Freshman internship - should I nepo or not?

Hi, I'm currently a freshman in a tier 2 target school (Columbia, Penn, Duke) trying to do finance. I'm an international student, and I do have parents that have connections in finance back home, and am wondering if I should use them. Since a lot of big firms don't hire freshman interns, I really have two options for my freshman internship:

  1. Cold email smaller local firms in the US for an opportunity to intern in the summer
  2. Use my family connections to land an internship at the Asia office of a reputable BB/EB bank

I wonder whether interning at a place with a brand name would be better than finding an internship in the US, since I've also heard that experience outside the US tends to get devalued. I'm also not sure how a nepo internship would look on my resume, so I'm worried. Which option is better?

11 Comments
 

I don’t know how/if international experience is viewed differently, but I’d assume brand name still matters most for early internship experience on your resume. Try both strategies and go with whichever lands you better opportunities. Even if you only accept one offer, it’s always good to practice with lots of interviewing and networking. Don’t worry about anyone thinking your internship is nepo, recruiters will ask you what you actually learned from the internship and not how you got it. Wouldn’t an internship in the USA be harder since it would require H1B?

 

it's not wrong to use your connections. use the advantages life gave you, while remaining humble and acknowledging that you were lucky to have these advantages. 100% anyone who complains about nepotism would use it instantly if they had the chance

 

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