College Life

Internships: Discovery And Real World Experience
By Sarah Campbell

Internships are a great introduction to the world of work and business. Interning can provide networking opportunities, as well as a means of making money. And it doesn’t hurt that this experience looks real good on paper too. A real resume booster!

In order to receive credit from an internship, Marymount Manhattan College requires students to have completed 30 credits and to have a GPA no lower than 2.8. Finding an internship begins in the office of Susan Ach, the career development specialist. She will give you the Academic Credit Internship Registration Form to complete, and will help guide you to an internship based on your individual interests, aspirations, and skills. She can also offer you advice pertaining to your resume or even assist you in creating one.

Ach believes that internships are an important step for students to discover what they like, but she stresses that the experience is equally necessary in helping students determine what they don’t like. Therefore, she feels that interning in a couple of different fields, rather than merely one, can prove beneficial.

Internships should serve as a taste test of an experience, so trying several different flavors is recommended before making a decision. The New York State Education Law states that, in order to receive credit for an internship, a student must complete a minimum of 120 hours of work, an average of about 10 hours a week, though MMC students typically intern somewhere between 15 and 20 hours a week.

MMC students are permitted to take a maximum of 15 internship credits. MMC is affiliated with many interning opportunities, which students are able to browse, though they are also allowed to receive credit from an internship they find elsewhere (Craigslist, for example), as long as the specific arrangement is approved by the school. Currently 110 MMC students are interning this spring, at places such as, NBC casting, Fox Entertainment Publicity, Harlem Charter Day-school, CBS casting and CBS News, Major League Baseball Network, and the Martha Stewart Show, and many, many more.

Ach says interning during the academic year seems to provide greater opportunities, though she does say that summer internships are more likely to pay (though paid internships are rare year-round). Being an intern in New York provides great advantages and fortunately MMC receives good feedback from the companies where it has interns. Sometimes, an internship may lead to a job offer from the company for which you are working, or another company in the same field.