FULL REPORT | JANUARY 2021
Internship and Career Plans for Computer Science Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Introduction
A historic recession, global pandemic, and closed workplaces: this is a tough time to begin a career. More than ever, we want to understand the resources students use, applicant outcomes, helpful courses and resources, and how schools and organizations can better support students in obtaining internships. This report, which focuses on internship searches and career potential in Computer Science, examines responses from 111 students at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. We hope that this report’s insights can help all students, both in computer science and other disciplines, better understand how to achieve their career goals.
REPORT OVERVIEW
We designed our analysis around six guiding questions:
- Who are the students and what companies do they seek internships in?
- How do class year and prior experience impact students’ internship search?
- What resources guide applicants through the internship process, and what do they perceive to be most useful?
- What does the application timeline look like?
- Who received assessments, interviews, and offers, and what factors correlate with receiving them?
- What classes and events were most meaningful to students’ job search, and what can schools and organizations do to better prepare students?
While the survey methodology intends to deliver responses as representative of the Allen School as possible, we recognize that there are many limitations, including:
Participation (non-response) bias: Students who chose to respond may have differed from students who decided not to respond in a way that would affect the survey results. For instance, students who chose to respond may have more internship interest or offers than the student body as a whole. Indeed, respondents are not representative of the Allen School’s distribution of class years.
The sample is not precisely representative of Allen School students as a whole: Because the survey was posted to the Allen School Career Board on Ed.stem, those who received it may have been more engaged in the career search process.
The survey may exclude students with limited digital and internet access: The online nature of the survey may have impacted our ability to contact and/or receive a response from individuals with little to no access to the internet.
As a result, unless otherwise indicated, we present the analysis in this report as correlations and do not infer causation between factors. We have chosen not to weight responses. We recognize additional limitations and complexities in analysis and welcome feedback on improving our methods at poddata.org/feedback.
SURVEY METHODOLOGY
This report explores results from the ACM Internship Search Survey, which received 111 responses from undergraduate students at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (N = 1668; 6.65%). This survey was open from 25 November 2020 to 8 January 2021.
The survey was conducted using Google Forms and posted on the Allen School Career Board on Ed.stem. The survey limited respondents to one response each and submissions were only accepted from students logged into their UW CSE email account.
From the time the survey was posted to the time it was closed, the Career Board post accumulated 1150 views. Views on the platform are not unique. Responses were tallied, with no personal data recorded and only submitted answers saved.
Summary of Responses
STUDENTS AND COMPANIES
- 111 students applied to an average of 68 companies (median = 50). 97% of respondents applied to at least one software engineer role and 28% to first or second-year internship programs.
- 67% of respondents received an offer from at least one company. Top offer companies were Amazon (20), Facebook (17), Microsoft (14), Uber (7), and Zillow (7).
- 74% of respondents applied with at least one referral; among them, they had 2.95 referrals on average. There is no discernable correlation between referrals and interviews or offers.
EXPERIENCE AND CLASS YEAR
- Experience matters. 59 students (53%) had prior internship experience (from 67% for the Class of 2021 to 20% for the Class of 2023) and 35 had return offers. On average, candidates with prior experience reported receiving offers from 1.58 companies, compared to 0.94 for those without experience.
RESOURCES AND RESUME
- 95% use Leetcode, the most popular interview preparation resource, followed distantly by Cracking the Coding Interview, with little variation among those who received an offer
- On respondents’ resumes, 52% include a personal GitHub and 20% a personal website; 95% of those with a personal website (n=22) received offers.
PREPARATION AND PROCESS
- Students who received offers reported starting earlier, preparing for interviews for 10.8 weeks vs 7.4 weeks. They also report more intensive preparation (6.2 hours vs 5 hours per week)
- Applicants estimated that they wait 2.58 weeks for online assessments, then 2.22 weeks for first-round interviews, then 1.95 weeks for final round interviews, then 1.55 weeks for offers
SCHOOL AND ORGANIZATIONS
- 64% of students indicated that CSE 332 helped them in the interview/assessment process
- Courses on data structures and algorithms (CSE 143, 332, 421) were the most popular
- 72% of students reported attending the Established Company Career Fair and 32% the Startup Career Fair; 70% who attended a career fair reported receiving an offer
- Asked what else the Allen School can do to support students, students volunteered earlier mock interview practice, a database of hiring companies, and assessment-type problem groups, among other suggestions
