<p>I'm a mechanical engineering finishing up their junior year with still no plans for the summer. I know junior year is the time to get an internship and I tried everything: career fairs, conferences, contacting alumni, asking friends/family, and nothing has worked out. I got 1 in person interview and never heard from the company again. My GPA is around a 3.2 so it's not horrendous but I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, and I've exhausted all options. I've taken my resume to career services and they said it looked fine. The only thing is I don't have any research/engineering experience but I didn't think it'd be that much of an issue since I'm still only in college. Now I'm scared I'll be applying to full time jobs with only crappy minimum wage summer jobs on my resume. What do I do/if nothing pans out what can I do this summer that can build up my resume a little bit? Am I screwed....?</p>
<p>You’ll certainly have a harder time without it, but it won’t be impossible.
Just figure out your mistakes and try next year. No engineering experience? Find some. Poor social skills? Improve them. Hard to find a position? Apply more.</p>
<p>Definitely apply to more and earlier on. </p>
<p>One of my buds here at UIUC is in the same situation as you, but he is one of the best communicators I know, has almost a 3.9 GPA in aerospace engineering, active in research, etc but hasn’t gotten an internship yet. I think his problem, and yours, lies with not applying to things earlier on and not applying to enough. He only applied to things at NASA and a school research program, and he has only been accepted to the research program but wants to be at NASA so badly. One company was interested in him, but he didn’t bother to do the interview because he was so set on working for NASA. However, he applied pretty late for the NASA positions, so he has a high chance of not getting one. </p>
<p>Moral of the story: Apply early and to as many opportunities that are interesting to you. That’s how you will get internships and jobs. Regardless though, I wish you luck!</p>