Jalaun Ross, a computer science major at Central Connecticut State University, knew it would be hard to find an internship at a prominent tech company this summer.
He chose to attend an affordable local public university over a top computing school, and he didn’t know anyone in the industry who could speak well of him with tech recruiters.
During an internship at a financial services firm last summer, Mr. Ross spent hours each evening preparing for the coding tests that technology companies use to weed out candidates. He said he ended up applying to more than 200 internships, but received no offers from any tech companies.
“College itself is a huge workload, especially for minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status,” Mr Ross said. “How do people who go to regular public schools compete?”
Like getting into an Ivy League university, getting a prestigious internship at a well-known tech company can bring lifelong advantages. Coveted software engineering interns at companies like Amazon or Google have been known to pay $24,000 or more over the summer, not including housing allowances. They can also provide compelling intellectual challenge, foster valuable relationships and lead to full-time employment opportunities.
With sometimes more than 100,000 students applying for just a few thousand spots, getting an elite tech internship can be as brutal as getting into Harvard.
Critics say the typical hiring process at a high-profile tech company often gives an advantage to top computing schools and students with industry connections — just as elite private colleges over-enroll students from top high schools and favor the children of alumni. Wealthier intern candidates may also have more time and opportunities to polish their portfolios and improve their test-taking skills.
“Privilege assumptions are baked into the system,” said Ruthe Farmer, the company’s founder and CEO. Last Mile Education Fund, a nonprofit that helps low-income students in technology fields complete their college degrees. “It favors students who have more free time to devote to studying for side projects, hackathons and technical interviews — traits that conflate privilege with student potential.”
(Ms. Farmer’s nonprofit has received funding from Google, Microsoft and other tech companies.)
The intern selection process highlights a long-standing inequity in recruiting and hiring in Silicon Valley. This year, layoffs and layoffs at leading tech companies have only narrowed internship opportunities and exacerbated socioeconomic disparities, students said. In response to a call from The New York Times, nearly 300 people — students, recent grads and software engineers — shared their experiences applying for tech internships and jobs, with some describing the process as “cruel” and “unfair.” or “frustrating”. “
To compete, dozens of students spent hours applying to more than 100 internships, practicing for internship coding tests or working on personal coding projects in an attempt to impress recruiters, they said. More than half of respondents said they never heard back from the companies they applied for.
Students at some lesser-known public universities say they feel disadvantaged compared with their peers at computer science powerhouses such as Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley. Some students say they quit their part-time jobs or neglected coursework to devote themselves to applying for technical internships — only to receive no offers.
Undergraduates in some higher-ranked computing programs reported more successful outcomes. Kien Pham, a student at the University of Minnesota, said he spent the summer and much of the fall focused on applying for more than 300 internships.
That included preparing for an interview with Amazon, he said, where he spent the better part of two weeks writing snippets of his life that aligned with the company’s guiding values, known internally as leadership principles. Later, he accepted a software engineering internship at Amazon this summer.
Some students noticed socioeconomic disparities throughout the application process.
Technology companies such as Microsoft and Google have Internal recommendation system Where employees can recommend candidates. These recommendations can help differentiate certain students among thousands of applicants. But students at lesser-known schools often lack the industry, family or elite college connections that can lead to employee recommendations.
Another concern, Ms. Farmer said: that the intern selection process may overlook or underestimate college students with jobs.
Davita Bird, a computer science student at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, has studied six computer programming languages. In addition to her classes, she holds three part-time jobs: a teaching assistant for a math class, an instructor for a girls’ science and technology education program, and an organizer of university events.
Last semester, Ms. Bird spent an hour every night for two months applying for 40 internships at Airbnb, Amazon, Google, Oracle and smaller companies. She said she has not heard back from most.
“I was expected to be a full-time student and work outside the classroom, spending about five hours a week looking for internships, which wouldn’t even hire me for five months,” Ms Bird recently accepted a job at an electronics company in the cloud Computing Internship, wrote in a commentary to The Times. “I hope the company will at least say no by email.”
The process can seem opaque to some students, since big tech companies rarely disclose their intern acceptance rates or list the universities where they recruit the most interns.
In a recent interview, Vaishali Sabhahit, Adobe’s global head of university talent, said the company typically receives applications from more than 100,000 candidates for its U.S. summer internship program and hires about 600 interns. This year, the company launched a separate cybersecurity internship program with Bowie State University, a historically black college in Maryland.
Apple did not respond to questions about its internship program. Microsoft and Meta declined to comment for this article.
In an email, Amazon’s director of student programs, Keyon Young, said the company considered a candidate’s education and work experience, but was most concerned with the student’s alignment with the company’s leadership principles.He said last year Amazon hired the most U.S. interns from top computer schools These include Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon.
“Connecting with current Amazonians is not a requirement for consideration,” Mr Yang added.
To expand opportunities, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yuan, amazon and other big tech companies have created various introductory internships or mentoring programs for freshman and sophomore college students over the years. These programs are designed to provide students from underrepresented groups in technology, including women, black, Latinx and low-income students, with hands-on experience working on engineering projects.
Google’s engineering program student training is designed to prepare students for professional internships. The program hosted hundreds of students from 143 universities last year. Mr Young said Amazon’s similar program, the Propel Program, already offered successful interns the opportunity to return home for an internship or full-time employment.
Wealthier students may also have an advantage in preparing for coding tests and technical interviews. To prepare for the assessment, many students practice their skills on LeetCode, a free test prep website that provides coding and algorithm questions with detailed solutions.
The site also offers premium services. For $35 a month, members gain access to specific questions that companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft used — and some still use — to assess applicants.To keep the questions up to date, the test prep service says it regular survey member Apply for technical positions.
Spending hours practicing on LeetCode didn’t end up helping Mr. Ross at Central Connecticut State University, however. He described the experience of applying for 200 tech placements and being rejected as “heartbreaking”.
“It made me feel like this field wasn’t for me,” he said, “despite my love of computer science.”
However, Mr Ross said he was grateful for the opportunity to study and work in computing. He recently accepted a homecoming internship at the financial services firm he worked for last summer.
