Internship Bias

In June I began work as an intern at a Republican Congressman’s office in Maryland. While I understand colleges value internships as great learning experience and reporting this work would be a positive on my applications, I’m a bit conflicted as to how to explain it. I am applying to very liberal schools and am worried that the political affiliation of my employer, to whom I am very grateful for my position, may be a turn off to some schools. Should I not include his name in my description or just not report the internship at all?

Unless you’re applying to like Reed or Sarah Lawrence, I really doubt they’ll see it as a turn-off. Every “very liberal” school that has a large student body will have at least some degree of political diversity, and contrary to popular belief, liberals will not dismiss you for being Republican-affiliated. They may have biases, but the allure of diversity will be enough to overcome that. But take this with a grain of salt I guess. I’m not an admissions officer, so I can’t speak for them. I just want you to know that your fears may be founded on exaggerations.

Also, if you look on the college results thread in what are my chances, there’s this one kid who was the president of his “Students for Trump” club at school and still got into some great though liberal colleges.

Nor would it be a turn-off at Reed or Sarah Lawrence, or any other school with a liberal student body. You should include it

Any benefit of including this (which does exist) far outweighs the negative (which may exist).

In any case, report the internship but do not include the ®. It is unlikely any reader would know the political affiliation of a remote Congressman, and it is unlikely they will vet it by spending any time to look it up.

It is an excellent thing to do over the summer and (as long as you are not working for some highly controversial Congressperson along the lines of a David Duke type in which case I’d leave the name of the politician out of your application) it should not hurt you at any school. In fact even liberal leaning schools should want a diverse group of students with a diverse array of opinions. And if there is by some small chance one outlier school that does not want you because you worked for a Republican – well, then that probably isn’t the right college for you anyway.

And FWIW I disagree with post #3 (unless the politician is controversial/not mainstream as I mentioned in my post above) and would certainly include the name of the Congressperson etc. in your application. Those details add substance to an application. And most importantly, don’t change who you are or hide what you believe for a college application.

@happy1
Not sure what you are disagreeing with then. I did not advocate omitting their name, nor the internship. I simply advised if it was a concern to omit the political affiliation of the Congressional Representative when listing the service.

“Internship in the office of Representative John Smith, Maryland” instead of “Internship in the office of Representative John Smith ®, Maryland” will not be noticed nor looked down upon, and nobody will care enough to go digging.

shrug.

Thank you for all the tips! I was inclined to include his name but not his political party.

@DavidPuddy My only disagreement, which is minor, is that I don’t feel that including the Republican affiliation of the Congressman would hurt the application in any way. Your phrasing “that nobody would care to look up the party affiliation of the Congressman” indicated to me (correctly or incorrectly) that you felt it could be a negative to work for a Republican. But since the OP seems inclined to leave the party affiliation out it is a moot point.

Best of luck to the OP as you go through the college application process.