S23 is a month away from the end of freshman year. He applied starting last fall to various research options at his school and nationally, though none were targeted to freshman and most likely bias toward older grades. None of them have come through so far, though they have been annoying late in announcing leaving little time to pivot. He also has reached out to many professors at his university and others (none of which is knows personally) without any success.
None of this surprises me but he has only now conceded the likelihood of defeat and opened himself up to help or suggestions from us. His older siblings had a couple advantages, including being at small liberal art colleges that provided research opportunities for undergrads (his older brother’s college practically guaranteed students opportunities). Not so at S23’s university. I also learned about internship opportunities from colleagues previously but that well is dry this time (too late, and I’m not at the same places).
Anyway, he’s now open to any applicable internship or research but it’s late days and I have few ideas or leads. Barring anything else, he’ll likely come home and try and find a local job for a couple months and/or offer himself up to academic tutoring or music lessons. But he would prefer a real research role or internship. He’s checking his school posting resources, but from other posts on the college’s parent forum it seems many of his peers have also tried that and dead-ended so far.
He’s a math and physics double major. He has CS experience from HS but is not a CS major/minor or did any course in it at the university.
Any suggestions from the collective? Is there a good research for late stage internships open to rising sophomores?
I think it would be a good idea to start contacting all your local friends and business associates - he may be able to find an unpaid opportunity (or very low pay) in your local area and live at home. He should also indicate he is open to full or part time. Flexibility really helps.
Be specific about what he is looking for (he can cold email local companies too) - important to be clear what he can do and that he is flexible. Are there local colleges in your area - he can also cold call those professors too - everyone likes low/no pay help Does he have a Linked-In account and has he cross referenced grads from his college that live in your area - another great place to cold call and make connections.
Is there career center on campus? He may need help with polishing his resume, or practice interviewing.
Ask his friends who have internships or jobs- sometimes may be last minute openings.
That happened for my son many years ago in accounting- he referred classmate for job.
Go to the website of the large corporate companies that look for CS recruits like Northrop, General atomics, BAE, etc. Generally those websites have specific descriptors for student interns; click on the “careers” tag and then look for “students”.
They will provide a description of whatever they require. Generally, there are certain schools that these companies work with, depending on the region that you were targeting. They’re pretty open to having student interns.
@citivas, unfortunately there are a couple of additional challenges other than the late search
there are fewer companies that hire math/physics majors (FTE roles in these field are typically for PhDs, although undergrad internships are possible)
very few companies offer first year internships (even for CS)
He can search on LinkedIn and through his career center, but he might have more luck searching for research support opportunities. I second the suggestion to check with local universities.
And if all else fails, working a “regular summer job” is a perfectly acceptable option for a rising sophomore. There are many useful skills to be gained that he can highlight on his resume.
There is nothing wrong with getting a plain vanilla job after freshman year. He will be a much stronger candidate for research next year, and developing the soft skills (dealing with angry parents if he’s a counselor at a day camp; dealing with hostile customers if he’s working at a diner) will serve him well.
If he has solid office type skills, he can make his own internship at a local non-profit (hospital, museum, advocacy organization, aquarium, bird sanctuary,) or political campaign (which ought to be heating up just as his last exam ends). He may start out doing traditional “bottom of the food chain” work on a campaign, but a math major will be able to interpret polling data (which many people- even experienced political types cannot) and do high value work doing segmentation and targeting.
And a final note- kids switch/drop out of already established campus research roles frequently. (they get a better offer, decide they want to go home instead of staying on campus, etc.) Your son should follow up with his professors up until the end of the semester… things open up suddenly and those jobs go to the kid who happens to be standing there. One of my kids got one of those…
I agree with the others that a plain old summer job is fine. I have a rising sophomore (engineering) who has also struck out on getting anything for the summer. He had a 1-semester research internship this term that was just for a specific project (one of his side interests outside of STEM), so that won’t continue.
He has a great resume, met with his career advisor several times, applied for >100 internships, and a couple REUs. He knew it was a long shot and was just excited to get a few interviews. He thought of it as practice and feels ready to hit the ground running for next summer’s search. Barring a personal connection, they’re almost always going to pick someone with another year or two of training – it’s not personal.
Your son could always look, and yes, there are still chances to get hired. Mine decided he’d applied to enough a while back. Unless he hears favorably from an older app (doubtful at this point), he’s looking on the bright side of coming home for the summer. We’re excited to have him, and he still works at his high school job (restaurant) during breaks. He wants to line up something better if he can, so he’s thinking about signing up with some local temp agencies soon. Of course, my spouse and I could get him hired at either of our universities, but we want him to be the driver of this process.
I don’t know if yours has had a standard grunt work job, but they are amazing experiences, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. My kids have benefitted more from such jobs than just about anything else they’ve done. In fact, the college kid might get to “benefit” from that for one more summer!
My S23 (in engineering) will be doing a regular summer job this summer (the same as his current on campus job).
He actually met someone while working at his regular job who got to chatting with him and is now very interested in hiring him for an internship in his area of interest next summer. So you never know where these internship possibilities will turn up. Maybe while doing the regular summer job itself!
My older S (math/econ) couldn’t find any local internships or even regular jobs after freshmen year. (Our area doesn’t hire college bound kids since we have so many non-college people who can work FT year round)
He “worked” for a friend’s Dad who is a PCP. He had recently got software for his office and was having trouble using it. S helped him trouble shoot it, and ran all kinds of statistics for him. He learned a ton about how doctor’s offices are run!
He also tutored people trying to get their GED through the adult education center.
He didn’t earn any $$$, but it was experience to add to the resume
Chiming in to say D23/rising sophomore/STEM student will also be going back to her HS summer job this year, probably for the last time, and getting a break from college and academics in the good old fresh air (camp counselor) - lots to be said for it.
Hope your son will have a good break, whatever he does!
Thanks for the input. A couple follow-ons to the various comments (since some of them were said more than once just summarizing here)…
Regarding a regular summer job is just fine… Totally agreed, and he does too. I certainly hope I didn’t imply otherwise. He would prefer a research or research support opportunity but there’s definitely no belief that a job isn’t fine.
The issue is it likely will be very hard to get a regular summer job locally. He tried it a few summers ago and totally struck out. Applied to all kinds of things – basic minimum wage stuff, not picky. Last couple of years his summer music performance activities effectually precluded it so he didn’t try. But we know plenty of other local peers who did and also struck out. The issue is most businesses simply don’t want to take on and train someone who is only available for a couple months. They prefer people who can continue to do shifts indefinitely. The handful that don’t mind – the local shops that serve ice cream, etc. – it’s all who you know. (Like many things in life.) The jobs go to the kids of friends of friends of the business owners. So he’ll try. But even at the resturants that should be hurting for people. they just don’t usually hire the kids and young adults to aren’t sticking around (except the ones who worked there previously and are back from breaks). Which is why anything he can pick up tutoring or doing music lessons may be it. He might have better luck getting a minimum wage job where his school is located but housing costs would be more than he makes.
Regarding checking with local universities – he’s been pursuing that for months. He definitely didn’t just stick to clearly defined opportunities – he reached out to departments and individual professors and researchers and always asked if they didn’t have anything if they could suggest any other leads and he’s done many unsolicited cold emails. He usually (but not always) gets a response, but nothing has come of it.
Good luck to him. If you area doesn’t hire college kids like ours, it really is tough. We are also a small, blue collared town, so there just aren’t a lot of true professional internships to be had.
Maybe look at the local gov’t website? We seem to still have a few posted, though it is just $15/hour. And look at volunteer opportunities. It’s probably easier to do that. And maybe AmeriStaff/temp work? Though I know older S did not get good vibes from our local office.
And try to keep his chin up. I know it was pretty depressing when S couldn’t find anything. He applied everywhere - no grocery stores, no fast food, no banks, movie theater, nada… I felt better when I talked to another parent of an older high stats kid. She said “oh yeah. Nobody around here hires them.” So the next year, he didn’t think about staying local. Stayed at school the next summer, and then went halfway across the country junior year.
OP- I think it helps if a kid offers a specific skill, not just a generic “I want to work for you”. The former suggests a lot of value add/impact; the latter suggests “I’ll need to be supervised closely in order to be productive”.
So- if your kid is adept/knows/competent using SAS or R- there’s a wide range of situations where having a “statistical analyst” is valuable-- the header on the email would be "College student with experience with large datasets ". If your kid is a strong writer- can translate technical and jargony results into understandable language for non-technical audiences-- valuable. Very strong with Excel; strong lit research skills, experienced with abstracts or has used Lexis/Nexis or similar.
Sometimes even if there is no formal “internship”, a kid who presents with a “this is how I can help you” vs. “Please help me” can work. I have colleagues/friends at companies who were maxed out on the number of college students they could bring on for their company’s formal internship program, but adding someone to DO a particular something (a massive data conversion project; some messy project that everyone was avoiding?) gets the green light.
Supervising interns and researchers is very time consuming, so any suggestion that a kid actually brings a “ready for primetime” skill to the table can help.
A lot of non-profits are working off of a hodge- podge of legacy IT systems-- one for billing and vendor payments, one for employee benefits and payroll, one for tracking grants, etc. and a kid who volunteers to clean up some of the mess- pure gold. Research labs sometimes have a backlog on the boring administrative stuff which is required for compliance-- procurement, tracking hours of the personnel who are staffed on multiple projects but accounting needs to know how many hours get booked on which project, etc. So offering up “I’m great with spreadsheets” can be a strong entree.
In this position, this late in the spring, i suggest that he look into attending summer school at your nearby 4 yr state college. He could do further comp sci, which would ultimately make him more competitive for an internship next summer. It would be more valuable than tutoring, plus it will free up space in his schedule for more advanced coursework in sophomore year.
Would definitely do this except sadly his college refuses to accept transfer credit (except under very narrow circumstances with petition for which he doesn’t qualify). He could still take summer classes but they would not count toward his main college so it would purely be for self-advancement. At a cost. He’s excellent at self study so if it doesn’t count anyway he may be able to do it on his own.
Do you have any big box retail nearby - super center, grocery or home improvement? My kids and their friends had good luck finding summer jobs at these place after graduation from HS. Some even offer educational leave so college kids can work during school breaks and subsequent summers without onboarding.
I think being 18 and being available to start working before high school kids are out for the summer probably increases your S23’s of being able to find something versus when he was applying as a minor high school student.
None of my 3 sons had “professional” jobs after their 1st year of college. Two went back to the farm jobs they held before college and one played high level soccer. It was only after sophomore year that they got jobs related to their major (with the exception of the one who was a sophomore in 2020).
It sounds like any job experience is needed to start to build his resume for future job applications if he has not been working the past few summers. Do not worry about internships unless they surface in the search for something.
Look at the local temp agencies for options if a flexible schedule or short term employment is needed. Indeed is used here regionally for lots of postings for short term work.
He may need to find some volunteer options to build references. With the music performances he had been involved with can he volunteer with anything there? It will build on past experiences in his resume and he already has those connections.
Another angle, do you have any family members that live in an area with more summer employment options that he could go live with for a couple months?
And he should go visit the colleges career center this week. They may have some leads or at least help position him for something on or near campus for the fall.
Does he have a Linked-In account and has he cross referenced grads from his college that live in your area - another great place to cold call and make connections.