International students queries

ath
Sun, 30 Apr 2006 02:12:00 +0000

IVY,

Yes and no.

Basically during your first academic year, you are not allowed to take on paid internships. Once your second semester ends, you can apply for this thing called OPT which will allows you a period of a total of 1 year to do full-time work(40 hours per week). Part-time work (20 hours or less) will considered for half the amont of time, meaning technically you could do a total of 2 years worth of internship part-time.

So these paperworks aside, I do not believe that internationals are at a disadvantage. You have international experience, and I’m also assuming some knowledge of languages beside English (I myself know 3, and I think that definitely helped).

My internship during the semester was unpaid, but I really didin’t care since it was more important to get some experience and to put something on your resume - It’s all about leveraging yourself for the future.

The thing about internships is that the onus is on you to look for them, especially international internships. Those who expect internships to fall on their laps will never get any. Anyway, it would be hard to generalise international internships, you have to let me know specifically what country you’re looking at.

Hope this helped.