how hard is it to get an internship?

Hi all. I am writing this post with extreme frustration. Currently a junior at a lower ivy, I have yet to find out what i could do this summer. I wasn't that upset when rejected by MBB, because I know they take very few interns. Since then, I branched out and applied to more than twenty boutique consulting firms and solar power companies (for marking/sales, since solar power is my interest) through official websites. I don't have the time to network for all of them, but even for those I did have a referral, nothing good comes out. Usually no communication whatsoever until a month later, a form letter flied in. In some cases, I am pretty sure my application wasn't even reviewed.

I would really appreciate someone in the HR team of any firm, or is familiar with the process to give me a sense of what the caliber of your firm's interns usually are, and what did i do wrong. Assuming I have a solid resume, how else can I improve my chance?

 
Best Response

Ivy league school or not, it's always an uphill battle, unless of course you got relatives in the industry who can set you up with a job.

You've pretty much answered your own question when you mentioned how you "didn't have time to network." Even if you were the top of your class at Harvard, getting an internship or full time job is never as easy as submitting your resume on the OCR, interviewing, and then getting the offer. You need to be build connections.

I didn't go to an Ivy League school and our location was pretty far away from most big name employers but my peers have always had great placement rates for jobs and internships and almost all of them put networking (on the phone or in person) as top priority, often skipping classes to do so.

 

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