Article written by Lindsay Ellis for The Wall Street Journal.
The starter pistol has sounded for college internship applications—for the summer of 2025.
Companies in finance and accounting are now recruiting for interns nearly 18 months before college students would be expected to start. The investment bank Guggenheim Securities and the Royal Bank of Canada, in addition to accounting stalwarts Grant Thornton and PricewaterhouseCoopers among others, started advertising for 2025 summer internships this fall. Many summer 2024 internship slots are already filled, several companies say.
The advanced timeline means that college students who may have taken just one business class are trying to prove their mettle in competitive application processes that can launch careers after graduation. To prepare students, colleges are hosting recruiting events and prepping their students earlier. Many applicants for 2025 are sophomores striving for a coveted internship after their junior year. The stints often lead to a full-time job offer before their senior year, career coaches say.
“To find out I had to apply so early was really, really crazy for me,” said Brayden Dam, a sophomore studying accounting at the University of Florida. Dam, 19 years old, learned of the early timeline from a college adviser when he was a freshman.
This fall, Dam applied to a few 2025 internships with accounting firms in Tampa, Fla. He was told that those offices were full and that he should try Orlando or Miami.
“I thought I was getting in early,” he said. “But apparently I was even later than some people that had already filled up the slots.”
Talent advantage
PwC and other companies say that the early deadlines help them scoop up talent that could go to competitors. PwC posted its summer 2025 internships for areas including tax and consulting in September, the earliest the firm has ever advertised internship positions, said Rod Adams, who leads hiring for the U.S. and Mexico. One key reason: PwC is trying to compete for top talent amid a dwindling number of accounting majors.
In some cases, the companies hoarding intern talent more than a year in advance have cut full-time jobs, or have made job offers to students, only to defer start dates for those new graduates. Major consulting firms don’t have enough work for their existing staff and are facing slowing revenue growth, and Ernst & Young last week began laying off partners. This year, PwC delayed about 600 full-time consulting hires’ start dates from August 2023 to January 2024.
It’s hard to plan for workforce needs so far in advance, Adams said.
“Would it be easier if we did real-time hiring? It would be easier to manage the manpower planning, but to get the top talent, we’ve got to be out in the market early,” he said.
Financial firms are the most likely to recruit sophomores early, according to college career offices and people familiar with corporate recruiting. At the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California, employers will host events and start to recruit undergraduate students in the first months of 2024 for summer 2025 internships, according to those schools.
Earlier this fall, Guggenheim posted internships in cities including Houston, Boston and New York. Evercore in October hosted an information session for freshmen and sophomores at Northwestern University’s campus.
Tech companies and consulting firms followed banks in recruiting sophomores earlier, said Roger Woolsey, the executive director of Union College’s career center. He said that only since the pandemic have fall-semester sophomores started to apply for summer internships after their junior year.
Twenty Union students are in New York City this week visiting alumni at firms with summer internships, including Goldman Sachs, to network. It’s the second year Union, located in Schenectady, N.Y., has held the tours; the program was created after college leaders worried that students weren’t prepared for earlier recruiting, Woolsey said.
Students also learned about financial modeling and practiced case studies as part of their internship application prep. That lets them communicate more confidently with alumni or recruiters, he said.
‘Be the best’
Rice University in Houston hosted an investment-banking night in November for sophomores and freshmen. As recently as 2022, the school’s informational sessions about the sector were held in mid-March, said Michelle Passo, a director in the campus’s center for career development. But recently, staff realized that was too late for employers’ timelines.
“Once one company does it, then it kind of sets the precedent for everybody else,” Passo said. “Students start preparing then—they’re contenders. They want to be the best candidates. They know how competitive these spots are.”
The Royal Bank of Canada is conducting behavioral interviews for the younger students, looking to evaluate skills including communication and leadership, instead of focusing on technical questions, like explaining a company’s valuation.
“It allows the candidate to share who they are, but they can’t prepare and necessarily study super-technical questions and regurgitate it back,” said Dawn John, RBC’s global head of campus recruiting.
Royce Kim, 18, is studying business at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He is aiming for an investment-banking internship during the summer of 2025, and has applied to several dozen companies.
To bolster his résumé, Kim will start an eight-month program this winter at RBC alongside his classes. Taking the position requires a two-and-a-half-hour, round-trip commute three days a week, but Kim said it’s worth it to compete against U.S. students from more prestigious universities.
“You have to get an internship now, or for the summer, in order to be applying for these 2025 jobs,” he said. “Most people are still in disbelief that it’s that early, and they end up being too late.”