For lower-income students, major engineering internships can be difficult to get
Jalaun Ross, a computer science major at Central Connecticut State University, knew it would be difficult to intern at a leading technology company this summer.
He’d chosen to go to an affordable local public university, not a top computer school, and he didn’t know anyone in the industry who could put in a good word for him with tech recruiters.
Last summer, during his internship at a financial services company, Mr. Ross spends several hours every night preparing the coding tests that tech companies use to weed out candidates. He ended up applying for more than 200 internships, he said, but didn’t get any offers from technology companies.
“The university itself is a huge workload, especially for minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status,” said Mr. Ross. “How can people who attend average state schools compete?”
Like attending an Ivy League college, obtaining a prestigious internship at a leading technology company can provide lifelong benefits. Coveted software engineering internships at companies like Amazon or Google have been known to pay $24,000 or more for the summer, not counting housing allowances. They can also provide engaging intellectual challenges, foster invaluable network connections, and lead to full-time employment.
With sometimes over 100,000 students applying for just thousands of slots, securing an elite tech internship can be as cutthroat as entering Harvard.
Critics say the typical recruiting process at high-profile tech companies often favors students at the top computer schools and students with industry connections — as do elite private universities that recruit heavily from the top high schools and favor the children of alumni. Wealthier intern candidates may also have more time and opportunity to polish their portfolios and hone their exam skills.
“Privilege assumptions are baked into the system,” said Ruthe Farmer, the founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education fund, a non-profit organization that helps lower-income students in technical fields complete their college education. “It’s aimed at students who have more free time to spend on side projects, hackathons, and studying for tech interviews — characteristics that confuse privilege with student potential.”
(Ms. Farmer’s nonprofit has received funding from Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies.)
The intern selection process underscores the long-standing disparity in hiring and hiring in Silicon Valley. This year, layoffs and cutbacks at leading tech companies have only reduced internship opportunities, students say, widening socioeconomic inequalities. In response to a call from The New York Times, nearly 300 people — college students, recent graduates, and software engineers — shared their experiences applying for tech internships and jobs, with some calling the process “brutal,” “unfair,” or “disheartening.” ” described. ”
To try to compete, dozens of students spent hours applying for more than 100 internships, practicing for internship coding tests or working on personal coding projects to impress recruiters, they said. More than half of respondents said they had never heard from the companies they had applied to.
Some students at lesser-known public universities said they felt at a disadvantage compared to their peers at computer science powerhouses like Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. A few students said they quit their part-time jobs or neglected their course assignments to devote themselves to applying for engineering internships — but they got no offers.
Some students of higher grade computer programs reported more successful results. Kien Pham, a student at the University of Minnesota, said he spent much of the summer and fall applying intensively for more than 300 internships.
That included preparing for an interview with Amazon, he said, by spending the better part of two weeks writing down episodes from his life that aligned with the company’s guiding values, known internally as principles of leadership. He later accepted a software engineering internship offer from Amazon for this summer.
Some students noticed socioeconomic disparities during the application process.
Tech companies like Microsoft and Google do internal referral systems where employees can recommend candidates. Those referrals can help distinguish certain students from tens of thousands of applicants. But students at lesser-known schools often lack the kind of industry, family, or elite college connections that can lead to employee referrals.
Another concern, Ms Farmer said: the intern selection process may overlook or underestimate students who have jobs.
Davita Bird, a computer science major at the Colorado School of Mines in the city of Golden, has studied half a dozen programming languages. In addition to her courses, she has three side jobs: as a teaching assistant for a math course, as an instructor in a science and technology education program for girls, and as an organizer of university events.
Last semester, Ms. Bird devoted an hour every night for two months to applying for 40 internships at Airbnb, Amazon, Google, Oracle and smaller companies. She has not heard from a majority of them, she said.
“I’m expected to be a full-time student as well as work outside of class and look for work for about five hours a week for an internship that won’t even allow me to be employed for five months,” said Ms Bird, who recently accepted a cloud computing internship at an electronics company, wrote in a response to The Times. “I wish companies would at least issue an email rejection.”
The process may seem opaque to some students, as major tech companies rarely disclose their intern acceptance rates or publish lists of the universities from which they recruit the highest number of interns.
In a recent interview, Vaishali Sabhahit, global head of university talent at Adobe, said the company typically received applications from more than 100,000 applicants for its summer internship program in the United States and hired about 600 interns. This year, the company launched a separate cybersecurity internship program at Bowie State University, a traditionally black university in Maryland.
Apple did not respond to questions about its internship program. Microsoft and Meta declined to comment on this article.
In an email, Keyon Young, director of Amazon’s student programs, said the company took candidates’ education and work experience into account, but its main focus was on aligning students with the company’s leadership principles. Last year, he said, Amazon hired the largest number of US interns best computer schools including Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University.
“Networking with current Amazonians is not a requirement for consideration,” Mr Young added.
To try to broaden the odds, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, meta, Amazon and other major technology companies have established several introductory internship or mentoring programs for freshmen and sophomores over the years. These programs are designed to provide students from groups that are underrepresented in technology — including female, black, Latino, and lower-income students — hands-on experience working on engineering projects.
Google’s program, the Student Training in Engineering Program, is designed to prepare students for professional internships. The program received several hundred students from 143 universities last year. A similar effort at Amazon, the Propel program, has expanded return internship or full-time job offers to successful interns, Mr Young said.
Wealthier students may also benefit from preparing for coding tests and technical interviews. To prepare for the assessments, many students practice their skills on LeetCode, a free test prep site that provides coding and algorithmic problems along with detailed solutions.
The site also offers premium services. For $35 a month, it gives members access to specific issues that companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft previously used — and some continue to use — to review applicants. To keep the questions up to date, the test prep service said regularly polls the members apply for technical positions.
However, practicing for hours with LeetCode didn’t help Mr. Ross at Central Connecticut State University. He described the experience of applying and being rejected for 200 engineering internships as “heartbreaking”.
“It made me feel like this field wasn’t for me,” he said, “despite enjoying computer science.”
Still, Mr. Ross said he was grateful for the opportunity to study and work in computer science. He recently accepted an offer for a new internship from the financial services firm where he worked last summer.