The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore , and to find data that matter to you in your college or graduate school search.
Interning as a student can be a humbling experience — but it can also be lucrative in the long run. Many interns spend their days answering phones, getting coffee or organizing files, but these temporary jobs can lead to full-time employment after graduation.
More than 56 percent of students from the class of 2015 who participated in an internship or co-op had received at least one job offer by April of last year, according to from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Only 36.5 percent of undergrads who didn’t have an internship or co-op experience had received at least one job offer.
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At some colleges and universities, every student completes an internship to bridge the gap between academics and the working world. Bennington College in Vermont requires students to for seven weeks in the winter each year. At College of the Atlantic in Maine, students must have their approved before starting an 11-week work experience.
In all, eight out of the 324 colleges and universities that submitted data to U.S. News in an annual survey reported that 100 percent of their 2014 graduates had internship experience. Among all schools, the average was 40 percent.
Most of the schools on the top 10 list are , which focus on undergraduate education and grant fewer than half of their degrees in liberal arts fields, or , which offer a range of undergrad programs, some master’s programs and few doctoral programs.
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Below is a list of the 10 schools where the highest percentage of 2014 graduates completed an internship. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
| School name (state) | Percent of undergrads graduating with internship experience | U.S. News rank and category |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 93 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
| 100 | 82 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
| 100 | RNP*, National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
| 100 | 69 (tie), Regional Colleges (Midwest) | |
| 100 | 60 (tie), Regional Colleges (Midwest) | |
| 100 | 26 (tie), Regional Universities (North) | |
| 100 | 136 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges | |
| 100 | 92 (tie), Regional Universities (North) | |
| 95 | RNP, Regional Universities (North) | |
| 94 | 30 (tie), Regional Universities (Midwest) |
* denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its rankings category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.
Don’t see your school in the top 10? Access the to find internship data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via .
U.S. News surveyed nearly 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2015 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News’ data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News’ rankings of , or . The internship data above are correct as of March 8, 2016.
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