Internships are a really good way to learn the culture of a particular company or an industry. Following from this, internships can be very valuable for learning whether or not your "dream" environment is right for you (learning that you hate doing something is as valuable as learning that you like doing it). However, internships do not make or break your design career. Following are common traps that students fall into.
Your parents mean well, but they don’t have a lot of information except for general information they read on the internet. We see over a hundred students graduate each year, so we have more reliable data. Students with stronger technical, conceptual, and communicative skills get hired easily. It takes other studnts longer. We have found that students who spend time outside of class working on school projects, making friends with one another, and/or making time for mentorship with faculty during sophomore year build foundational skills. The ones who don’t spend the next two years catching up. As a result, we do not approve of or support internships during your sophomore year.
Companies do not hire interns to be nice. They want something from you, too, and don’t feel obligated to teach you what you don’t know: mostly they will put you on tasks using what you already know. Also there is a big difference between being an intern one or two days a week and being an intern full-time: the best “real-world” learning you can have is in watching a project unfold over time, how decisions are made, and how the work is divided. You can do this if you’re there all the time (like over the summer), but if you’re only there once a week, online only, or both, chances are you’re just being kept busy. It is possible to learn a lot in an internship, but only if you already have the technical, conceptual, and communicative skills that most people learn in school. (Look around: none of these companies take interns straight out of high school. Why not, if it beats school for learning to design?)
If a company has a choice between a student with excellent work but no internships and one with mediocre work but internships, they will always choose the first student. The only leg up that the internship gives is that if you’ve worked in a similar environment before (like if you interned at an agency and you’re applying to an agency, you interned at a small studio and you’re applying to a small studio), it’s likely you liked it enough to apply to a similar situation. But no one cares really whether you did it for 3 months or 6 months, and no one expects you to do an internship every semester.
No, you don’t. This is New York. There are many paid internships, and companies are becoming more and more aware that exploiting young people isn’t cool. For every two students taking on an unpaid internship, one junior-level job is gone. It’s good for the billion-dollar company, but it isn’t good for designers. Also it increases inequality, allowing only the rich to hoard design positions in certain industries. Go build a new world. Also when people don’t pay you, they don’t value your work, and they waste your time. If you want to work for free, volunteer at a non-profit, not at a corporation.
Not true. We want all of our students to succeed. Internships are a great part of your education as a designer, but they only make sense when you have a solid understanding of design and know what you want to learn before agreeing to one. We highly encourage you to seek internships as soon as you near the completion of your sophomore year requirements. If you can, intern in different kinds of situations: this is the one time you can really sample different work environments to find out what you really want to do.
First of all, your peers are your best resource to find an internship at a smaller studio or company. When a company is at a small scale, it doesn’t make sense to post an internship and take a lot of time to go through applications, so they will just ask their most junior employee. You can also find listings and guidance on our Opportunities page.
At the other end of the scale, if you want to work this summer for a large company with thousands of employees, think about what you want to do and apply early. If you google “design internship for summer 2026,” you will find links to companies that are accepting applications in advance.
Whatever you do, seek the internships yourself. Companies reaching out to students without knowing anything about them don’t always have the best intentions, and there are also scams. Lean on your faculty and peers to understand what is and what is not a good opportunity.