<p>Would you know of some actual cases of IU career services helping students to get internship? I believe that they do not talk to freshmen about summer internship. I am not sure how helpful they are even for sophomore Kelley honor students. Most lowerclassmen found career related internship through family connections. I hope that they are helpful for juniors to find summer internship. But, I would love to hear some real success stories. </p>
<p>I don’t quite understand what you mean. Companies recruit through the UCSO so that is where I and most of my junior friends got our summer internships. </p>
<p>There are limited opportunities for the summer following sophomore year. But the Big 4 all have sophomore leadership programs that recruit through the UCSO, and usually lead to an internship the following summer. My experience with the UCSO has been extremely positive, and I feel like most of my classmates feel the same way. </p>
<p>Summer internships for rising sophomores are hard to come by no matter what–students just don’t have enough experience to really appeal to most big companies. </p>
<p>Sophomore accounting students have to compete against tons of MSA students for summer internships. Nearly half of the new Big Four hires these days have masters degrees. IUB MSA program has grown from 44 in Fall 2010 to 84 this year, so you know they are taking summer internships from ugrads, especially those seeking internships in Indiana. Even sophomores in honors or with nearly perfect gpa’s are not going to be able to compete with the MSA students and the many accounting 3/2 students. Students have usually been accepted to these programs before Fall recruiting takes place the fall prior to their starting the program, so all the recruiters know about them and prefer them over most sophomores, few of which have even taken the A311 weed out class. </p>
<p>Most of the IUB MSA students did not get good internships at all as undergrads, and they are doing the MSA program in order to a good summer internship after their undergrad senior year. </p>
<p>Some accounting majors get a Big Four/Regional accounting internship spring of their senior year, then graduate the following Fall. It isn’t that bad of a strategy, as a lot of firms wind up hiring new hires to start during busy season (Jan-April), and, of course, May graduates won’t be able to take those jobs.</p>
<p>HKEM,</p>
<p>It is great for you and other Kelley juniors to secure summer internship opportunities through UCSO. I have not paid much attention when DS2 (junior also) was a freshman. He got a summer internship after sophomore year through his friend’s parent last year. Last December, he was lucky to find a finance internship for this summer w/o going through UCSO. Therefore, I do not know how helpful is UCSO. It sounds like they are doing a good job.</p>
<p>However, a good job is not necessarily enough for Kelley students in this economic environment. I sensed this because DS3 (Kelley freshman with junior standing) had been seeking for summer internship since winter. He got his resume ready through C106 and another course he took. Other than that, he is pretty much on his own except that his Mom is search for local opportunities through the internet. One of his HS friend at Kelley has secured an internship with a wealth management company this summer through family connections. His another friend at Mendoza reported that many classmates had secured internship also. The pressure is definitely on. He apparently underestimated the difficulties especially when a couple of his connections fell through. The most my connection can get for him is a filing clerk job at a local bank. What I also find out is that commercial firms are leery about offering unpaid internship position due to a lawsuit last year. It is tough out there. This spring break (no beaches), he sent out 40 some inquiry letters and had only one phone interview with the hiring manager at Indy for a career related summer job. He has another unpaid internship interview next week with a community economic development non-profit organization. I am keeping my fingers crossed for both. If these do not pan out, it could be a long summer with only A201/A202. </p>
<p>From what I have learned, there are career related summer internship opportunities out there for sophomore or even freshmen depending upon how prepared is the student. However, those opportunities are limited especially for accounting related ones as bthomp1 has indicated. Kelley honors and the new ACE programs are nice, but Kelley needs to think hard about how to prepare these top students to compete against those from Mendoza, ROSS, UI, and NW in the midwest not to mention others on the east and west coasts. They have done a great job of preparing students for the professional skills. But, they need to develop a roadmap/timeline and train the lowerclassmen to hunt for the internship early like a business warrior. In the meantime, they need to motivate Alumni to support the initiative. </p>
<p>Maybe I am overestimating the students from other schools. But, I am pretty sure that students w/o family connections are at a disadvantage. Perhaps there are other success stories through UCSO or personal effort from IU students. I believe that those experiences would be valuable to share. </p>
<p>Ace, I think you might be overestimating the ability of other top midwestern schools to place accounting students into internships after freshman and sophomore years. I checked a lot of Linkedin entries for Notre Dame Mendoza accounting majors who were undergrads from 2009-2013. Their summer internships tended not to be impressive after freshman/sophomore years. And as Hkem said, after sophomore year the leadership programs are a great way to get your foot in the door with many firms instead of limiting yourself to a single internship. Big accounting firms use summer internships to get who sign contracts to start the following year; they might be wary of offering internships so early in a student’s ugrad career, as a lot could happen to the last couple of years of college to make that freshman or sophomore interns not want to work at the company they interned at two or three years after doing the internship. </p>
<p>Big accounting firms use junior undergrads and MSA students the summer after their ugrad graduation to a large degree because they make the full-time offer immediately after the internship, and the student signs a contract that will pretty much bind him to working-- only one year later-- at the company he interned at. I know only of two accounting majors from my son’s graduating class that got Big Four accounting internships the summer after freshman or sophomore year, and they were both minority students in Kelley honors, and the firms wanted to lock them up early, probably as much for affirmative action reasons as any others. </p>
<p>Also, I don’t think Big Four and many large regional firms are concerned with hiring superstar talent so much as getting competent, warm bodies that fit their company culture to come to their firms, which see tremendous turnover compared to many types of business jobs. Check the first-year Class of 2013 hiring salaries for IU ugrads, MSA’s and 3/2 MBA’s for accounting majors:</p>
<p>Ugrad – 57k
MSA – 54k
3/2 MBA – 57k</p>
<p>In other words, the starting salary is pretty much the same for all three, even though the MSA and the 3/2 MBA students pay way more for their educations and have had significantly more chances to land good internships. The post-junior year summer internship is pretty much all an accounting undergrad needs to get into a Big Four (for audit and tax positions, anyway), even though they hire a lot of MSA grads. Of course, you have to wait until summer after junior year in order to get the internship, which is stressful.</p>
<p>A better strategy than the post-sophomore summer accounting internship might be to attend as many summer leadership conferences with as many firms as possible, attending the conferences and oncampus activities during the school year. For instance, one Mendoza student attended all of these conferences the summer after his sophomore year:</p>
<p>-Deloitte National Leadership Conference - Scottsdale, AZ
-Ernst & Young Emerging Leaders Program - St. Louis, MO
-RubinBrown GOAL Program - St. Louis, MO
-McGladrey Pathways Program - Kansas City, MO
-Grant Thornton Footsteps Program - St. Louis, MO
<a href=“http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/matt-lynch/30/749/9a8”>http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/pub/matt-lynch/30/749/9a8</a></p>
<p>You can browse the below set of Mendoza accounting jobs from Linkedin to get a good overview of the post-freshmen (2010) and post-sophomore summer (2011) activities of accounting majors who got their ugrad degree in 2013. Some students in post-sophomore summer land good finance internships, but the good accounting internships come pretty much after junior year for ugrads and after senior ugrad year for Mendoza grads who did the MSA program. </p>
<p>Also, it seems counterintuitive that the MSA Kelley students starting salary is lower than the ugrad. But that is what USCO says. I think it is because the eventual MSA students were not outstanding enough to get a good accounting internship during summer after junior year (or in Spring semester of senior year, thereby delaying graduation until the following December) and were forced to get the MSA in order to get a good summer internship after graduating from ugrad. </p>
<p>Here is the Mendoza google search:
<a href=“Mendoza "notre dame" "2009-1013" "accounting" site:https:/■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/ - Google Search”>Mendoza "notre dame" "2009-1013" "accounting" site:https:/■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/ - Google Search;
<p>Looking at the internships for Mendoza accounting students, I don’t see that they are placing freshmen and sophomores any better than IUB Kelley. Factor in the $240,000 cost of attendance at Notre Dame compared to an instate IUB Kelley student probably being able to get by with $80,000 cost of attendance at IUB Kelley, and I think Kelley is a much better choice-- especially for accounting majors.</p>
<p>I think the leadership program route is the best for anyone pursuing the Big Four. I felt pretty good about myself for being one of the few sophomores to land a fortune 100 finance internship, but I couldn’t pursue leadership program opportunities and came back to recruit in the fall realizing that may have been a poor decision. The leadership program is the easiest way to get into the Big Four. Almost everyone who participates gets offered an internship at the program for the following summer, then almost all of them will get full-time offers from those internships. </p>