To learn more about what may interest you, you can:

• Take the CareerExplorer assessment to help you discover your career interests.
• Ask a career adviser about CliftonStrengths, a self-assessment developed by Gallup that can help you discover or confirm your strongest strengths and talents.
• Schedule an appointment with a career adviser to discuss your results. 

These resources can offer insight on what options to consider, no matter where you are in your academic journey.

• Read through the Career Fields pages on the Princeton Career Compass site to learn different fields and discover Princeton resources that can help you build experience
• Get an insider’s perspective on various professions, including what it takes to break in and how to advance your career using the career guides on Vault.
• Review the Graduate School Guide for tips on searching and applying. Start to research universities and programs of interest, and visit or inquire about virtual tours and information sessions.

Asking alumni or others who work in roles that interest you for informational conversations about their work or opportunities to shadow them is a common and valuable practice. 

• Sign up for coffee chats, one-on-one conversations with company/organization representatives who have made this time available to help students learn about their industry, career opportunities, and hiring practices.
• Find step-by-step advice to speak with alumni about their roles and get career insight from our Networking Guide.
• Read alumni profiles on Career Compass. You can contact most alumni directly through Compass. 
• Not ready to do your own outreach? Sign up for a Career Chat and a Center for Career Development team member will match you with alumni whose background fits your interests. 
• Beyond Princeton alumni, you can also speak with  faculty, peers, staff, friends, family, past supervisors and coworkers, and leaders in your local community.

Princeton Programs

• High Meadows Environmental Institute: Mentored assignments with Princeton faculty and other qualified hosts. Focus is on global environmental issues including climate science, energy alternatives, water, health, biodiversity, conservation, ocean biogeochemistry and sustainability.
• Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship: Two-year cohort starting junior summer for highly qualified underrepresented students and other students who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity. Program provides support and mentorship to prepare for doctoral programs and careers in the professoriate.
• OURSIP (Office of Undergraduate Research Student-Initiated Internships Program): Grants for Princeton first-year and sophomore students (and occasionally juniors with projects not related to their senior thesis research) who have independently created or secured an unpaid faculty-mentored research internship over the summer. 
• ReMatch and Rematch+: Meaningful research collaborations between Princeton first-year and sophomore students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across all departments to provide undergraduates with early hands-on opportunities for mentored research.
• Additional Departmental Opportunities: Some academic departments offer summer research opportunities for their undergraduates, either as part of independent work or separately. Example emails on how to inquire about independent research opportunities can be found in our Internship & Job Search Email Samples.  

External Programs

• REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates): The National Science Foundation funds undergraduate research opportunities at host institutions around the United States. Each student is associated with a specific research project and works closely with faculty and other researchers. Students are granted stipends and, in many cases, assistance with housing and travel.
• SR-EIP (Summer Research Early Identification Program): Fully paid summer internships that provide undergraduates with training and mentoring in the principles underlying the conduct of research to prepare them for competitive applications to Ph.D. or MD-Ph.D. programs.
• SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship): Gain hands-on experience working with technology at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in one of the world's leading research organizations.
• Work with individual researchers: Many times, if students have very specific research interests, they may directly contact professors or researchers that interest them to ask about research opportunities. Example emails on how to communicate your interests can be found in our Internship & Job Search Email Samples. 

There are several University-sponsored programs that pair selected students with industry internships. Examples include:

• German Summer Work Program
• International Internship Program 
• Princeton Startup Immersion Program

More University-sponsored programs can be found on the Princeton Internships page.

General job boards are useful for finding postings. You can use keywords and filters to narrow your search. A few common sites are:

• Handshake - Internships and jobs posted directly by recruiters for students and recent graduates. Also peruse our Postings of the Week.
• CareerShift - Internship and job postings and employer contact information aggregated from multiple sources. 
• LinkedIn - Internship and job postings and an opportunity to see roles that your contacts are sharing.

For more focused leads, look for industry-specific job boards. Examples include:

• AAM (museums)
• Archinect (architecture and design)
• Dice.com (tech)
• FindSpark.com (arts and creative)
• VentureFizz (startups)

Learning and Education through Service (LENS) ensures that every Princeton undergraduate student has the opportunity to secure a meaningful summer service or social impact internship before graduation.

Explore options for service and social impact internships and grants on the LENS website. 

For roles at the local, regional, state, national and global levels:

• Volunteer to work on a political campaign by signing up on the campaign’s website.
• Idealist.org: Nonprofit and social impact roles.
• USAJobs.gov: Comprehensive database of employment opportunities across federal agencies.

Recruiting is when an employer seeks out prospective hires for open positions with their organization. This process involves sourcing, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding of strong candidates.

The Campus Recruiting program features organizations who work with Princeton in a variety of ways from sharing opportunities to actively recruiting students at campus events and career fairs. Many organizations partner with our office to post positions and offer interviews to prospective candidates. Campus Recruiting is just one of the many options for students. The Center for Career Development also helps students pursue internships and jobs in many other ways.

• HireTigers Career Fair (fall and spring semesters)
• Science & Technology Job Fair (fall semester)
• All Ivy Environmental and Sustainable Development Career Fair (spring semester)

Volunteer and freelance work is invaluable and can help you explore your interests and find fulfilling personal and community causes.

• Use Idealist, VolunteerMatch and identify local volunteer opportunity databases to find opportunities.
• Freelance and one-off opportunities span many categories, including copywriting/editing, design, tech, marketing, social media, development, customer support and more. Tutoring is often in high demand over the summer.

You can develop skills and build your resume without formal work experience.  Your summer break is also an opportunity to take care of yourself, engage in an activity you didn’t have time for during the school year, or work on a self-directed project of interest to you. 

• Professional associations — which often offer student memberships — may offer online workshops, resources, and virtual conferences in your fields of interest. 
• LinkedIn Learning offers free courses for Princeton students in creative, business and tech fields.
• Access Rosetta Stone through the Princeton University Library to learn or increase proficiency in a  language.
• Forage offers virtual project simulations from Fortune 500 companies that students can complete in 1-7 hour segments to gain experience and receive feedback on their work.
• Enroll in summer courses through sites such as Coursera, EdX or Udemy, or a local college, to get a taste for a subject, earn badges/certification, or simply supplement your other summer activities.
• If you are interested in future internships or jobs in industries that have case interviews, technical interviews, or quantitative interviews, consider taking time to practice for these areas."

• Start a writing project or blog on a topic about which you are passionate.
• Create a portfolio (printed and/or virtually) with examples of how you use and develop your top skills.
• Produce an independent, low-budget arts/music/film/design project or vlog. Opportunities in these areas could qualify for funding through the Lewis Center for the Arts. Proposals for Lewis Center funding are usually due by early spring.
• Develop computer programming/web/app development projects on GitHub.

Your profiles can help you build a networking and provide a way for recruiters to find you and share internship and jobs. 

• Update your Handshake and LinkedIn profiles with the most current and thorough information. Check your security settings to confirm only those parties you want seeing your profiles have access to them.
• Check your social media accounts for any posts, tags or images that do not represent you in the way you want to appear to prospective employers.

You will need to thoughtfully tailor your applications to the specific positions and organizations.

• Use the resume and cover letter guides to help you create or revise your documents.
• Consider both formal and informal experiences you could include to highlight skills you’ve learned, the pace and scope of your work, the levels of responsibility or decision-making you’ve held, and the accomplishments you’ve achieved.
• If you have applied to a large number of positions and you aren't seeing follow up from prospective employers, meet with a career adviser to discuss tips for your overall search strategy. 

Networking is an important ongoing part of the application process - not just early on for informational conversations. Your Princeton experience offers frequent opportunities to naturally engage in networking. 

Your Princeton experience offers frequent opportunities to naturally engage in networking — sometimes without even realizing it.

Review our Networking Guide to learn how to confidently network with professionals and alumni.

Ensure you are ready for an interview if you are selected:  

• Create a search tracker to keep yourself organized. 
• Review our general Interview Guide and the specialty guides for case, quant and technical interviews.
• Scheduled a practice interview with a career adviser. 

The amount of time that passes from submitting an application to receiving an offer can be several weeks or even months. Although some organizations review and action applications as they come in, more commonly they collect a larger pool of applicants before screening resumes and scheduling interviews. In general, we recommend that you apply to a position within two weeks of the date it was posted. 

If there isn’t a place for you to check the status of your application online, or if the status has been unchanged for weeks, it is appropriate to find a recruiting contact on Handshake, LinkedIn or CareerShift to express your continued interest in the role. Examples of ways to communicate your continued interest can be found on our Five-Step Guide to Networking and Internship & Job Search Email Samples. 

Remember that industries recruit at different times during the  year-sometimes a year ahead of the scheduled start date-so it is important to stay on top of recruitment timelines. To learn more about timelines for your industry of interest, you can review our Recruitment 101 module.

It is common to receive an offer for one role while in the interview process for others. Unlike college admissions, where students generally receive all their offers before having to commit to one school, employers may not accommodate holding your internship offer indefinitely while you hope to secure other options. 

When you receive an offer, read the Understanding Your Job Offer guide and schedule an appointment with a career adviser to talk through the opportunity so you can make an informed decision about that role.   

While Princeton University does not vet nor endorse summer housing options, students often benefit from connecting with one another during their housing search. Students searching for roommates can use their residential college listserv or Hoagie Mail.

For information about summer housing at Princeton, check the Housing and Real Estate Services page.  

For summer housing in locations outside of Princeton, students often find summer dormitory housing offered by other colleges, apartment subletting, short-term leases and other rental agreements. Whenever vetting a housing option, please consider the following:

• Proximity to work, groceries, laundry, etc.
• Parking/public transportation options
• Furnishing options
• Security/safety
• Rental insurance and deposit terms
• Occupancy restrictions 
• Cost of living