This past summer at the publishing house in New York where I worked, my fellow interns and I compared our experiences in finding summer positions. My peers were lucky - their schools connected them to alums in high places and provided financial grants so that they could live in the major cities where attractive internships tend to be located.
The same week, the New York Times reported that Williams College, Princeton University, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania have a policy of waiving financial aid requirements so students may pursue summer internships, which tend to be unpaid. Smith and Connecticut colleges offer $2,000 grants to their general student populations, while Yale University, Wellesley College and Brown sponsor limited programs. While most of the colleges' programs fund several hundred students per year, Brown's sponsors only 25. With wounded school pride, I wondered why Brown, ranked number one by the Princeton Review for student happiness, wasn't also topping the charts on career development.
Perhaps Brown is stuck in the past. Alums I've contacted usually told stories of navigating the search for a career with help from friends, but such networking was always informal and involved little help from the University. Many of these Generation X-ers, now 10 or 15 years since graduating, took the roundabout path to a fixed career. Many spent a few years in non-profit work or in the arts before settling down to seek financial success. An informal networking process fit their "slacker," "find-your-own-way" mentality and their world. Our laissez-faire career services suited them.
Today's job market, on the other hand, is more competitive than ever. In our adult lives, Generation Y will face expensive home mortgages, elderly care costs for parents likely to live past well past retirement and college tuition for our children approaching the half-million dollar mark. Business Week magazine's recent cover on the 50 best companies to launch a career with emphasized Generation Y's interest in jobs with early access to leadership and high pay. As the entryway to these jobs, summer internships have become essential to any resume, and no longer a luxury for the well-connected.
Many Brown students feel this financial pressure well before graduation. One student I know switched out of the oft-derided modern culture and media concentration because he feared it was too directionless. Further, many alums told me stories of Brown interns they hired who displayed a distinctly pre-professional zeal, in sharp contrast to the rejection of careerism once so common on Brown's campus.
These changes demand expanding Brown's career and alumni services. Other colleges make their complete alumni listing available to all students and alums online; Brown's ACCESS network is volunteer-based, and largely unknown to students. In my experience, alums are eager to reconnect - one event I attended this summer was the attempt of an alum to connect all students and alums in the New York area. But the small turnout (only 20 alums) reflected the need for Brown's institutional support in building a network.
Granted, Brown students are an individualistic breed, committed to finding their own path and rarely demanding anything on a silver platter. I have been fortunate to have had several internships, some of which were found by contacting Brown alums through the ACCESS network on the Alumni Association's web page. This site presents a list, searchable by industry and location, of alums who choose to make their contact information available. Alums have always been receptive, but many have told me that I was the first student to contact them, and my friends at Brown were surprised when I directed them to ACCESS.
When we take the initiative to dig through professors' papers for research opportunities or browse the financial aid job postings page, my peers and I almost always find jobs, but such a difficult process seems unfair when such resources can easily be made available to us directly and systematically by Brown. We are entitled to a university that actively encourages students to pursue internships and informs us of resources available to us.
It's time for Brown to reconsider its historically ambivalent relationship to alum connection-building, and to match other top schools in networking strength. It would be an appropriately Brunonian course of action to grant students unlimited access to the independent and driven individuals who drew us to Brown in the first place.
Maha Atal '08 is dressed for success.
