<p>Seems like engineering and CS internships are still treated as short term paid jobs (if you are in engineering, you probably hear about paid internships from your engineering classmates), but the forum chatter here seems to indicate that, in some other types of jobs, the entry-level job market is skewed so heavily against the employee so that the unpaid internship has replaced the entry-level paid job. This may effectively screen out those from poor families from gaining the unpaid internship experience needed to eventually get an actual entry-level paid job in that area, since they cannot afford to do an unpaid internship.</p>
<p>The poster’s son found one, so I know they’re out there. But even outside of engineering, I always only hear of paid internships for Business, Math, and Econ majors as well. The few people in other majors (than Business, Math, Econ, Engineering, CS) I know are often doing paid lab work or other research in some part of the University.</p>
<p>It still seems very odd to me that the school would insist that the kid’s internship be unpaid. Certainly it restricts your options if you can ONLY take unpaid internships. I highly doubt the unpaid internship will offer significantly better experience than a paid one, so I don’t see the rationale behind the requirement.</p>
<p>Edit: Actually, come to think of it, I do remember hearing someone saying they were considering one that was in a developing country, but I think it was that they would pay for expenses during the internship.</p>
<p>I think that going back to the career services office is a great idea. Also, how well does your D know her past professors? I know that my own D got an internship offer via a finance professor whom she had for a course. D had a good relationship with the prof (and she did well in that finance course) and sought that professor’s advice when she started looking for internships. It turned out that the professor had a lot of connections with the local community and was able to help D with the internship hunt.</p>
<p>In the end, D got her internship(s) through the school’s career services office, but I thought that networking with professors was a good idea, at least in her experience.</p>
<p>My son’s school has a career services department that seems to offer weekly events to help students get internships and jobs. They also have required classes at different parts of their college career. This Spring my sophomore son has to take a one credit class entitled, “Strategically Marketing yourself”.</p>
<p>Career services also has a program where students can submit their resumes and they will get jobs/internship leads via e-mail to personally suit their skill sets. At least that’s how my son explained it. He just opted in, so I don’t know how well it works yet. </p>
<p>And yes, Vladenshutte, unpaid internships abound. Education majors are always unpaid when they student teach. Humanities majors often have unpaid internships.</p>
<p>Career offices will IME help put together a resume, give advice about clothing, sponsor a few career fairs and have listings of internships, but for a student who has never had a job before getting that first internship is pretty difficult. My younger son didn’t even try after his freshman year, opting instead to take a summer immersion course in Arabic. The next year he found most internships asked for more experience and better grades than he had, so he got a campus job for the summer that has a job description that should be helpful for future work. There’s also a professor on campus who is a good source of networking and he may look to him in the future - in fact he’s considering taking another course from this professor just because the subject of the course should give him networking opportunities right in his field of interest.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten several jobs that I was not technically qualified for according to the advertisements. If the resume and cover letter don’t get thrown out right away by computers for not having the right keywords, you should think that just because you don’t quite measure up it’s completely hopeless.</p>
<p>My D is currently doing her fourth internship experience during college (she’s a senior now) and none of her internships have been paid. Her school does have a program where students can apply for a stipend which allows them to accept an unpaid summer internship. She received this stipend the past two summers. She gained valuable experience, and the stipend paid her living experiences in another city, which we would not have been able to afford otherwise.</p>
<p>Her bf at a neighboring university has had paid internships. His have been in scientific research, while hers have been in broadcast journalism.</p>
<p>I think the internship being a 9 hour class credit had something to do with the unpaid requirement. S2’s major was Criminal Justice. His internship was at a county Sheriff’s Dept. The other offer he received was also a Sheriff’s Dept. in a different part of the state. We are in a large metropolitan area. The huge city police dept. also runs a summer internship program that is unpaid. </p>
<p>My neice is a senior marketing/fashion design student (attends same univ. as S2).<br>
She took a four week nonpaid internship in New York City last summer with a large fashion company. My brother spent thousands of dollars (for her room/board/life in NYC for a month) for her to do the unpaid internship. It panned out though. She graduates in May. The NY company has been recruiting her for a job since early Fall.</p>
<p>It would be nice if the college provided the guidance you feel they promised, and hopefully when she talks to someone else she’ll get more help. But this is also a teachable moment. If they don’t do much more, what is your D’s plan B, plan C? You say she goes to college in one of the largest cities in the country. I can’t think of anything that is stopping her from trying to find internships on her own. How about the clubs related to her interest that I hope she belongs to. Has she asked fellow students if they have internships, and if so how they found them? I think serendipity plays a large role in this, so the more irons you have in the fire the better the chances of something working out.</p>
<p>Career Services should be helpful in that there should be people who you can meet with and resources like resume writing guides or interviewing workshops. </p>
<p>My department requires an (unpaid) internship for all our majors. We have developed what I think is a helpful manual, we post internship and job announcements, and each student is assigned a faculty advisor who guides them/provides a safety net. HOWEVER, we do not find the internship for the student. The reason for this is that we view the internship as a sort of job hunt with training wheels - it’s often easier to land an internship since it is unpaid, and having gone through that experience, our graduates tell us that the actual job search is easier for them than it may be for some of their friends in other majors. (Many of our interns end up being offered paying jobs at their internship sites, too.)</p>
<p>My daughter’s college was excellent at helping their students get internships. I wish they had been equally helpful at helping the students get jobs as well</p>
<p>My understanding is that if a school is going to give academic credit, it has to be an unpaid internship.</p>
<p>S1 always got paid, but that is the nature of his field (CS).</p>
<p>S2 got paid two summers ago, but we considered that a miracle. Things that are more closely tied to his major are not paid. He is lucky that if he can land something in DC where the jobs are for his field, he could live at home and reduce his expenses.</p>
<p>Every year the WaPo has storied of unpaid interns by day working multiple jobs at night/on the weekends to cover their rent.</p>
<p>Vladenschlutte - it’s because of academic credit. We do, however, make exceptions on the rare occasion that someone lands a paid internship that meets our requirements and we routinely buy into the legal fiction that travel stipends don’t count as “pay.” Mostly the rule was established because students were trying to get credit for working their regular part time job and calling it an internship: “as an assistant at the restaurant, I will be perfecting my interpersonal communication skills by working at the hostess station and practicing problem solving and conflict resolution by explaining to customers why we are out of tonight’s special…”</p>
<p>My D2 is a new college grad working a relatively low-paying job in her field and has explored some internships but has decided that she can’t afford to take an unpaid one at this time because her parents are too cheap to pay for her to live in the city and work for free once she’s finished with school. ;)</p>