Washington, D.C., and Colorado School
of Mines ( 81 percent).
One thing that helped Dartmouth
to have a successful intern program is
the way it uses the quarter system, says
Monica Wilson, the acting co-director of
the Dartmouth Undergraduate Career
Services Department. Dartmouth
encourages its students to take a quarter off to gain real-world experience to
supplement their education. Students
replace that quarter by taking classes
during the summer quarter—a shift of
the year that’s not possible at semester-system schools.
Megan Shackleton, a Stanford
undergraduate alum and current student at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of
Business, says that internships have
been invaluable. Both through undergraduate and graduate internships, she
says “internships have given me the
opportunity to put into practice skills
I have learned in the classroom and to
help direct my educational and professional pursuits.” (By the way, Shackleton graduates in May and is looking for
a job in Ne w York City.)
The Dartmouth career services
department is connected to the National
Internship Consortium, which holds
one of the country’s largest internship
databases, with over 6,000 opportunities.
Still, integrating internships with the education process as much as Dartmouth has
can be difficult in a down economy.
“We definitely noticed a dip in avail-
able internships for students in 2008 due
to the economy,” Wilson says. “Fortu-
nately, 2010 really picked up with more
internships because a lot of companies
have realized it is a great way to identify
talented early hires.”
In addition, students are increas-
ingly sharing information about their
internships through a variety of plat-
forms, such as LinkedIn, Vault.com and
internal school databases in the case of
Dartmouth. These sites allow interns
to evaluate their experience and have
become a standard source of informa-
tion for intern-seekers. These platforms
make interns a source of free market-
ing for companies if students return to
campus and write positive reviews. This
also means that bad news can travel fast
when someone does not have a positive
experience with an organization that
recruits on campus. Companies should
Film director Steven Spielberg, 1973
As an intern, spielberg wasn’t officially
allowed on set—but that didn’t stop
him from sneaking on regularly and
networking his way into any meeting he
could find.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, 1988
“I remember my first day, expressing
complete enthusiasm and bliss at being
at Hewlett-Packard to my supervisor,
a guy named Chris—telling him that my
favorite thing in the whole world was
electronics.”— steve jobs
