Just when you thought the school year was winding down, high-achieving Ivy League students are ready to leap into action again. Life at Princeton can be competitive and downright cutthroat, depending on your major, and nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to summer internships. Whether you’re doing community service in a developing country or learning what it’s really like to be a money-grubbing I-banker, it’s all about building the resume.

The institutions that hire college interns don’t help relieve the competitive atmosphere; in fact, they aggravate the problem by beginning their recruiting as early as October and November of the previous year. If you want to work at Goldman Sachs or Merril Lynch, you’d better be ready to be interviewed before you’ve even had your fall midterm exams.

The interviews themselves are grueling. My economics-major friends report on five-hour interviews in which they’re drilled on mental math, business sense, and whether the choices made by some corporations were wise or foolish and why. My female econ friends had to have a ready supply of pantsuits or skirts-and-blazers for the rounds of interviews, and my male friends kept pre-knotted ties hung on their bedposts to be deployed at a moment’s notice. Read More »