<p>I have a question for people who started attending graduate school in the fall right after graduating from undergrad in the spring: In the summer following graduation, what is your enrollment status? Are you technically enrolled in your graduate school as a student, or are you in some limbo where you're enrolled in neither school and are thus not a student? What about if you arrive early at your school to start research in the summer? And does it depend from school to school?</p>
<p>I'm asking because I'm interested in doing an internship during the summer between undergrad and grad school, and this question of enrollment status can be important to employers because of liability issues if the intern is not a student... Thanks!</p>
<p>I was not affiliated with an educational institution in the summer between college and grad school. It was the most evident by my lack of library privileges.</p>
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If someone pays your tuition for the summer, you are a student. </p>
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What liability issues? (Speaking of which, transfer students are not affiliated with an educational institution over the summer either; yet I can’t see them getting denied an internship because they are not students.)</p>
<p>I would not expect to be considered enrolled. Like the above poster said, if campus services don’t recognise you as a student, you probably aren’t technically one yet.</p>
<p>It’s less liability issues than minimum wage laws. There are a lot of exclusions for unpaid internships for students. It’s far more problematic for a person who is not in school.</p>
<p>You’re not enrolled as a graduate student in the summer in between unless you make a special arrangement with your receiving school - usually, to start doing early research with your advisor or to start a fellowship or something. You’re in “some limbo,” which is also generally referred to simply not being a student just like the majority of people in the world.</p>
<p>minimum wage laws. There are a lot of exclusions for unpaid internships for students. It’s far more problematic for a person who is not in school.</p>
<p>Actually, I’m not sure this is true. A lot of people do internships the summer after they graduate, and a lot of people do internships (both unpaid and paid at below minimum wage) long after they graduate from college. I think the exceptions are for internships in general, not for students - the difference being that an internship that pays less than minimum wage has to impart more benefit to the intern than to the company (although this is not widely enforced).</p>
<p>The problem is that some internships are only for people who are classified as students. For example, the State Department internships - but they will accept graduating seniors IF they have been accepted at and commit to enroll at a graduate school for the following fall.</p>
<p>From the United States Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (April 2010):</p>
<p>"The determination of whether an internship or training program meets the exclusion in which the intern is not required to be compensated depends on all the facts and circumstances of the program. To assist in that determination, the following six criteria must be applied and evaluated:</p>
<p>1 ) The internship (even if it includes actual operation of the facilities of the “for-profit” employer) is similar to the training which would be given in a educational environment;
2 ) The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
3 ) The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under the close supervision of the existing staff;
4 ) The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;
5 ) The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and
6 ) The employer and intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.</p>
<p>If all of these factors are met, an employment relationship does not exist under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the intern is not required to be paid for the services he or she renders."</p>
<p>Number 4 is the real hook. It’s not that there must be more benefit to the intern than the company, it’s that there must be no benefit to the company. If the intern provides an immediate benefit, there’s significant liability for the employer. It’s far cleaner to try to get by these with an active student participating through his school.</p>