Do I need an internship for my college application?
We get questions all the time: do I need an internship for my college application? It’s time to talk frankly about whether internships really are vital for our kids. And my basic answer? They are not at all vital. A good high school internship could be helpful. But a run-of-the-mill internship might not be helpful at all.
Let’s examine the reasons why you might be asking, do I need an internship for my college application.
An internship as an introduction to the world of work before the college application
It’s true that an internship for a college application might also have the benefit of giving a young person an introduction to a professional work environment. In today’s economy, and with college costing so much these days, we want to be sure that our kids are ready upon college graduation to dive into the workforce and begin to make a living. But is an internship the best way to make this introduction?
The alternative is for our kids to get a job. A paycheck. Money that can help pay for college. Of course, the jobs that teens can get these days are limited to things like food service, landscaping, and other manual labor. Some might work in customer service or do some data entry. Not very glamorous stuff. But they learn responsibility, punctuality, and honesty. In the service industry, they learn to deal with the public.
Some of my students with the best overall educational outcomes were kids who held jobs during high school. One worked 20 hours per week at an In-N-Out Burger, eventually rising to become an assistant manager before she applied to college. Another young man began mowing lawns to pay for his car insurance, and then ended up building an actual enterprise with two other kids working for him while he went to summer camp.
And the paychecks teens earn mean more than just the money. They mean independence. Empowerment. Motivation. These are the sorts of attributes that not only spell success on the college application. They spell success for life.
An internship to explore career paths before the college application
Again, college is expensive, and we want to make sure our kids are making the right educational decisions that will optimize their earning potential after graduation. Part of the calculus for getting an internship for the college application is to help kids narrow down their professional choices, thereby focusing their educational decisions more narrowly and more carefully.
While it can be helpful to narrow things down, the irony is that the American higher education system traditionally is not set up to narrow a young person’s options, but to broaden them. In the UK and its “legacy educational systems” (like India), in China, and in other parts of Europe, the educational system creates a gradual narrowing of professional options, such that by age fourteen, career paths are generally mapped out, and by age eighteen, the student will choose a single subject on which to focus while in university.
The traditional liberal arts curriculum of the Ivy League and other top-tier universities is constructed to expand intellectual—and professional—options. General education or distributive requirements enable students to create a multidisciplinary foundation of knowledge, while electives allow students to explore new domains of knowledge and allow their curiosity free reign to learn new and different subjects and be introduced to ideas and theories outside their academic focus that we call the “major”.
Of course, it depends on what the internship in question is. If the internship is to explore a career path, well, that could be helpful. However, keep in mind that this may be at odds with an education system designed to allow students to broaden their career options before narrowing them.
Will an internship for my college application be more competitive?
Many people assume that an internship will make a college application more competitive. This is not necessarily true. On the college application, what matters is not what company the student interned for, what their title was, or who they were reporting to or working with. What matters is what a student was able to accomplish. What is a student actually doing during their internship? Are they making tea? Are they following the CEO around, sitting in on meetings while doodling on a scratch piece of paper? If they’re actually doing something substantive, that could be great. And sometimes they do, but that is not the most common case scenario.
Keep in mind that companies have other things to do besides investing time and effort fostering a meaningful experience for a teenager. Most of the time, internships are menial grunt work. Now, if a student has a specific idea of what career they might want to pursue, they may be in a position to trade grunt work for a behind-the-scenes, in-depth understanding of their prospective career field. And they might be a personally useful experience. But, without the opportunity to actually accomplish something meaningful, internships do not enhance the competitiveness of a student’s college application as much as many people think they do.
Need more advice on your college applications?
The team at Great College Advice has deep experience in guiding students along the road from high school college. We provide individually tailored, one-on-one advising to help young people achieve their educational ambitions. If you’d like more information about our services, contact us for a free consultation. Or just pick up the phone and call us at 720.279.7577. We’d be happy to chat with you.
