I attended the Cal Poly open house on Friday. At the Women in Engineering panel it seemed that everyone had gotten incredible internships as underclassmen. Were these students the anomaly, or does Cal Poly really prepare you well enough to get internships after your first or second year?
I don’t mean to be sexist, but it is a little easier for females, especially members of SWE, to land internships in the earlier years. It’s very challenging for males. They basically have to know someone. No one at that stage really has much to offer.
Companies are making up for the gender diversity gap and are trying to incentivize strong female candidates through earlier internship opportunities. That’s not to say you can be a slacker and expect to be chosen simply because you’re female. You can’t. You still have to be strong. The door will just open a little earlier.
Congratulations on your acceptance! At Cal Poly gender is not considered in admissions and engineering is a tough admit!
What @eyemgh said and I’d like to confirm a few details. My daughter (Computer Engineering Junior) will have her second consecutive internship at Apple, which she chose from a number of other offers from other companies. She’s involved in a few women’s societies and all her female friends got really good internships.That said, she also has a good GPA (>3.5) and actively sought out the internships. At the company I work for (large/well known name in the industry - not Apple tough) I met a good number of CalPoly interns, male and female. I highly doubt the internships are awarded to women without a strong merit consideration. That is certainly not the case at the company I work for, where I personally interviewed and rejected women candidates that did not make the bar, without any pressure from HR. The only advantage women will have is that they might be given more opportunities to interview, which helps. BTW, my daughter did not receive offers from all companies she interviewed with, and even from Apple, she interviewed with 3 separate groups before being made an offer. Also, I had absolutely no contribution, I don’t know anyone at Apple, I might get in trouble if I talked to them 
So don’t expect any free lunch, she will not get internships unless she does well in interviews and actively works to stand out somehow in the pool of candidates.
I will also second @eyemgh . I don’t know any female CPE students who haven’t had an internship as an underclassman. Engineering is tough, and there is certainly some very strong competition for women in engineering at Poly, but there’s quite a bit of visibility for women at Poly. Any company in the Bay area (Especially Apple and Google) seems to recruit women heavily. There’s also VERY helpful SWE networking events that almost guarantee interviews if you attend. All of the girls I know that got internships, got at least one of them through those events. (Separate from career fairs)
I know a few of those who helped put on the SWE event you attended and I will tell you that they, and the others, are not an anomaly.