Hello Everyone,
I am planning on going to graduate school (PhD program in political science) after completing my undergraduate degree. Does anyone think that it is necessary to have internships on your application for grad school? Do grad schools, specifically PhD programs, care about internships?
It always matters what the internship is and what your role was there. So it’s a case by case question. If you want to get more specific - pm me!
Internships aren’t really relevant. It’s research that’s relevant. If your internship is research-heavy then yes, they care.
When I applied to PhD programs, I did talk about my time interning in a non-research position (as an intern in the Senate) because it was important to why I wanted to pursue a PhD (which I’m pursuing in American Culture). However, I didn’t talk about other internships because they weren’t relevant.
Moved to the graduate school forum.
As romani already said, internships aren’t really that relevant - you need to do research. There are some summer internships that are pretty research intensive (like interning at a think tank or nonprofit as a research assistant) and those can be pretty useful. As romani pointed out, doing an indirectly related internship can be sort of helpful, too, insofar as you can use it to talk about building your interest or learning about applied areas of research. But really, to get into grad school you need research.
During the school year, you should see if any of your political science professors can take on a research assistant - pair up with one doing research that’s interesting to you. You can also try to do an independent study project. And there are lots of summer research internships you can do - search “summer undergrad research political science” or some similar words to find some.