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And the mix-and-match of three jackets and three pair of slacks left me conspicuous even then.
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<p>There was a male intern in the office where I worked. Maybe I'm just unduly clueless, but I seriously doubt that I would have noticed if he only had three jackets and three pairs of pants (unless they had really loud and memorable colors or patterns.) As I recall, he showed up looking well-groomed and wearing presentable business clothes and I certainly can't imagine that I would have thought to myself on Thursday, "Gee, he was wearing that same jacket on Monday," We all had lots of work to do and were really too busy to keep track of who had worn what recently.</p>
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As for the shoes, even as a fashion-impaired man, I get that you don't wear the brown shoes with the blue slacks. A set of black pumps (when the term was first introduced to me, I wondered where the excess liquid was coming from) is indeed square one. But they don't go with all outfits.
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<p>Maybe I'm just lucky. But even at a stage in life where I own several pairs of presentable dress shoes, I find that I almost always wear my black pumps anyway. I do have blue and brown dressy shoes, but they never seem to go as well with my clothes as the black, so the others languish unused.</p>
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But you can't count on "classic" pieces being donated by alumnae in the sizes and quantities required.
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<p>No guarantees that this would meet everyone's needs immediately, but over time the collection could grow. </p>
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And most of us don't live where we can rummage through politician's and diplomat's cast-offs.
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<p>But maybe retired Smith alums who live in areas that do have such good deals could go shopping for classic pieces to contribute to the collection. (It's not just DC either. Ritzy suburbs in other areas also have great deals in garage sales and thrift shops, according to my mother, who likes to check such things wherever she travels to visit her farflung extended family.)</p>
<p>TheDad; the notion that a family would subsidize Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley via an unpaid internship is a most depressing thought. It is an urban myth that you need an unpaid internship at a place like that to get a paying job upon graduation, and you shouldn't buy into the hype just because an article in the Times says it's so. There are kids getting good jobs in finance right out of college on the basis of their excellent grades (including some classes requiring quantitative skills) , demonstrated drive and motivation, and a clear pattern of leadership in a wide range of activities. Not a single one of these requires a kid to forgo a summer's worth of earnings, not to mention the out-of-pocket costs of a summer living in NY and buying office clothing.</p>
<p>I hire hundreds of new grads a year and see a wide range of experiences, ranging from ice-cream scooper to unpaid intern to paid whatever. To me, it reflects the parents socio-economic status, and has no bearing whatsoever on the kids qualifications. The children of the rich don't have to work for money... so what else is new?</p>
<p>Back in the '70's when I was in college (and worked a series of menial jobs which paid real money) the "rich kids" I knew did one of three things during the summer-- sailing instructor or golf pro at "the club"; bummed around Europe or another exotic locale soaking up color and writing in a journal; unpaid internship with a friend of daddy's doing something fabulous-sounding but which amounted to making coffee for the rich and famous.</p>
<p>Sounds like the only thing that has changed is that the middle class has abandoned ice-cream scooping or sweater-folding for pay, to ape the coffee making of the uber class. </p>
<p>Tell your kids to develop marketable skills via paid employment, and leave the subsidization of the Fortune 50 to the wealthy.... who don't need the $8/hour wage from a store at the mall. My company would rather hire a kid who has demonstrated they can show up on time, take orders from their supervisor, perform the tasks assigned to them regardless of how trivial or menial, and manage to get back to work the next day, than a kid whose internships reflect their parents Rolodex.</p>
<p>Investment banking, law firms and management consulting are a the few markets where if a student gets an internship they are paid (approx. 1000/ week), and work full time. </p>
<p>Hey Blossom,</p>
<p>I think I have one of your kids in my house or you must have been a fly on the wall when we had the conversation. My D feels outraged at the concept of working as an inpaid intern at a multi-million dollar corporation just to gain experience. She feels if she is going to work for free, she will follow her passion and do an internship at a non-profit for a cause she beleives in.</p>
<p>As she was looking through the listings of internships at Dartmouth, the IBs, Mgmt consulting and law firms definitely pay, but she can't quite wrap her mind around the fact that the major TV stations, magazine publications, fashion houses and auction houses want you to do a lot of grunt work for free.</p>
<p>While Dartmouth does have the same types of program through (it must be for a non-profit organization or good deed doer work)</p>
<p>This brings us back to the other issues that were raised; a limited number of fellowships and you gotta have some $$ to do a "free internship" or a sponsored internship because the $3000 does not off set the cost associated with doing the internship. </p>
<p>In addition, the student still has a student contribution to pay insome instances it may be reduced, but not by much.</p>
<p>theres nothing wrong with only having 1 pair of appropriate work shoes, especially since its only going to be for the summer.
every female should already own a pair of black pants- crucial for the working world. just get a few nice tops- collared botton downs; sweater sets; and you will be set.
i bet that most females also have at least one appropriate length skirt they can wear. church/synagogue clothes?
for a pricier investment, i recommend one nice pants suit- it will be essential for the post college world.
i am an extremely thrifty shopper- i find ann taylor loft has the best sales, and the limited also has trendy but appropriate clothes. filenes, even marshalls.</p>
<p>the student will absolutely need these types of clothes anyways, so it is most defintely a worthwhile investment.</p>
<p>Sybbie, one of D's friends is in her second I.B. internship, one with a major firm, and neither has been paid. </p>
<p>Unpaid internships are kinda like the SAT's: dependence upon them may suck but that's the rules of the game until the rules are changed.</p>
<p>There are many internships where I don't think the experience would be qualitatively better than finding a good summer job, thought that too can be tough. Otoh, there are many internships where the qualitative experience is worth it, imo. As with many such judgments, each individual will draw the line at a different place.</p>
<p>Huskem, a hearty second about Anne Taylor loft. No Filene's here nor do I think Marshall's, though I'm acquainted with both via travel. But sweater sets are a non-starter for some internships; the dress code is very explicit: suits or jackets with slacks/skirt, with hose if the latter.</p>
<p>ann taylor and ann taylor loft are both now having a big sale with $5 shipping. It would be the perfect time to get some black slacks and match them up with a nice jacket.</p>
<p>Hey Dad,</p>
<p>Are you back from your trip or are you writing on the road? All I know is right now during sophomore summer they are in the middle of on-campus interviews fin Hanover or fall and winter internships at the following firms</p>
<p>BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES
CITIGROUP CORPORATE & INVESTMENT BANKING
LEHMAN BROTHERS
JPMORGAN
PARTHENON GROUP
MERRILL LYNCH
MERCER OLIVER WYMAN
McKinsey
BARCLAYS CAPITAL
DEUTSCHE BANK
GSC PARTNERS
LUBIN LAWRENCE</p>
<p>TheDad-- you are mistaken. The importance of an unpaid internship (let alone two... for an I-Bank of all places!) is most definitely in the eye of the beholder; unlike the SAT they are in no way a requirement. You are experiencing a little cognitive dissonance here.... just because every college kid your D knows is doing an unpaid internship you are assuming that they are like the SAT's which they are most clearly not.</p>
<p>If you can afford to subsidize your kid's summer then that's great-- especially if your kid is enjoying the work and discovering a possible career path.</p>
<p>To everyone else reading this board.... do not assume that your kid will be flipping burgers for the rest of his/her life if he/she hasn't spent a summer doing one of these. I cannot imagine encouraging my kid to do "volunteer work" at an institution which makes billions of dollars of profit for its shareholders.... but that's me. Out here in corporate America, we like to see that kids have some familiarity with the career path they hope to start, but a kid who worked at Starbucks and regularly reads the Wall Street Journal, Aced his/her econ and higher level math classes, and has shown leadership has as good a chance of getting an entry level job in finance than someone working for free.</p>
<p>Consider that very few government internships pay, even for higher-level students (ex.working in a prosecutor's office). </p>
<p>At least in law school, it is a big turn-off if you don't do something law-related; so much of it is for free that many students, esp. during their first summer, are expected to work for free. Couple that with the issue of often paying double rent (on an apartment near their law school and on an apt in their job in the city) and you have a financial mess. </p>
<p>Someone recently pointed out in the NYT that unpaid internships theoretically violate the minimum wage laws. Possibly, but the government is never going to change that, lest its unending supply of free labour dry up.</p>
<p>Interesting that a lot of unpaid internships are in more feminine fields - fashion, journalism - while paid internships are in the fields dominated by men (engineering, sciences, i-banking). A thought.</p>
<p>Sybbie, I'm back from the road, digging out through an accretion of back-log, still more hit-and-run than anything else with respect to CC.</p>
<p>My D's friend had an internship with one of the firms on your list; it was unpaid. </p>
<p>Blossom, it's a probabilistic, not deterministic, problem. But I suspect that "a kid who regularly reads the Wall Street Journal, Aced his/her econ and higher level math classes, and has shown leadership" <em>and</em> has experience in the field will probably be a stronger candidate.</p>
<p>Does it mean you can't get a job without the internship? Certainly not. Not any more than you can't get into HYPSM without a 1500+ SAT. But.</p>
<p>And fwiw, I'm "subsidizing" both my D's Summer and Fall, during which time she'll be taking a seminar and working on a thesis for a combined 14 units. I don't take kindly to the implication that doing so is a rich man's whim.</p>
<p>Aries, good point...I know a recent grad with top grades from a very good fashion design program. She, too, had possibilities among several internship programs...all unpaid. She did two, one with a non-profit, the other with Nordstrom's on the showbiz side. </p>
<p>And you example of law is another example of where the common expectation is to "work for free." Yes, you can perhaps get a paying job in a non-related field, though competition for those is also intense, but it's better if you can come up with something in your projected field of interest.</p>
<p>Dad, I don't question your motives in subsidizing your daughter. But to state as if it were an empirical fact that kids without unpaid internships suffer in the job market post college is untrue. You speak with such authority on most everything here, and I'd hate for parents of moderate means to feel that once again, the labor market is stacked against their kid.... after feeling that without SAT coaching their kid is relegated to unknown U.</p>
<p>For many of my colleagues in recruiting and HR, an unpaid internship is a signal of a parents socio-economic status.... nothing more. A kid with the initiative to find a lowly job job making copies and answering phones in the desired industry will always trump a fancy internship.... no matter what they may be telling you at Smith. It is well known on the "inside" that many of these internships are one step away from a violation of several labor laws... federal and state.... which is why most corporations require that interns get college credit for their work in lieu of pay.</p>
<p>My own company pays all employees-- that's the law. Any college student interested in volunteering gets sent a list of wonderful organizations... ranging from soup kitchens to homeless shelters to political campaigns to environmental protection advocacy groups, all of whom would love an energetic, talented college student for the summer.</p>
<p>"A kid with the initiative to find a lowly job job making copies and answering phones in the desired industry will always trump a fancy internship.... no matter what they may be telling you at Smith."</p>
<p>Great points again, blossom. Paid internships are no doubt going to kids with the best stats. Both the firm and the intern are checking each other out. It is logical that schools want to maintain an affiliation with top corporate employers; it's something to boast about in the catalogs & on the website. No great detail about the arrangements need be revealed. School benefits, corporation benefits, intern just "donated" a summer of labor that those "inside" the HR world aren't especially impressed with. Something is wrong with this picture.</p>
<p>It's no great effort on the corporation's part to have kids come in and do a summer of unpaid busy work to take over for vacationing file clerks.</p>
<p>I wonder how much depends on the field. A friend is working in small law firm for $10/hr. He does grunt work, but also accompanies them to court and depositions.
My S has a paid internship, about $20/hr. They order in lunch every day. The staff dress as S does, in cacki's, t-shirts, and sandals. This is a computer firm. Research programs thru his college offer a minimum of $5000.</p>
<p>In repsonse to Memie's early post about the Duke in NY fall program. (One I go to Duke and have a bunch of friends who've done the program in the past. I would've jumped at it had I not been a NY native). As for the internship dress code-- it is technically an "arts and media" program, and a lot of those firms and companies in NYC are on the casual side. (For example, my summer internship at a major film production studio which I actually found through Duke is very casual. Of course I dressed up for an interview and for the first day, but I've since learned that jeans and sneakers and flip flops are the norm... for other interns and for top execs. After she picks where she's working, definitely shoot them an email about the dress code-- she can be pleasantly surprised, and you can save a lot of money with not buying a ton of business casual stuff) </p>
<p>As for my internship, it's essentially unpaid (I get $20/day and all transportation costs covered + work-related reimbursements + school credit) and since it's unpaid, they give all interns the option to work parttime-- either to have a second internship, or a parttime job in order to make some money. I would've liked to have had a job with a real salary, and I'm sure my parents would've liked that too, but they realized that this is the industry I want to go into, and I need to start somewhere (and most people do work from the bottom up-- as interns making nothing) to learn the industry and make contacts, and maybe next summer I can get some money from it. I've had some great learning experiences, but I've also had to do Devil Wears Prada-esque tasks and errands around Manhattan (today was <em>definitely</em> one of those days). But maybe I'm able to do this because I live in NY and I don't have the outside costs of living and eating and whatnot in an expensive city, since I'm staying at home.</p>
<p>Blossom, of course the labor market is stacked against student from moderate backgrounds. The only question is how much. Students from wealthier backgrounds tend to have better pre-college preparation, are more likely to attend "name" schools where the <em>initial</em> job offerings are likely to be better, and have useful family connections into one pursuit or another. </p>
<p>Indeed, one of the attributes of a good internship is the ability to make meaningful contacts within a specific industry, somewhat democratizing the opportunities beyond the realm of the tradtional Old Boys network. (I'm beginning to feel a Mini-esque rant coming on.) </p>
<p>If internships were as insignificant as you would have it, I doubt that colleges, including the Ivies cited in the OP's article, would increasingly be getting behind them and putting resources into them.</p>
<p>As for your cavalier "A kid with the initiative to find a lowly job job making copies and answering phones in the desired industry will always trump a fancy internship.... no matter what they may be telling you at Smith"....Bullfeathers. </p>
<p>For one, a <em>good</em> internship extends beyond making copies and answering phones. For another, I've read a lot of student-originated stuff on-line and eavesdropped a lot: many students have a problem finding something beyond working at Starbucks or the Gap, and however income-producing those opportunities might be, qualitatively they aren't the same as a good internship.</p>
<p>Bookworm, the idea of a software development company having any dress code tickles me. Yeah, some environments are easier than others. I worked in two organizations where management couldn't quite bring themselves to make writers wear ties for fear that it might strangle their creativity...we didn't suggest anything to the contrary and might possibly have abetted the notion.</p>
<p>Blossom is speaking from the experience of herself and her colleagues in recruiting and HR. She is claiming that those making the hiring decisions see through the sham of many un-paid internships. She is not claiming that wealthy, privleged kids don't have advantages in the search for employment. Simply that most of these unpaid internshps provide no advantage. (I shouldn't speak for her, of course. Just posting my interpretations.) Family connections are an entirely seperate matter.</p>
<p>Colleges have every reason to encourage these internships. They cost the college nothing. Associating your college's name with a list of Fortune-100 corporations "looks" impressive. Peel back the veneer, and many of these associations are indentured servitude arrrangements. But hey, if you can afford to send your kid to one, it's not harming anyone. The kid will still learn to be polite, punctual, etc. and that's a good thing. And from the college's point of iew, it can't hurt to attract more applicants who have a Fortune-100 job as a long-term goal. Blossom was just reassuring middle-class families that these internships are not essential at all.</p>
<p>Tax corporations on the receipt of unpaid labour. Assume that it is "income" to the corporation at the rate of a new hire. At least then the Fortune 500 companies (not sure if any of them do unpaid internships.... could someone name names, or are we just assuming this happens?) would get hit in the pocket for not paying people. </p>
<p>As for college v. law school - I can tell you that your life would be hell if you looked for a job and did not do something law-related every summer. Since so many of the internships are unpaid, a lot of students simply have no choice but to work for free. Many college experiences may be a different story.</p>
<p>Aries-- I'm responding to Dad's assertion that he knows a kid who has done two unpaid internships at I-banks. It is up to him to name names.</p>
<p>Once again, we've got some cognitive dissonance here.... because the colleges like internships, we believe that therefore employers see them as a requirement? Employers see them as free labor, so what's not to like. The colleges use them as part of their spiel.... parents balk at paying 180K for their kid to major in Women's Studies....so they can trot out the list of prestigious corporations who employ their students as interns during the summer. "See Harry, I told you she'd be employeable with a degree from Fancy U."</p>
<p>Sticker Shock did a better job than I did of pointing out that the folks who make hiring decisions are not quite as naive as you paint them to be. I can probably guess the tax bracket of the parents of virtually every new grad resume that passes my desk with a high degree of accuracy.... especially when kids still stick a little section on the bottom of the resume that lists tennis, squash and sailing as "other interests".</p>
<p>Aries-- don't know enough about the law to comment. Given that most undergrads work plans are so vague as to be undescribable, the notion that a kid needs experience "in their field" is pretty funny.</p>
<p>Perhaps Citigroup offers both paid and unpaid internships, but I do know that my D spent a full day in spring 2005 interviewing, among a bunch of other semi-finalists, with a series of people at Citigroup's NYC offices for a summer internship that would have paid $1,000/week -- plus housing supplement for those who needed it. (She would not have, as her grandmother lives in Manhattan.)</p>
<p>The program was very specific -- she was e-mailed a document outlining the program and all the benefits, etc. -- and quite competitve. Not really her thing, as she and they discovered, but the money was real and they of course paid for her interview transportation costs. My D's main reaction was to some piece of original artwork by a very well known modern artist whose name escapes me at the moment -- that should have been everyone's first clue that her head was elsewhere than on the money. </p>
<p>She ended up writing briefs on trade policy and recent legislation as the only economic research analyst intern at a DC foreign policy PAC -- a wonderful (but unpaid) experience.</p>