I am currently a freshman about to enter my second semester of college and I’m a little worried about the fact that I do not have a summer internship locked down. I am an anthropology major and did not realize how difficult it can be for us humanities majors to get an internship, most of my friends who are in STEM have been able to secure internships for not only the next semester, but also for the summer. Trust me, I’ve heard every joke in the book about humanities / social science majors being worthless, but I truly love my major and absolutely don’t intend to change it. I am planning on working and taking GE classes at a community college over the summer instead so that I can still be productive, but can’t help but feel disheartened while I watch what feels like everyone besides myself get an internship during our next big break.
Anyways, enough rambling. Is it really so bad that I don’t have an internship for the summer? Any tips from fellow humanities / social science majors?
No. Take the summer classes. It is more likely to get something after your sophomore /junior year anyway. Stem is essentially the same with some exceptions. Doing something positive each summer is the key. Taking classes will help you get ahead so you know you will graduate in time. Keep in mind most summer classes are accelerated also so take like 2 and do well in them.
I heard from my kid who goes to a school in the West coast that STEM majors have to apply to 50 or even 100 internship positions because even though there is a lot of demand for let’s say CS majors, the supply is huge. But non-STEM majors, even though it’s hard, there is not as much competition. My kid was able to get an internship position for his freshman summer with a stipend in another country whose language he spoke pretty well. If you speak another language, you might want to look for an internship position using your language as a hook.
@websensation allow me to crack a joke (not at your kid’s expense! I think it’s awesome that he got a paid internship abroad!). So are you telling us that Stanford kids have to compete for internships and don’t have employers lining up to hire them for $4,000 per week positions? ?
Non-STEM kids anywhere have to try harder. Internships with stipends are not easy to come by for them. That’s the reality. :). Some of the kids who applied for the spot were Stanford kids.
While traveling to attend an event I had the opportunity to take my S and four classmates to lunch. One of the topics that came up was what everyone will be doing over the summer. I took that as an opportunity to get some info on their experiences with internships. Here’s the points I walked away with. Note that they are all junior year students (three CS majors, one EE and one Chem). All have had internships beginning freshman year (save for one who went on an extended family vacation with her family). So, a small sampling of STEM focused experiences.
Complete agreement that freshman year internships were the hardest to land. Some mentioned competition in general and from sophomore/junior/senior students.
Sophomore year internship applications resulted in more call backs and interviews and for junior year, most reported being contacted directly by recruiters from the big tech firms.
A few mentioned using connections (profs, grad students, family) to gain interviews. All on LinkedIn with healthy connections and use of InMail.
Two had at least one summer as a paid research intern.
Three had at least one summer in a startup. All three mentioned their preference of the startup environments as opposed to the big tech companies (in general).
All have internships tied down for 2019 after which they all feel like they will have had experience from some of the companies they consider to represent the internship gold standard: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Uber were all mentioned.
No, it is not bad that you don’t have an internship after freshman year. However, make this productive by working at any kind of job or taking courses.