Internships in economics for sixth formers?

[MareofBeasttown]

Looking for a summer internship for DS, in junior sixth who wants to study economics in uni. Yes, I know we have probably left it too late; there were reasons for that. He already did an internship with Springpod earlier this year. Most internships seem to be undergrads or cost a huge sum of money. He has combed Student Ladder, Investment 20/20 and so on with no luck.

Too late for this summer - but might be useful for another time: iea.org.uk/internships/

Try asking at all the various local financial investment companies. Thats what my son did for his work experience.

OhCrumbs my ds applied for the IEA's year 12 internship but didn't get it - no explanation given, but looking at the list of private schools they target for their programme of talks I do suspect they go for students from a slightly more upmarket background than his. To be honest though, I was relieved, because I followed them on Twitter for a while after he applied and realised (naively) that "free market think tank" means very, very right wing. I'm no lefty by any means, but I found some of their posts a bit distasteful. I looked them up on Wikipedia and it seems the left wing press have tried to expose them as being in the pocket of the tobacco industry and various other powerful industries in the past. They've shaken off the accusations, but even so I don't get a warm glow and think "ooh they'd be a great employer for DS". Horses for courses I guess. 🙂 He's got an internship with a bank instead, though they call it work experience - the word internship seems to be more used for undergrads/postgrads (but back in my youth, that was called work experience too).

OP, you are a bit late. The work experience programmes were all open for applications in Jan/Feb, and most were scaled back to online experiences rather than in an office. We hunted around for them in the 'early careers' sections of company websites. At this late stage I'd say avoid big firms and write to small places with no organised annual programme.

Have a look at Speakers for Schools

Yep really competitive area. Probably too late for this summer. If interested in economics at uni, focus on reading for your personal statement and there are some essay competitions you can enter eg Royal Economics Society. Can do online Investment banking experience too with Investin, but you have to pay.

I meant to post my thanks for your useful posts earlier; so sorry! I am new to the UK- hence why we are so late and why I used the term 'internship". DS had his eye on IEA, but he needs very good grades for his targeted unis, so he has been focusing on that and missed the deadline. In any case, I don't think he would get along in a right wing think tank. He's very leftwing!

We had a talk with his school careers counsellor and she seems to think its more important for him to read widely, get top grades and do some online courses rather than work ex.