Guide gives insight into internship search

Every year students frantically send out their resumZs, hoping to land the perfect internship. More often than not, however, students end up fetching coffee or making copies. And students have had few places to turn for help in the application process -- until now. The Princeton Review Student Access Guide to America's Top 100 Internships published earlier this year, seeks to advise students on the best internships available in the country. The book's authors, Mark Oldman and Samer Hamadeh, graduated from Stanford University in 1992 and set out to locate America's best internships. Oldman, 25, and Hamadeh, 24, kicked off a 10 city promotional tour this week in Philadelphia. They spoke to students in Houston Hall yesterday. Their book lists a wide range of internships ranging from working at The Late Show with David Letterman to interning at the White House. The authors worked through 11 internships between them. Oldman's experiences include interning for MTV and the U.S. Supreme Court. "The more internships you've done, the more it shows that you can handle real world responsibilities," Hamadeh said. The pair decided to write the book because they felt there was no source available on the top internships. "There was really no source available, and our internships we just obtained piecemeal," Oldman said. "Really, there was no definitive source. The campus career center was great, but there was really no way of getting an opinion on which were the best ones." Oldman described the writing process as strenuous. "Basically we secreted ourselves in our New York Upper West Side apartment and worked 18 hour days?for several months and researched all sorts of internships, and all sorts of vocational fields," he said. Oldman and Hamadeh said they interviewed five to 10 past and current interns for each internship and sometimes visited companies. They also surveyed students at various universities to learn about internships students experienced. Oldman and Hamadeh noted that a high grade point average is not all most companies are looking for. While a few of their top 100 have GPA cutoffs, Oldman said what companies are really looking for "is just the combination of a diplomatic personality [and] a go-getter." "If you can display in your interviews or in your cover letters this diplomatic [and] assertive mindset, that would really go a long way," he said. Hamadeh added that despite rumors to the contrary, the majority of the internships are paid. "Surprisingly, 75 percent of these internships pay, and some of them really well," he said. The Washington Post's positions are among the highest paid, offering $730 per week, he added. As of last week, America's Top 100 Internships was the top-selling book in the Princeton Review series. It is currently in its second printing.