![]() It’s hard to know if you’ll be burned out without having experienced back to back work quarters, but if you felt like you were burned out after a summer internship and still want to do off-season, you might want to opt for Winter, which allows you to rotate school and work at an even pace, thus avoiding burnout. In addition, doing back to back internships (spring to summer, summer to fall) can lead to the possibility of burnout from work. It may be preferable to opt for a spring/winter internship over fall, so you don’t have to deal with the hassle of interviewing and working at the same time. Specifically for fall internships, one downside is that you have to handle interview season alongside your internship, which will vary depending on how nice your mentor/manager is for letting you take time off to interview, especially if you need to onsite at those companies (I got very lucky with my mentor/manager who were extremely accommodating with all the onsites interviews I had, this may not be the case for everyone). Why you shouldn’t do off-season internships Even so, if you’re able to graduate earlier than a 4 year pace, it may be worth taking a gap quarter/semester to do an off-season internship, especially if you want more internship experience, want to try working at a particular company, or intend to work in industry for full-time. In addition, it tends to be easier to take a gap quarter for quarter schools than a gap semester at semester schools (you still have 2 quarters to take classes vs only 1 semester to take classes). This tends to be much easier for certain schools, such as Waterloo who has mandatory co-op programs, and Harvard/MIT who have a 6 week winter break which allows for winternships. we still had 5–6 different intern events with all the fall interns, and it was easy to hang out and get to know the Snap Inc. ![]() had 80 summer interns and 10 fall interns) than summer internship programs, which means the internship tends to be less “fluffed” with intern events and tends to focus on actual full-time software engineering. In addition, off-season internships tend to have significantly less interns (Snap Inc. This is why I think it’s better to intern at different companies each summer instead of repeating, as I think you learn a lot more from being in a completely different workplace with its unique environment). ![]() Everyone has their own factors that they value, and interning at multiple different companies can help you identify what you like and don’t like about each workplace, helping to identify the factors you prioritize (which is important by the time you’re looking for a full-time job). In addition, each company has their own unique factors/quirks - work environment, perks, compensation, location, products, company mission, culture, core values, size, learning/growth opportunities, etc. if I interned at Google summer sophomore year, and wanted to go back but also wanted to intern at Facebook, I could do Facebook Summer + Google Spring or Google Summer + Facebook Fall to try interning at both companies). In particular, off-season internships are a great way to experience working at a different company, especially if you wanted to repeat an internship with another company (e.g. Off-season internships are a way to obtain another internship - this can lead to an increase in prestige, help you to get more interviews, as well as more offers for full-time negotiation (two junior year internships can lead to two full-time offers), and overall make you a better and more competitive candidate through having more internship experiences. In this article, I’ll be sharing about my experiences with off-season internships (in particular an internship where you take time off from school as part of a co-op program or a gap quarter/semester), including my experience as a Software Engineering Intern at Snap Inc. In the past I’ve written The Internship Hunt: Finding CS internships in College, an article about strategies to obtain software engineering interviews and internships. Hi, I’m Victor, an incoming MS student in Computer Science at UCSD.
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