorities.</p>
<p>I think if you read the above posts you’ll get your answer OP but I think an internship would be more beneficial to you right now. If you are already not active on campus I would highly recommend you start joining clubs that interests you and take leadership positions. Since you are a sophomore you are very limited to internship opportunities since most companies only look for juniors and up. I would try to find a local company in your hometown, if that is possible. I was lucky enough to secure an internship as a sophomore and it has helped me tremendously. I already had a head-start when fall recruitment came around my junior year. I have now secured my second internship for next summer. </p>
<p>If you can get an internship then do that. You’ll be helping yourself a lot. I think an internship related to your field will definitely outweigh a study abroad experience. If you cannot secure an internship then do the study abroad. It’s better than wasting the summer away playing games or doing some crap retail job.</p>
<p>Let me try to rephrase what I’m saying.</p>
<p>I look at this in terms of utility: how much utility is gained through study abroad, and how much is gained through an internship?</p>
<p>This is something that varies by person, and I think you are being rather shortsighted in your analysis of the value of internships vs. study abroad. You can look at it as a year of screwing around, but there is actually a good bit of value in studying abroad. </p>
<p>Consider that you will likely be living with people of entirely different cultures, and you will need to learn how to cooperate with people who may not even speak English, let alone understand American educational or business culture. That’s got value in any business with an international presence. I work with a lot of eastern Europeans and Indians; the experience I got in just a month of study abroad has helped immensely with regard to understanding cultural differences.</p>
<p>Let’s think bigger, though. Much bigger… as in lifetime. If you are an average person, you are going to get a job out of college and start working 50 weeks a year. You will eventually get married and have children. If you are exceptionally lucky, you will be able to take vacation time and spend the money to travel abroad, but that isn’t really a guarantee. Even if you do get to travel abroad, you will probably only be able to hit major cultural icons… check things off the bucket list, so to speak. When you are 67, you might be able to retire, and if you have planned well and had a few strokes of luck, you may be able to travel for more extended periods, but you will still have the responsibilities of children and grandchildren.</p>
<p>As a student, you can immerse yourself in a foreign culture. You can see the major cultural icons of the country you visit, but you can also discover local icons… the things that tourists never get to see. If you travel to Europe, you get to study in a setting entirely different from that of the United States. You position yourself so that you can visit other cities and countries on a weekend trip for a hundred bucks instead of planning a major annual vacation for a thousand. If you do it right, you will have an experience that will forever change your perspective in a fundamental way.</p>
<p>Two of my friends did full-year study abroad - one in France and one in China. Both are now better than fluent in their languages (they can speak naturally and can recognize regional dialects as quickly and easily as native speakers). One is in law school and has used his experience in France to help secure a summer internship with a law firm that specializes in international cases. The other took a job with an American bank but located in Singapore.</p>
<p>I have dozens of other friends/acquaintances who studied abroad for a full year or for a semester, and literally zero of them have any regrets, including those who studied in places that made obtaining an internship impossible.</p>
<p>The detail that the OP has no work experience is important, and it means that he must find a way to get experience somewhere, but that does not need to be at the expense of a study abroad experience that could be truly life changing. Consider these options…</p>
<ol>
<li>Short-term fellowships and internships that would allow flexibility to work during the part of the summer you are in the United States before moving abroad.</li>
<li>Spring semester fellowship/internship in spring, 2013</li>
<li>Campus job - though others would lead you to believe that these are pointless, any job is better than no job since it forces you to have some responsibility for something.</li>
<li>Research - if you’re going into business, research is quite useful since it will likely force you to understand business applications like Access and Excel. If you can’t secure a position as a research assistant for a professor, find a paper that you particularly enjoyed writing and ask your professor if he would help you expand it. I actually did this during my junior year, and it led to a research job for senior year!</li>
<li>SOME kind of job - You shouldn’t have a resume with no work experience whatsoever, so it is in your best interests to do something at some point before you start applying for jobs.</li>
</ol>
<p>You are behind on work experience if you have none as a sophomore, but studying abroad shouldn’t have a major impact on your ability to get a job senior year; you may have more trouble doing fall recruiting, but as long as you recognize that you need to earn experience, you should be able to get yourself there without sacrificing a truly unique opportunity.</p>
<p>Like I said, if OP has no offer for a legit summer internship, then go study abroad because he’s probably just going to waste his summer chilling with his buddies or working as a waiter anyways.</p>
<p>Either way, I’m doubting OP will have a legit summer internship considering he has never worked a day in his life and can’t even spell “ultimately” correctly.</p>
<p>Internship experience is very important. At the minimum you need one, but honestly aim for two. There is a strong correlation between getting a good full-time offer and having solid internship experience. </p>
<p>You don’t have to do this in the summer either. I have worked an internship during the school year, and many of my most successful friends have done the same thing. We all have full-time jobs lined up next summer at good firms. Actually it may be even less competitive getting an internship in the fall, and the fact is most places are very flexible and can work around your schedule.</p>
<p>So you can study abroad and find an internship for the school semester.</p>
<p>I’d say get an internship, even if it’s short. I’m a senior Biology major, and I had a full time internship this past summer surveying trees for a longevity study. That internship helped me get a recommendation for an internship that I started in October and just ended on Friday. That one was short (primarily due to financial reasons for me, since both were unpaid), but, since I have begun looking at job postings, I realized that without those internships I would be royally screwed. I have worked at a camp for two summers, and I’ve been working at a car wash while attending school since 2007. I honestly would have no clue what to write in a cover letter or speak about in interviews if I didn’t have a slightly relevant internship. I understand what Chris is saying, too, but I think internships are incredibly important these days.</p>
<p>Hopeing this isn’t too off topic, but daughter is choosing between 2 majors at 2 different schools: one in Marketing Communication, the other in Retail Management with a Fashion Merchandising component. Likes everything about the Marketing Comm program; however like i said the Retail Management program includes Fashion Merchandising courses. Her career goals are Fashion Merchandiser, Buyer, Fashion Marketer, write for Fashion magazine, etc. Sounds like the program with Fashion Merchandising would be best-suited based on what I have written. Marketing Comm is in Boston, Retail Management/Fashion is in SC. My questions are: 1) better to go to Boston even without the Fashion Merchandising component and get a good solid general Marketing Comm foundation and look for internships in the Fashion field? 2) go to SC and get the Retail/Fashion foundation and look for internships in Fashion field in the typical fashion meccas (NY/Atlanta/LA/etc?). PLEASE HELP. She needs to make this decision in the next few days for the upcoming semester. I’m an IT person and don’t really have a feel for this career path when it comes to which will position her for the best job opportunitities.</p>
<p>rgaines, it may be worth starting a new thread about this because it is a very good question.</p>
<p>Both of those majors would lend themselves to jobs in fashion - in fact, my school didn’t offer a specific “retail management” concentration or major, but many communication grads go work for Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, etc. as buyers. It sounds like your daughter wants to be involved in fashion somehow but isn’t sure how, and my gut says that she should go for the more general program. </p>
<p>That said, the types of companies that recruit at each school should be a big part of this decision. In addition, she should consider her personal fit at each of the schools. The program can be perfect, but if she doesn’t like anything else about the school, it won’t be worth sticking it out for four miserable years.</p>