Did your student do or need to do an internship in college. My daughter who is an accounting/finance major can graduate without doing one but it is highly recommended. Her school seems to promote summer internships. This summer she will be interning at a local large accounting firm (one of the big 4). I do not believe the company provides anything that I’ve heard some internships provide such as airfare or housing but it is easy to get to from home by public transportation though a bit long. I’m a bit surprised though happy with the pay rate.
When I was in school we had to do two internships during the school year along with classes. One was a 3 credit 10 hour a week internship the other was a 6 credit 20 hour a week internship. We were not allowed to get paid and if we did find a company wanting to pay us the school would not give academic credit. I lucked out and was asked to do a weekend program on top of my hours and they talked to my advisor who okayed getting paid for that since it was above and beyond my hours. I ended up being offered a job through that internship.
Is it required at my D’s school? No. Is it highly, highly recommended? Absolutely yes.
D had a paid internship at school after her first year that also provided all meals and discounted housing. Her engineering co-op, which starts this summer, pays for all of her housing, travel, and benefits. That seems typical for engineering positions.
D will have another free summer where she will intern at a different company to vary experiences. She will not go a summer without relevant work.
My kids were engineering majors and had internships every summer including the one between freshman and sophomore years. None of these jobs were less than 250 miles from home, one was cross country. Some companies helped with relocation or provided living stipends, but not all. Pay increased each year and some companies paid summer before senior year interns the same salary as new hires. For my kids, the experiences were amazing.
Yes, my Graphic Design daughter had to have one. It was about 10 miles from her apartment. She did not get paid at first as she job shadowed, but then when the designer went on maternity leave and DD took over, she got paid.
My Parks & Rec daughter has to have a Field Experience and an Internship. Basically the same thing except Field Experience is less hours. They are supposed to be after sophomore year and senior year. She did apply for a job for this summer which would work for a field experience if she gets it, so I will have her ask if she can have it count and get it done early.
It can depend upon the industry. In accounting, it is definitely standard for the Big 4 to provide paid internships and, more importantly, that’s the primary source for their full-time hiring. I don’t believe that it’s so much a school requirement to have an internship at most places, but it’s certainly a de facto requirement to have had a relevant internship to be a viable candidate for a full-time job in accounting.
My kids both had jobs in the summers. These days, those jobs would be called “internships”. Seriously, a job is a good summer activity. It provides something to put on the resume as work experience, and also potentially could provide letters of reference to future employers. In addition, it shows responsibility and willingness to take on a task.
Job…internship…just get something.
ETA…get a paid job or internship. An unpaid one is simply giving the employer unpaid help…and i believe this is frowned upon.
My D’s school requires some experiential learning for graduation. Internship is one of the options to satisfy this requirement and the most popular. My D did one sophomore summer and junior summer.
My son’s school requires two internships in accounting . He did a summer one in China and one spring semester here in the states . He will be starting a job with the company here once he finishes his master’s degree.
This can be very field specific. If you want to go into Poly Sci, IR, etc, many of the internships may be unpaid. Many of the entry level job are barely paid.
D’s major of Hospitality requires 3 paid internships of 256 hours each. They suggest it be done while taking a full load of classes. I think that’s crazy. She did one during the summer and is doing her second now. Luckily she has enough credits to take a full year off from school and still graduate on time, so she is working full time and taking 1 class just to get it out of the way.
ETA- Her dad and I went to Northeastern so internships are the norm for us. D jokes she is on the Northeastern plan without going to Northeastern- semester of school, semester of work.
My older son had internships after junior and senior year. The companies paid for airfare and paid enough for room and board and for son to start an IRA account. The second internship led to a job offer. Internships were not required by the college.
Younger son had a campus job that provided room and board and increasing responsibilities each summer. Not really related to his major, but did provide skills for his resume. He had internships after he graduated that did not pay enough to live in NYC. They were at NGOs.
Personally I think the Big 4 firms have enough money they should be paying their interns a living wage. I’ll give the NGOs a pass, though I think many take advantage of kids as well.
@mathmom The Big 4 typically do pay interns a very nice salary. The firms use their internships as a hiring tool. My son was paid well (years ago) and the OP said she was “happy” with the pay rate.
An unpaid internship would be either with a government entity or non-profit, or would be for school credit (and usually you have to pay for those credits, so a double downer - no pay and you pay!).
For a private company or business, they have to pay at least minimum wage if you are doing work (not just shadowing or observing).
I probably should have divided up the comments about locations. My daughter did not mention any companies she applied to offering housing allowance, airfare etc so she applied to companies that seemed to be located on public transportation. My daughter has grown up with public transportation so that part is easy but she has never had to take it daily to the location where the job is. It looks like a one hour commute. That sounds long to me. She doesn’t’ have a car but even with one driving during rush hour is about the same.
I know for some internships such as cs my nephew had several options that included free airfare to interview and again to go there plus housing and food allowance in addition to pay. His were also in the summer. He did not want to live there once he actually experienced living there so he did not accept a job offer. The internships I did for school I got credits for that were required for graduation.
I agree that now many jobs are called internships when they are just summer jobs especially for high school students.
I’ve done one hour commutes on public transportation and found them quite doable, you can get a lot of reading done or listen to podcasts. Driving is more tiresome.
Big believer in the advantages of internships or jobs that provide college students with relevant experiences. It can be very helpful in carving out career direction; sometimes by ruling things out. Neither of our kids were required to do internships, though both chose to do them.
One of our kids is still working (9 years later) at a place where 2 separate paid internships were done (one during a semester and one for the summer). These experiences led to a part-time job at internship company throughout college, which really helped in a competitive field that required a demonstrated body of work for hiring.
The other attended a rural LAC and did a total of 5 internships as an undergrad, two during summers and the others during the academic year; not all were paid (common in these non-profit fields), though one was a fully funded international fellowship; two were governmental internships. The work experience and resume acquired were extremely impactful in determining goals, gaining graduate school admission and acquiring preferred jobs.
Great to access these experiences while in college. Understand the hesitation about unpaid internships and some rules may have changed over time, but it does vary by field. At some points, one kid did an unpaid internship that took a relatively small amount of time weekly while in school and tutoring peers for income. They found gaining the experience worthwhile. Many ways to make it work and lots to celebrate if your student is in a field with well paid internships and jobs. Agree with others that having job experience is a big advantage.
Technically unpaid internship is not legal unless you are getting school credit for doing the internship. Many companies have done away with unpaid internship because they don’t want to get sued.
When my kids were in college I was not supportive of unpaid internships. They had internships every summer, and some were funded by their school when the company didn’t pay, but no unpaid internship.
My D is a CPA who interned with a Big 4 accounting firm while in college and who still works for that firm. In her opinion, an internship is almost a requirement for full-time employment at her firm…and preferably an internship with one of the Big 4.
In my opinion, that internship was a win-win situation: it paid very well (seriously, they paid her amazingly, plus they actually paid overtime), she made valuable contacts in her field, and she learned so much. She did get a lot of free meals, but that was only because she worked a lot of late hours.
To me, the best outcomes of that experience were that she learned if she wanted to pursue a career in accounting (she did) and that she received a full-time job offer at the end of the summer. That offer made for a glorious, stress-free senior year at college.