International Students and Internships

Hi fellow monkeys,

I'm an international student who'd like to share his success story. To fellow international students: Even though there might seem to be a huge invisible wall preventing you from securing a summer internship here in the US, do not give up hope. There is still light at the end of the tunnel, and all you need to do is to find a way to get there.

I followed the rules: Network early, recruit hard, hustle like crazy. Sometimes the cards just don't fall your way, and in this case I couldn't secure many first rounds. I want to attribute it to the fact that international students aren't really put on the early recruitment cycle like others, but I left it as just luck was not on my side.

Spring semester came, and the feeling of not having secured a banking summer internship really gnawed at me, I was all ready to throw in the towel and fly back to Asia where internships were much easier to secure through family connections. However, after reading many posts here on the forum, I picked myself up and decided to hustle till the end of the semester. I thought that by doing that, I wouldn't let myself down and have any regrets over summer.

Fast forward to today, I just received my offer from a small buy-side firm in the West Coast. After 315 days of hustling, networking, recruiting -- I have reached the promised land of landing a summer internship in the US as an international student. And I really have you guys at the WSO community to thank for the inspiring posts that have been helping me along the way.

Cheers,
fiveam