Does his school keep a data base for interns? or companies that recruit interns on campus? They should know the protocol from years past or have contacts.
They likely do. I’ll have him check in. Thanks!
Op- I apologize if I misunderstood you when you said “so I’ve reassured him that it’s likely a little early in the process” in your post #4. To answer your question about when he might hear back, in my DD’s experience she heard back any where from 4 hours to two weeks when companies wanted to interview her and two to three months when companies did not want to interview her. She usually got her offers within a week of interviewing.
One idea in case your son hasn’t done this is to apply to the companies that sponsor his college’s SAE team. At my DD’s college her SAE team is part of the university’s student competition center. Most of the corporate sponsors have actively solicited and hired students involved in teams coming out of the student competition center. In fact the university person in charge of corporate relations told team members to let her know if there was a sponsoring company that they wanted to work for because she would push their resume to the top of the pile with that sponsor. If the team has a sponsorship chair or faculty advisor, perhaps your son could contact them and get some sponsor contact information.
Another thing that some students at my DD’s university are doing if they haven’t received any offers yet is to apply to special research projects which have due dates now and pay stipends ov $5k or more. I don’t know much about it, but I have see advertisements from all kinds of universities or organizations. I quickly could only find one link, but my DD tells me she gets emails about them every week. http://www.qem.org/2016%20NSF%20Internship%20Application.pdf
I am sure your son’s college engineering department would have more info on those kinds of opportunities.
If I remember correctly you son is ME, if so then look at the job listings posted on ASME and SME.
Oh, sorry, I meant early in the process for this hiring cycle. No need to panic yet.
“With a busy course schedule, Formula SAE, his job and trying to get some exercise and sleep, he’s still working on applications.” - Yep, that can be a challenge, especially when doing Formula SAE as well as project-based courses. But it’s so great he is doing that.
CP doesn’t really do project based courses in the same way that WPI and Olin do, but most of the classes have labs. There’s not much you can do to lessen the impact of 23 page thermodynamics problem sets. 
The highly competitive intern position companies will many times restrict their internships to rising seniors and above no matter what the applicant’s GPA or other hooks are. The company I worked for did. Never saw an internship applicant less than a rising senior, HR filtered them out first. The main reason for that was 1) they could because they got so many applicants and 2) the internship was viewed as a long job interview.
Applying for internships is almost like applying to colleges, you need your safeties. In the case of internships, a safety would be a smaller company where they don’t get as many applicants and your son’s application would really stand out.
Thanks Puck. He does have an ultimate fall back internship where he has an open invitation. If he doesn’t hear anything by spring break from the pile he has out now, he’ll start digging into lesser known positions. He knew he was taking a bit of a risk and retrospectively figured out he started late. It’s a good learning experience.
It’s not bad to take a risk with not accepting an offer after an internship. It gives you perspective and helps answer the question, “what if I had done things differently?” Chances are that a company or its direct competitors will always be willing to hire a good quality student with knowledge in their domain.
He already has one internship on his record, which puts him well above many others in the job search. I think it will work out OK in the end.
Thanks. Me too.
My internship timelines from 2014 (for Summer 2015 internships):
Boeing did interviews in September for summer internships and full time hiring. They start collecting resumes July 1st, I never personally applied there once I found out they weren’t hiring for anything CST-100 related. Chinook’s are cool I guess :-p
ULA interviewed me in early November (I didn’t get the offer but a fellow classmate who interviewed the same day I did got his offer in December)
JPL interviewed me in mid November, internship offer in February
NASA - At least with Goddard, they really want you to do the Co-op Pathways program, which ironically, doesn’t work with UMD’s aerospace curriculum. That said, every time I’ve used OSSI or USAJobs, I’ve never gotten any bites from NASA proper in the past 3 years. (Note JPL employees work for Caltech, not NASA)
SpaceX - October & November interviews (side note, SpaceX employees make good trivia night partners)
Sierra Nevada Corp - I met informally with an engineer from there in early September. That probably would have led to an interview except he was laid off along with 300 other engineers after losing the commercial crew contract to Boeing and SpaceX a couple weeks later.
On USAJobs: it’s a site that gets you hits if and only if you know the proper way to write a resume for the site. They have a magic algorithm that prunes out most applications and automatically ranks the rest in their own special ordering scheme. Google this and you should be able to find a solution, if you really want a job from there. They pay badly so personally I’d pass.
Thanks! That’ll be very helpful for next year.
For my D in sophomore of engineering with junior standing (85 credits after first semester), I told her to put junior standing on her resume explicitly. Hopefully that would increase her chance to get an internship position this summer. She has 2 likely position pending. Otherwise, she has a summer research in engineering on campus as a back up plan.
I did hire a few interns in the past and I usually look for relevant work experience. So the first intern position is very difficult to find.
My son is the same, soph with junior standing. I think he put junior too since by the summer he’d be a rising junior in years and an established junior in progress. Thanks!