Internship apps provoke financial worries for some students

The saying “It costs money to make money” even applies to internships.

College students everywhere are scrambling to apply for internships, which have become an essential part of a successful resume. Penn isn’t an exception. Especially this month, when so many internship applications are due, Penn students will shoot off resumes and cover letters to New York City, D.C., and even the West Coast. New York City will likely draw especially large numbers of applications, since so many Penn students end up there after graduation, but New York is also where one-bedroom apartments run for $3,000 a month in Manhattan and $2,000 in Brooklyn.

For some students, this isn’t a problem. But for many others, it weighs heavily in their internship decisions.

Erin Tinney is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences studying criminology. Like many of her peers, she’s applying for internships, but she feels very limited in what she can apply for. When she texted her mom to tell her about an internship, she said her mom’s immediate response was, “Where are you living, how are you affording housing, are they paying you?”

“These are things I have to consider and many other people have to consider, but people who come from more wealthy backgrounds don’t have to think about,” Tinney said.

Tinney plans to apply to internships primarily in her home city of Cincinnati so she can live at home and avoid the cost of housing, but it doesn’t allow for a very wide pool of options. She’s expanded to look at a few jobs in Philadelphia, some through Penn and some at the Mayor’s Office. But those will require summer housing since she lives on-campus during the school year and has a nine-month lease. She will also need to cover transportation costs if she has to get to Center City every day.

Tinney is at another disadvantage because she’s primarily interested in public policy internships, and she estimates 75 percent of them are unpaid.

Penn has resources to help students out financially over the summer, but the process of getting funding is competitive. The different options for financial help are laid out on the Career Services webpage, where organizations on campus like Civic House and Wharton Public Policy Initiative outline specific qualifications. Career Services also has its own fund to help students pursuing internships not limited to certain areas, which only started three years ago.“We’d been hearing from more students who were coming in and saying ‘Do you have any way to help me? I got this great internship but it pays minimum wage,’” Career Services Director Patricia Rose said.

Last year, Career Services funded 30 students, but it was only a “percentage” of the students who applied. “We can’t fund everyone who wants to do it,” Rose said.

Career Services takes a number of things into account: the amount of financial aid the student had received, whether or not the internship makes sense in terms of the student’s “career trajectory” and whether or not the student had received funding in a previous summer.

“If the student received internship funding last summer we may want to fund someone who hasn’t yet received funding,” Rose said.

The amount of money awarded can vary. Rose said they’ve covered housing, transportation and other living expenses if the student lives at home.

David Grossman, director of Civic House, is also closely involved with funding students for internships.

Grossman said Civic House generally receives applications from “three to four times as many students” as it can support, but added, “the good news is that there are so many opportunities for students. We collectively still don’t meet that need but we are working to support as many students as possible.”

Civic House specifically funds public interest internships, and Grossman said it also awards money to cover a variety of costs.

“Some students just need money for a SEPTA pass, some are going abroad and need money for airfare,” he said.

While Tinney is considering applying for funding, she still has a few concerns.

“If you don’t get the job but you get the scholarship or the funding then what’s going to happen?” she asked. “There’s that uncertainty.”

Additionally, applying for funding for internships adds more work to the plates of students who are already juggling midterms and internship applications.

“People who are able to afford housing or that’s not a concern for them, it’s hard for them to understand,” Tinney said. “They’re just like ‘yeah, but you can apply for [funding].’”

Tinney hopes she can find an internship for the summer, which she sees as essential, especially for a job in public policy.

“I’m in a really competitive field so I feel like there’s so many people applying for jobs,” she said. “If you had an internship you already have an ‘in.’ I’m hoping I’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

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