Allison Parker gathering real-world experiences and exploring careers at the famed National Aquarium.

Internships

When you take on an internship, you apply your classroom learning to the working world. Internships provide a valuable opportunity to develop your career skills while you're still a student. That's why the CEO is here to help you identify the types of internships that support your goals, search for opportunities, practice interviewing and ace your applications, and get the most out of your internship experiences.

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Your Gateway to Success: Handshake Appointments | Internships | Jobs

We're proud to maintain a database of over 50,000 opportunities through an online platform called Handshake. When you make an account, you can schedule career coaching with the CEO, search for on-campus positions, and find internships and full-time jobs.

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Olivia Jefferson Business Administration and Philosophy major internship

Summer Intern Fellowship

Want to intern, but worried about cost? The CEO facilitates a limited number of competitive need-based summer intern fellowship awards to help offset the cost of summer opportunities!

How to Apply

Reality-Test Your Career Choices

What is an internship? An internship is an on-site work experience that can be paid or unpaid, held during the summer or throughout the academic year, and is often a student’s first experience in a professional setting.

Internships allow you to experience new work environments, meet and work with professionals, develop and refine your skills, and gain valuable work experience before you even graduate from college, which many employers look for when hiring for full-time roles. You can also earn academic credit for your internship if you plan ahead and follow the required process at McDaniel before the start of your internship.

The CEO connects students with professional opportunities that they are passionate about! Handshake, our online experiential learning database, contains thousands of internship opportunities.

Explore Internships on Handshake

Earn Academic Credit

If you're interested in receiving academic credit for an internship, it is up to you to lead the process of applying for and earning it. Academic departments recognize that learning happens during internships, so they may award credit for an internship that is closely related to your career goals.

The credit is offered on a pass/fail basis. You can earn academic credit for paid and unpaid internships.

Here’s how it works:

The student identifies, applies for, and secures an internship that aligns with their academic program.
The student requests a faculty member to sponsor them from the department most closely aligned with the experience. In the rare instance that no faculty can sponsor, the executive director of the Center for Experience and Opportunity may be substituted.
Faculty will often meet with the student on campus and assign additional assignments as a condition to receive the credit.
The student fills out a form they find on the McDaniel College online portal. The faculty sponsor and internship site supervisor sign the form. The student submits the form to the Registrar’s Office.
With very rare exceptions, most for-credit internships are approved.

Fund Your Internship

The CEO sponsors a limited number of need-based experiential grants and awards.

Designed to help defray the cost of experiences like internships, McDaniel's support has enabled students to complete internships at places such as the National Security Agency, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and The Legal Aid Society in New York.

Funds have also allowed students to complete research opportunities at the Institute for Cell Engineering with Johns Hopkins University and the Ohio State University Department of Molecular Genetics, among others.

Learn More About Experiential Grants & Awards

Recent News for Internships

Students gain real-world experience with summer 2024 internships

Numerous McDaniel College undergraduate students participated in summer internships. Read more about their experiences.
Sophomore matches with McDaniel for state’s first-in-the-nation public service program

McDaniel College is among the host sites selected for Maryland’s Service Year Option and Maryland Corps, the nation’s first public service year program for high school graduates. Ameerah Johnson, a sophomore Criminal Justice and Sociology major, is fulfilling her commitment as an inaugural fellow of the program by assisting with student outreach at McDaniel, focused on promoting the eight dimensions of wellness.
Embassy visits and ambassador meetings enhance National Security Fellow’s summer internship

Tatiana Hamilton, Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies major and Political Science major, found her ideal internship with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington, D.C.