How much does an internship help in being accepted to college

Applying to College
1

<p>Obviously its going to be very important, but just how important. </p>

<p>Im doing a internship at the national cancer institute this summer and during the school year of my senior year. </p>

<p>My transcript is average though. 3.7 GPA, 2050 (720/680/640) SAT, ranked about 25 percent in my class. </p>

<p>Would i have a considerably better shot at college where i would otherwise have not gotten in?</p>

<p>For example, one college im looking at is Carnegie Mellon. Most likely without the internship i wouldnt have a great chance at getting in. However, after doing the internship would you say i had a reasonable chance at being accepted. </p>

<p>Sorry for being so wordy</p>

2

<p>An internship is a huge factor in getting into college. Seeing as how they are generally made for colleges students, they really show your initiative. Most important though is the fact that it puts you in a whole other category of applicants, those with work experience, who’ve been in the “real world.” Of course, the internship should align with your interests or else it’s useless. Don’t take an internship at a cancer institute if your main area is political science for example.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the reply</p>

<p>And the internship falls almost perfectly with what i like and plan on doing (med school)</p>

4

<p>“An internship is a huge factor in getting into college.”
^I respectfully disagree with this statement. It is not a huge factor in getting into college.</p>

<p>GPA, class rank (top 10%), rigor of the curriculum, SAT/ACT scores, and teacher recommendations are the huge factors in getting into college. Then, add a solid essay to the package.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2009_10/c_first_year_admissions.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2009_10/c_first_year_admissions.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
^common data for Carnegie Mellon</p>

5

<p>An internship is not a huge factor in getting into college. First, most colleges don’t factor things like ECs, jobs into admission. They overwhelmingly use grades, scores, course rigor and class rank as admissino factors.</p>

<p>The ones that do use ECs and internships as admissions factors are places like Harvard that get so many high stat students that the schools can pick and choose among those high stat student to create an active, diverse class. For such colleges, to stand out for having an internship, you have to accomplish something significant on the internship such as helping author an article in a professional journal. So many applicants to top colleges have internships that simply having an internship won’t make you a shoo-in for admission.</p>