<p>I’m hoping to get some advice on this matter from parents who may have been in this predicament in the past or have kids who have been in similar positions. The consulting internship I’m applying for is for the summer and requires "an average of 50% out-of-town travel to client work sites. Must have reliable transportation to and from in-town client sites. " I do not have a car. However living in NYC I’ve never had much of a need for a car because of how good and abundant public transportation is. I am still unsure whether this internship is paid or not. I’m not making any assumptions though. However if I were to get this internship clearly I would need a car of some sort. This would be in the summer between my Junior and Senior year. (I may be graduating a semester early so right after the summer, I’d only have one semester left that Fall if that makes any difference). If asked about transportation during the interview, what should I say? This seems like it could be a deal breaker for the internship. I won’t resort to lying and saying I have a car when I don’t. How should I approach this? I’m really interested in this internship because it’s one of my areas of interests and they even came looking for my major at my school which rarely ever happens. The interview is next Thursday.</p>
<p>If it’s non-paid would it be worth to take an such an internship? If it’s paid, would it still be worth it? I definitely want to get a car after I graduate anyways just for work. If I managed to get this internship, I’d have to get some kind of car. Doing this would mean getting the car a year earlier than expected. and I’m talking about a decent used car (nothing fancy, just a vehicle that gets the job done).</p>
<p>On a related note, would it be appropriate to ask whether the internship is paid or non-paid? How should I go about asking? I’ve checked online on their website and there doesn’t seem to be any reference to it.</p>
<p>Any advice is appreciated. It’s my second interview for internships. I had one interview last year and never heard back from them. Though it felt like I did everything that I could possibly do right.</p>
<p>If they do, one option might be for them to rent a car for the summer and allow you to use their car for your internship. (You shouldn’t be the one to rent the car because rental car companies charge higher rates for young drivers – if they allow them to rent a car at all.)</p>
<p>This will cost your parents somewhere in the vicinity of $2000 for three months, so the internship had better be paid so that you can reimburse them.</p>
<p>my parents do not have a car unfortunately. i was considering the option of renting a car. i just don’t know how expensive that is. though if i do look into it i will definitely ask my parents to do me the favor. i didn’t realize the rates changed based on age. thanks for that info.</p>
<p>My personal opinion is that this internship probably isn’t worth it. If it is an unpaid internship, you are looking at housing costs (assuming the internship isn’t where you live now), rental car (or buying a cheap used car), lots of gas, parking fees, etc. </p>
<p>But there is value beyond a paycheck. If this opens doors to you for a particular career or company, or you are desperate for something to put on your resume, then perhaps the cost is worth it to you.</p>
<p>If this is something you really want to do, I would ask them what their “50% travel” entails. That’s a fair question. You need to know what their expectations are. Is the travel local - home in your own bed each night? Or requiring overnight stays elsewhere? And if so, how is that paid for? Is a car sufficient, or are they talking air travel? Who pays? </p>
<p>Some internships offer a per diem to cover travel. In my S’s case, he lived with relatives, so his meagre travel allowance almost covered his expenses. (It was in DC, and he paid for public transit from MD every day.) His unpaid internship was off-set by the fact that his school waived his “expected summer earnings” for financial aid. So in his situation, we were able to determine that the experience was worth it.</p>
<p>You need to do similar calculations.</p>
<p>By the way, DC has zipcars, but for 50% travel, I’m not sure you’d come out ahead.</p>
<p>As far as asking whether the internship is paid or not, you need to just ask in a straightforward manner.
As an employer I am actually always leery of a candidate who doesn’t ask what the salary is.
It seems like an excessive amount of travel for an intern. Be careful that they are not using you as an employee rather than hire someone for a position that requires a lot of travel. (Of course, not knowing the field I could be way off base here).</p>
<p>It’s reasonable for you to ask even before applying whether an internship is paid or not. No reason to waste your time on something that you couldn’t afford to do.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to get internships, even unpaid ones, so you need to apply to several.</p>
<p>fendrock: i’ve never heard of zipcars. i’ve looked it up and it seems like some sort of rental car service. i don’t know if my school offers that, or at least i haven’t heard of it on campus. will look into it further.</p>
<p>binx: the internship will be located in nyc. accordingly, they apparently fly out all interns to chicago for an orientation for a week or two. whether them covering the costs to fly us out means they will pay us is the question i don’t have an answer to. i will be sure to ask them that question in regards to what the traveling really entails.</p>
<p>ebeeeee: i think i will e-mail one of the recruiters that came to campus, not the one interviewing me, and maybe they can tell me whether or not this is paid.</p>
<p>Northstarmom: that is true. my major and my school just don’t attract a lot of employers for my field of study. so it makes it harder to apply to some internships. this one in particular has me excited because it’s completely different from what i do. the other internships posted usually are somewhat related to the jobs I currently have so i wouldn’t be gaining much experience on that end. but we’ll see how this goes. i have a chance to go to a night event in which the company will have info/dinner type session at my school. maybe i can ask around there or at least get to know more about the company. this is the night before my interview.</p>
<p>thanks for all the advice so far guys. really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Zipcar is a private company. You rent the car by the hour. If you have to do a lot of travel and participate in meetings that last for quite a while, it can be quite expensive. Think about $10 per hour for renting, traveling for one hour each way, attending a meeting for two hours, and you have spent $40. I assume you would need to pay some of the parking fees.
The internship would have to pay you very well for it to be worth your while.</p>
<p>We are going to possibly be in the same predicament for our son who has just been offered an internship in Houston, TX for next summer although it is a paid internship. I don’t think a car is required for the internship, but he will need transportation to and from work. He has not needed a car up to this point as his campus is over 11 hours away and pretty much self-contained. He has flown home in the past for breaks, etc. and it has always been our intention to help him with the purchase of a car when he graduates. What we are considering is the possibility of a short-term lease thru a car dealership although we understand that leases of that type have become almost non-existent. However, spouse does have a family member in the dealership business so we hope that if leases are not available, he might be able to advise us on the best arrangement. Anyone else with thoughts about this?</p>
<p>The business should provide you with all the details regarding the internship and if they don’t, it’s appropriate for you to inquire. You need to know whether the internship is paid or not and if so, what the rate is.</p>
<p>Regarding the requirement for personal transportation, they should at least reimburse you for the mileage rate to cover gas/wear on the vehicle. Find out about that as well.</p>
<p>If the internship is unpaid or if they’re unwilling to reimburse mileage expenses I’d be inclined to skip this position. You shouldn’t have to effectively pay them for the priviledge of working there. You can always look around for more internship opportunities including unpaid ones that are local thus not requiring you to incur large expenses.</p>
<p>If they do pay and reimburse for the mileage it may or may not be worth it. A car is expensive - even a used one. Don’t forget to consider the cost of the car, insurance, maintenance, registration, sales tax, and in NYC, the cost of parking it.</p>
<p>I assume public transportation wouldn’t be viable. If so, are there any other interns at the same place or nearby places from his college that he could ride-share with?</p>
<p>I’m wondering what kind of consulting firm we’re talking. DH is a management consultant who has had many interns. If a car is needed any firm will provide one. They may issue you a company car or have you rent them. When they say 50% travel, they generally mean most trips further than a drive are the norm.</p>
<p>DS is a part time computer consultant. His company is very bare bones and even they provide basic company cars for consultants with a drive range territory.</p>
<p>My son, who is a graduate student at UC San Diego, uses Zipcar for grocery shopping and other errands and occasionally for social events. I think he uses it about once a week, which gives him access to a car much more inexpensively than would be possible in any other way. Because Zipcar is a rent-by-the-hour system, it’s very useful for errands and short social events. It would not be good for full-day use because you would be paying for all the hours when the car sits in a parking lot while you are working.</p>
<p>As for a normal rental (Enterprise, etc.), when you rent a car, you are required to give the names and driver’s license numbers of all individuals who will be driving the car. If any of those people are young, the price is higher (or the company may not allow the young person to be included at all). So your parents can’t help you out by doing the renting. Also, if your parents don’t have a car, it’s likely that they don’t have auto insurance and neither do you. Paying for the insurance when you rent a car increases the cost astronomically. (This is not true with Zipcar, where the insurance is included.) </p>
<p>Last summer, our family needed one more car than we own. I rented one on Enterprise’s Month-or-More plan. Our regular auto insurance agent was able to tweak our policy so that we paid only an extra $75 for insurance during the time when we had the rental, and we did not use Enterprise’s exorbitantly expensive insurance at all. I rented the car with myself listed as the principal driver. I was allowed to include my 55-year-old husband as a second driver for free. If I had wanted to include my 22-year-old son, there would have been an extra charge. The company refused to allow my then-18-year-old daughter to drive the rental car at all. So we made sure that I drove the rental and the young people drove cars that our family owns.</p>
<p>notre dame AL – I was in the same situation a few summers ago and I rented a car by the month for an internship which was paying well enough to make that a good financial decision. Looking at the Hertz page right now, it seems like it’ll be about 600/month to rent a small car. However, this is without any coupons/deals. There are ALWAYS deals on rental cars through credit cards, employers, AAA etc. so you can probably get a price that’s better. My parents actually rented that entire summer and I drove their cars because it would have been much more expensive for me to rent since I was under age. I believe we got car insurance through their insurer for another $100 or so. And for whatever reason (may just have been the deals at the time), we got a much better deal by renting one month at a time rather than renting for three months; while it was a hassle to drive the car back 3 times to pick up a new one, it came out a few hundred dollars cheaper for the whole summer.</p>
<p>However, don’t under-estimate the power of a car dealer friend. I’d talk to them first because sometimes they are willing to create a deal and allow a short term lease if it means getting a car off the lot for a while. Just last yr I had someone practically create a one yr lease for me since their sales are dismal right now - when no other company would even talk to me about anything less than the standard 2 yr.</p>
<p>You can sometimes just buy a used car, drive it for a few months, then sell it. If you get a decent deal up front you can sometimes lose a minimal amount of money or do what I did once and actually make some money. Your S can look for one in the area. It helps if he’s car savvy. It’s something to consider.</p>
<p>We are considering the buying option as well–spouse has a great mechanic that deals in used car sales as well. This could certainly be an option. We do have some time to think about this, thank goodness! I am more concerned right now about the housing situation; I suspect more info will follow in the next couple of weeks. (this of course, calls for a new thread, I guess!) At any rate, we do have time on our side!!!</p>
<p>I e-mailed the recruiter and got a response today. So this is a paid internship. For the most part interns do not travel out of the tri-state area (NYC being where I’d want to intern since I live here). And any travel above and beyond the normal commute to the office is covered by the company. This sounds great. It sounds like I may not need to travel much as expected. I mean 50% on the requirements sounds like a lot. I wonder why they put that.</p>