The word “summer” often garners a variety of emotions. While for some Harvard students, the word might represent sunbathing on beaches and surfing on beautiful blue waves, for others, the word “summer” comes with a much more daunting connotation: internships.
When it comes to internships, certain fields of interest require recruitment processes that vary heavily in terms of difficulty. This is especially true for two of the most popular industries for Harvard undergraduates: finance and consulting. To understand what summer entails for hopeful Harvard finance and consulting pre-professionals, the Harvard Independent interviewed three students about their experiences recruiting for summer and full-time positions. All three students requested anonymity.
A sophomore concentrating in economics and computer science explained how many students struggle to find employment with little on their resume. After working at a hedge fund during the 2022 summer, he will be joining a private equity firm for this upcoming summer. Both job searches posed the dilemma: “You need experience to get more experience.”
“If you want to get a job at a company after graduation, you often need to work there the summer before,” he said, in regards specifically to finance and consulting jobs. “If you want to do that, you often need to apply during January of your sophomore year. So, the recruiting process is very accelerated.”
Another sophomore studying applied mathematics and economics voiced the lack of guidance on campus in finding available internships, specifically noting how much he wished he had an upperclassmen mentor. He will be working as a business analyst at McKinsey this summer. “I wish I had someone who had gone through similar positions that I did,” he said. “As a sophomore I tried to make sure I was talking to the freshmen I know about the opportunities and what they should do.”
“I think freshman summer is a stepping stone to sophomore summer, and sophomore summer is a stepping stone to junior summer,” he continued. “So, if you didn’t do anything freshman or sophomore summer, you’re behind.” He added, “What you do freshman summer is not going to be important for the rest of your life, but it is important for what you put on your resume to get that sophomore summer internship.”
The Economics and Computer Science concentrator also said he feels disadvantaged by the lack of Harvard finance programs or business classes compared to his competitors for internships. “The reality is that there is a very high prerequisite level of knowledge that’s expected, and you’re expected to be able to compete with kids who have gone to Wharton or these other undergraduate business schools even if you don’t necessarily get to learn that in the classroom,” he said. “If you want to be competitive for a lot of these jobs, you need to spend a significant amount of time outside of your schoolwork.”
“Harvard’s mandate is not to provide a technical education … It’s not pre-professional,” he added. Unlike other undergraduate institutions that offer specific finance majors, business schools, or more technical curriculum, Harvard College implements a liberal arts and science approach that gives students the “intellectual foundation for the tools to think critically, reason analytically and write clearly,” as reported on the Harvard College website.
To compensate and prepare both themselves and their resume for the summer recruitment process, many students chose to join a finance or consulting club on campus. These organizations often teach students invaluable lessons on necessary interviewing and pre-professional skills and provide a community and mentorship. Of the over 500 student organizations that Harvard boasts, nearly 80 clubs focus on pre-professional endeavors. These organizations may have exclusive and high-demanding admissions processes or a more casual, education-based curriculum.
When asked how students from underrepresented communities face challenges in the summer recruiting process, the Economics and CS concentrator said, “freshman and sophomore internships are really hard to get, and a lot of people, if they’re privileged enough…get jobs through connections. Oftentimes that’s what you see happening at Harvard.”
He continued, “But that really puts people at a disadvantage if they come from an underserved community or if they come from a place where they don’t have a lot of connections.” Nevertheless, he pointed out that several selective pre-professional clubs already have mentorship programs and diversity initiatives to help people who may not have the opportunity to get exposed to these opportunities before college.
Pre-professional clubs do not always play a necessary role on campus. One senior concentrating in Mathematics and pursuing an AM degree in Statistics, approaches the applications by leaning on his peers. He prepared for his quantitative finance interviews primarily by working with friends in his class who are also undergoing the application process. “I did not have any upperclassmen mentor, and lots of my friends didn’t either. However, I do have lots of friends who are going through the same process, and I think that is very important,” he said.
Harvard’s Office of Career Services, Harvard’s primary resource for undergraduate and graduate students to help them prepare for life after graduation, is helpful for many reasons. While it often provides resources on how to build a proper resume or cover letter, OCS fails to help students prepare for the most competitive, smaller access internships—the ones most people are after.
“The people who do well in these [application processes] either have support from the clubs and the extracurriculars they’re in, and people telling them what to do. Or if they’re lucky they might have an older sibling who has gone through the process,” the economics and CS concentrator said. “I really don’t think Harvard as an institution provides a lot of resources both in terms of training and tangible knowledge that you need to get these jobs, and in terms of being clear in terms of saying ‘here is what you need to do, here is when you need to do it.’”
The other sophomore noted an alternate opinion. “If you talk to [Office of Career Services] advisors, go to the summer fairs, it seems to be helpful,” he said. “I just wish they had more opportunities per se. I wish Harvard had more funding for example. It would be great if summer funding were guaranteed. It would take so much stress out of the process and make sure that low-income students could participate in the opportunities they want,” he said.
Despite the often-high number of qualifications that Harvard students offer in the application process, the reality is that most employment attempts will result in failure. Despite being offered a full-time job at a top quantitative trading firm, the senior described the process of recruiting as “mostly rejections,” and that it is important to not give up or be discouraged from failure. As an international student, he also described how getting job offers is harder in certain smaller, less streamlined industries, such as start-ups, as these companies will need to sponsor your visa. Larger companies, alternatively, are often able to provide legal help and onboarding precedent, making the process for international students much smoother.
Springtime often breeds anxiety over summer plans, and Harvard students are no exception. Summer plans, like most academic and extracurricular experiences at Harvard, are often taken advantage of as opportunities to build resumes and gain experience. Yet does the culture of summer internships really improve our qualifications as students? Or does it just contribute to the never-ending rat race of surface level success? By viewing summer opportunities as an opportunity for self-development instead of stressing out and comparing activities with others, the summer can really be a time of enjoyment, exploration, and a steppingstone for greater things in life.
Nathanael Tjandra ’26 (nathanaeltjandra@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.