For Students on the Quarter System, Landing a Summer Internship Can Bring Complications

Krista Keplinger made it through one round of interviews recently for a summer internship at a local radio station when she disclosed a minor detail: She couldn’t start work until mid-June, when her academic year ended. A junior at the University of California at Davis, Keplinger had never applied for a media internship before. She never expected her schedule to be a problem.

While the recruiters said they were interested in her as an applicant, they insisted she start in May. And when Keplinger told them that wasn’t possible, she was immediately withdrawn from consideration. “Normally,” she said, “that station hires people from Sacramento State University, which is on the semester system, so I think they want all their interns to start at the same time.”

Davis is on the quarter system, which splits the academic year into four 10-week quarters, the last of which ends in June. (Colleges on the semester system typically use two 15-week terms.) When her academic calendar sank her internship prospects, Keplinger felt unqualified for other roles in media, she said.

The roughly one-month difference between when the two calendars end can appear insignificant, but some students say it puts needless obstacles in their search for summer internship, and even places them behind the curve for a postgraduation job. While most did not turn down available opportunities, they described to The Chronicle a myriad of complications.

Some were able to negotiate later starting dates, but others weren’t given that flexibility. Several students recalled reaching out at the start of the quarter to their professors, hoping to schedule earlier final exams or to complete their courses remotely. Some said they had been screened out of the selection process for internship programs because of their rigid timeline.

The headaches students described were anecdotal, but hint at an overlooked problem at the handful of campuses that operate on the quarter system. There’s even evidence to suggest the issue has, in part, motivated some campuses to switch to semesters.

Unexpected Setbacks

Gaudi Iyer, a senior computer-science major at the University of California at San Diego, which is on the quarter system, described fall recruiting as an extremely high-stress period. “Since school starts a month later [than in the semester system], you’re forced to tackle starting a new year and finding a new job at the same time,” she said.

Quarter-system students have varying experiences with employers, Iyer added. Students who attend prestigious institutions have stronger professional networks, which can help in negotiating the terms of an internship, she said. “If students are coming from backgrounds where their schools aren’t as prestigious or if their majors aren’t as desired, employers aren’t necessarily going to make exceptions,” she said.

Olivia R. Sanchez, a graduate student in journalism at the University of Oregon, recently discovered that the start date of her internship would fall during the last two weeks of class. She considered asking her professors to make special arrangements for her final projects, but she didn’t really want to risk rushing her master’s capstone.

The scheduling conflict took her aback, Sanchez said, since she had studied on a semester system as an undergraduate at the University of Portland. “It was never a problem before,” she said, “and now I suddenly realize I have to make changes in my schedule.”

Complications from the quarter system can weigh on students’ minds even before they start applying for internships, which can lead them to screen themselves out of opportunities. “I’ve often found myself choosing between spending hours working on a cover letter for an internship I’d be immediately disqualified for, or risk sounding presumptuous by asking for adjustments before I even hit the button on my application,” said Pranav Baskar, a freshman majoring in journalism at Northwestern University.

Other students have faced greater frustrations, progressing far in the interviewing process — some even receiving offers — only to be withdrawn from consideration. Most employers were aware of their academic calendars, the students said, but still expected them to leave college early.

After a federal agency offered him a summer fellowship, Mohamed Al Elew, a senior majoring in computer science at UC-San Diego, faced a last-minute rejection from the program because it conflicted with his finals schedule. In an email to Elew, the program’s coordinator asked him to make special arrangements with his professors, explaining that previous fellows had opted to take their exams remotely.

Elew sought to take his finals early, by the second week of the quarter, but leaving early wasn’t an option in some classes. He received an incomplete mark in one class, on the condition that he take the final at the start of next term, and ended up withdrawing from another course since he wouldn’t receive a passing grade with an early exam. “I still feel humiliated by the whole ordeal,” Elew said.

Gabriela Valencia went through three rounds of interviews for an operations position at a nonprofit organization, and was even asked if she could work remotely in May and June. A junior majoring in political science at the University of California at Los Angeles, Valencia said the internship started around the eighth week of the quarter, when some classes still had midterms. “I was told that while the nonprofit really liked me,” she said, “another candidate was more convenient because they could start sooner.”

At a Disadvantage

Only about 5 percent of four-year colleges and universities, many of them public institutions, operate on the quarter system. So frustrations like those are far from the norm in higher education.

Career advisers at quarter-system institutions say the problems are actually minor. They’ve found employers — mostly those that recruit on their campuses — to be flexible, although they advise students to start thinking right away about the recruitment process. In recent years, the advisers say, some large firms and companies have begun recruiting as early as August or September.

The advisers acknowledge that the recruiting schedule can be particularly demanding for students seeking positions in industries that recruit in the fall quarter. “Primarily on the recruiting side, it just means we have to make sure that our students are ready earlier and faster than at other schools,” said Christine Wilson, interim director of the UCLA’s career center.

“If they aren’t already thinking of their internship plans during the summer,” said Rachel Finch, director of external relations at Oregon State University’s career center, “by the time they’re back in school for the fall quarter, it’s already October and they may fall behind on that process.”

Certain industries, including accounting and banking, have a rigid timeline for the recruiting process, Finch said, while others have a rolling recruitment cycle, a practice that could disadvantage students who start classes later. A rolling cycle means that positions could be filled before quarter-system students even have a chance to apply.

But mostly, Finch said, the students face isolated problems unrelated to the academic calendar. The timing differences between the quarter and semester systems, she said, do not appear to be a large concern for students — a view supported by other career officials who spoke to The Chronicle.

But administrators whose institutions have moved from a quarter to a semester calendar commend the change, despite the yearslong, often tedious process to accomplish it. They believe it will put their students on an even ground with peers at other colleges.

California State University at San Bernardino offers a course credit if students take part in a 10-week internship program. But often their schedules don’t align with what some employers are used to, according to Craig Seal, dean of undergraduate studies. “That puts our students at a particular disadvantage,” he said.

The university is now reorienting its curriculum and academic calendar, and is expected to start on the semester system by the fall of 2020.

After the University of Cincinnati converted to a semester calendar, in 2012, administrators felt students were better positioned to compete for summer internships, said Annie Straka, director of multidisciplinary initiatives. Back when the university was on the quarter system, Straka worked as manager of academic internships. At the time, she said, students felt they had been “late to the game” in securing those jobs because their schedules didn’t align with what employers wanted.

“Even regardless of start date,” Straka said, “there are so many other students at semester schools actively looking for positions starting a month in advance of our students.”

Minimal Research

There has been minimal research on the effect on students of shifting from a quarter to a semester calendar, said Stefanie Fischer, an assistant professor of economics at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. Fischer and two other economists wrote a paper, published in 2018, on the effect of the academic calendar on graduation rates. The paper found that students caught in the transition from quarters to semesters face delayed graduation. The scholars have also conducted research on how a switch to a semester calendar affects summer employment; that paper is under review.

One reason administrators cited for making the calendar conversion, Fischer said, was to provide more opportunities for study abroad and to better accommodate summer employment and internship cycles.

“Schools have speculated that semesters are better for students academically and professionally,” she said, “but in reality there hasn’t been any research to know the causal impact of the switch.”

Most students who spoke to The Chronicle said they actually enjoy the quarter system. A 10-week quarter is fast-paced, but it allows them to learn from more professors and keeps them on their toes academically. But it’s very much a double-edged sword, said Iyer, the UC-San Diego student.

“I really cherish the fast pace, and I thrive in the short turnaround time,” she said, “but you’re always thinking about school, and then there are jobs you have to apply to just hanging in the back of your mind.”

Follow Terry Nguyen on Twitter at @terrygtnguyen, or email her at terry.nguyen@chronicle.com.