Scorp Insider
The Internship Bum Rush
Conor Grennan
Issue date: 1/26/10 Section: Voices
About a week and a half into January, long before the first day of class, I came to Stern to do some personal work. I figured it would be completely empty - I was practically on the way out of my house in my pajamas before realizing the security guard might take me for a lunatic. Then I walked into the Reading Room and found it so packed that I couldn't even find a cubicle.
We at SCorp have a bunch of stuff to fill you in on, but for the moment, we know that you're completely preoccupied with interview season. How quickly we MBA2s forget about that! This time of year feels like something of a climatic period, in many ways. It's the reason we worked so hard to get into Stern in the first place, so that we could nail down our dream jobs. We came back to school early and prepped for hours each day, preparing for interviews. We spent the first semester cramming in cocktail parties and corporate presentations in addition to our full work load and club activities, just to get to this point, just to get these interviews, to land the perfect summer internship. We finally had a way to measure how well we were doing: the number of interviews we had locked up.
At least, that's what we thought. The truth, as we found out, is that this is only the beginning. It's a warm up to the rest of our lives, not the granite cast that we make it out to be. Most of my MBA2 classmates who didn't land that investment banking job with the huge firm went on to have an infinitely more interesting and more productive summer, interning somewhere that gave them lifelong contacts and allowed them to run small projects. And a bunch of those folks who did end up at the big consulting firm or Sales and Trading floor ended up realizing it was really, really not for them.
So, having lived through this so recently, I'm going to offer some advice that I never would have listened to last year, and I don't expect anyone to listen this year. I don't really know much about anything, but I am absolutely sure of this: The summer internship? Not such a big deal. Tons of full time offers are available after your second year. And those big companies are going to be even more impressed with the fact that you spent the summer in Colombia or did an amazing project at the Clinton Foundation than they would have been if you had merely survived McKinsey. You want a cool story? This is your chance to do something amazing.
If you get that summer offer at JP Morgan, well, hooray and all that. It's a great accomplishment. But if you don't - and I sure as heck didn't (I think JPM probably burned my resume after reading) - I can tell you with certainty that your real dream job is out there.
But for now: Kick ass in those interviews, people. We know you will - you're an awesome bunch.
We at SCorp have a bunch of stuff to fill you in on, but for the moment, we know that you're completely preoccupied with interview season. How quickly we MBA2s forget about that! This time of year feels like something of a climatic period, in many ways. It's the reason we worked so hard to get into Stern in the first place, so that we could nail down our dream jobs. We came back to school early and prepped for hours each day, preparing for interviews. We spent the first semester cramming in cocktail parties and corporate presentations in addition to our full work load and club activities, just to get to this point, just to get these interviews, to land the perfect summer internship. We finally had a way to measure how well we were doing: the number of interviews we had locked up.
At least, that's what we thought. The truth, as we found out, is that this is only the beginning. It's a warm up to the rest of our lives, not the granite cast that we make it out to be. Most of my MBA2 classmates who didn't land that investment banking job with the huge firm went on to have an infinitely more interesting and more productive summer, interning somewhere that gave them lifelong contacts and allowed them to run small projects. And a bunch of those folks who did end up at the big consulting firm or Sales and Trading floor ended up realizing it was really, really not for them.
So, having lived through this so recently, I'm going to offer some advice that I never would have listened to last year, and I don't expect anyone to listen this year. I don't really know much about anything, but I am absolutely sure of this: The summer internship? Not such a big deal. Tons of full time offers are available after your second year. And those big companies are going to be even more impressed with the fact that you spent the summer in Colombia or did an amazing project at the Clinton Foundation than they would have been if you had merely survived McKinsey. You want a cool story? This is your chance to do something amazing.
If you get that summer offer at JP Morgan, well, hooray and all that. It's a great accomplishment. But if you don't - and I sure as heck didn't (I think JPM probably burned my resume after reading) - I can tell you with certainty that your real dream job is out there.
But for now: Kick ass in those interviews, people. We know you will - you're an awesome bunch.
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