Third year and still no summer internship

[internshipstruggles2026]

DS does engineering at Imperial and is in his third year with a strong 2:1 performance. He applied for 70+ internships in the last 12 months and had final-round interviews with around 5 companies that included big names like NVIDIA, ARM and small names/start ups, but hasn't been successful in securing an internship. So he is facing a third summer without an internship, and has a final Masters year that will start in October. Last year he volunteered at a start-up (that has since closed down) and has some strong own-projects in his CV. He seems to have lost hope. Any advise?

So hard for them!
dont know anything about engineering sorry but is there a very local firm who might want someone hands on like in a v junior role for a few weeks?

Keep trying, widen his net
my dd has just had a year 2 internship in HR, she wanted finance. Has absolutely hated her HR year!! But the same company has just offered her a graduate role in finance for after her year three.
Sometimes you have to side step your way in!!

It sounds as though your Ds has done amazingly well to get to the last round - there are 1000s of people applying. But also so frustrating.

I'd agree with PP to apply speculatively for local / smaller firms who may suddenly have a vacancy / a summer project wanting completed. Maybe even try doorstepping some firms - I did that - admittedly it was a long time ago when all firms had offices - but it shows initiative and side steps the AI bots.

Has he tried uni research labs (imperial or elsewhere)? - they sometimes take undergrads for internships.

Would doing next year in industry be an option instead? I know it might be a bit late. My DC1 is also doing an intégristes Masters and a couple of his friends have gone down this route after failing to secure an Internship for those Summer.

It is really good news that he got down to the final rounds though. Has he asked for feedback? It sounds as though he may need more work on his interview technique if he’s falling at the last hurdle?

Some engineering companies sponsor dissertations. Would that be a compromise for his final year if no internships forthcoming.

Is he just applying for ones advertised? Or is he cold calling small hedge funds etc?

Dear OP,

I know how hard this is. My daughter applied for so many internships that she actually had a spreadsheet to keep track. She is studying history (year 2) and is due to start an internship with Skanska doing community engagement next week.

Last year she couldn’t do a standard internship because she had surgery in the Summer. She contacted our local councillor who helped her set up a month of work experience with the council’s education team which was terrific. It is definitely worth contacting smaller firms, local councils and other local organisations to see what they can offer.

The other thing worth considering is whether he has any specific characteristics that organisations might be in a position to support : state school educated (93% club), disabled (change 100), BME (10,000 black interns). My daughter was supported by Change 100 to apply for her internship.

I would also encourage him to take every opportunity available through his uni such as student projects, SU/student rep positions etc to be able to demonstrate specific achievements. Careers services can often be very good at highlighting opportunities and helping with the application process.

Good luck to your DS, it is really hard.

Getting to five final rounds is not failure; it suggests the CV is working and the bottleneck may be final interview, fit or timing. I’d make him do a quick post-mortem: which roles reached final, what feedback came back, what interview questions repeated, and whether each rejection was technical, behavioural or “better fit elsewhere”. Then use the summer for one visible engineering project plus targeted smaller-company/speculative approaches rather than another broad 70-application cycle.

Has he asked for feedback from the places where he got to final round? I think he's legally entitled to ask and they have to provide it if he got that far.

It will help him know if there's any gaps in his interview techniques or if its simply a matter of more experienced candidates competing with him, etc.

That must be so frustrating for him. Has he looked at small local companies? I guess it depends what type of engineering. My sone did a few weeks at a small garage that services high end cars. It wasn’t perfectly relevant to his degree but was still useful and enjoyable.

Does he take on other normal summer jobs? My kids didn’t all do interns but found long term coffee shop type jobs were useful when applying.
However this was a few years ago and I do understand the grad job situation has changed.
One of my DC got through to the final partner interview stage at one of the big four with zero work experience other than coffee shop jobs. They had no characteristic that would have helped get them an interview. Good employers know that getting internships is difficult and tends to advantage already advantaged applicants.

Just wanted to address your point about internships going to “already advantaged applicants”.

This is not necessarily the case at all. Internships and work experience recruitment is one of the few (if not the only) time employers can explicitly recruit applicants from disadvantaged groups or groups underrepresented in their workforce and exclude “advantaged applicants”. So as mentioned above, they could run a programme specifically for BAME students.

The old Bristol Tracker company produced a report on internship application outcomes recently for the last applicant cycle which showed that such under represented groups had a much higher success rate in internship applications. (And in that report it showed that girls were more successful than boys - reflecting that there are some STEM type programmes just for girls.)

However, when it comes to applying for full time graduate jobs, the jobs are open to all on an equal basis. So my message is not to be too disheartened if your DS doesn’t get an internship because it doesn’t mean he won’t get a graduate job.

And my only suggestion is to go back to his uni professors and ask if there’s any project he could help out on over the summer - even unpaid. Oh and this company INVESTIN, runs v £ engineering summer programmes for school pupils which have lots of student helpers so if he cld do that he will be able to network with the engineering companies involved.

@internshipstruggles2026 what type of engineering is it?

Also, does he have anything on his CV other than his strong academic history?