Tips for Scoring an International Internship
Aman Jhalani is a student of IIT Delhi pursuing Dual Degree (Integrated Masters) in the field of Chemical Engineering. This summer, he landed an internship with a Research profile at Imperial College, London, United Kingdom. He hands out nifty tips to bag a lucrative international internship!
Getting an internship in a world renowned college was a dream come true for me. But before that let me tell you, students getting internships at foreign universities is not a new thing, its just that majority people don’t really know how to apply for the same and clearly Internshala has done a great job in bridging that gap.
Let me start by sharing my experience of applying for this type of internship for which you should have a cover letter and a resume (Google it to see some good samples on how to write the same). Once you are done with that, get them reviewed by some of your seniors who had done a similar kind of thing.
After creating the final draft you need to search for the colleges you need to apply (that have departments of your field of interest). The best way to do this is to (obviously, again) Google the top 50 schools across the globe and select 20 out of them. Now go to the (interested) department faculty page to get the mail-ids of professors whom you wanted to apply. Remember always choose those professors who have similar field of interest in which you have done some thing strong or concrete. They people (profs) give more attention to your field of interest and the work you have done in it, instead of your CGPA/GPA/percentage/grades.
Once you’re done with that, start applying by the starting of November (if you are applying for next year’s summers). Another word of caution, this process requires a lot of patience and you may not even get a reply after 50-100 mails, so get ready to send A LOT of mails to get a positive reply with funding (I got mine in 48th mail!).
The perks of being a research trainee (or any other foreign internship) is that you get to learn a different culture, work environment and for a travelling & photography enthusiast like me, it’s a one in a life time opportunity to explore new lands. Things that you should keep in mind while doing such internships is that you are not only representing yourself but your college and your country so behave as professionally as you can and make a strong networking with the people you are working. And in your casual hours, enjoy hard!
