How I Got My NASA Internship

Summary

Ashley, a software engineering student, details her journey to securing a NASA internship as a freshman, emphasizing the importance of persistence, experience, and fit over grades and coursework.

Abstract

Ashley, a Rutgers University student double majoring in Computer Science and Economics, recounts her successful pursuit of a software engineering internship at NASA. Despite being a freshman with limited coursework and not attending a "target" school, she applied to over 70 internships. Her preparation included a focus on grades, relevant experience, and involvement in impactful extracurricular activities. Ashley's application process involved essay questions, submitting her resume and transcript, and a recommendation, followed by interviews with her potential mentor and an education officer. Her offer came amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a virtual internship experience. She attributes her success to a combination of leadership involvement, teamwork abilities, and a genuine interest in sustainability and climate change, which aligns with her project's focus at NASA. Ashley reflects on the learning experience from numerous rejections, highlighting the importance of resilience and the belief that rejections are often about fit rather than personal qualifications.

Opinions

Ashley believes that internships are not solely reserved for upperclassmen, as she managed to secure one as a freshman.
She feels that while grades are important, they are not the sole determining factor for securing an internship.
Experience in programming, robotics, and impactful side projects is highly valued, even if not extensive.
The internship selection process at NASA may heavily depend on the preferences and criteria set by the individual mentors.
Ashley suggests that passing the initial screening and reaching the interview stage significantly increases the chances of receiving an internship offer.
She emphasizes the importance of demonstrating one's ability to work with others and a genuine interest in the project's subject matter during interviews.
Ashley expresses that rejection from internship applications should not be taken personally but rather seen as part of finding the right fit.
She advocates for continued effort and hope, advising that even without an internship, personal projects can be a valuable use of time.

I Shot My Shot and Hoped

I’m going to be honest. As a freshman, I was not expecting to get an internship this summer because internships are typically reserved for juniors or seniors. I also don’t go to a “target” school and I only started getting into computer science last year. Despite that, I applied to 70+ summer internships for this summer throughout the course of the school year. I didn’t give myself too much pressure to get an internship, as long as I shot my shot and tried as hard as I could.

Courses and Grades

When I applied for my internship, I had only completed the Introduction to Computer Science course and was in the middle of taking Data Structures. I could not help but feel a little underqualified because I was only a freshman who wasn’t that deep into my major coursework, but after learning more about the project, I realized that coursework doesn’t directly align with what a lot of SWE internships are about. It seems like the consensus online and amongst my peers is that it’s more about being able to apply the basics and to adapt on the spot.

In terms of my grades, they were not perfect, but I was proud of them and happy with them. While I’m not sure how much weight my grades actually impacted decisions, I know that they definitely looked at them and considered them.

Experience

This is my first internship experience! Prior to this summer, I had experience teaching programming/robotics camps to younger students. I also did a few small programming projects at hackathons and for my classes. On the side, I worked as a data analyst at my school’s newspaper but that more analysis of numbers than writing code.

Although I didn’t as much CS experience as other candidates might’ve had, I do think that I take on a lot of impactful side projects and am very involved in organizations at school.

The Process

I applied at the beginning of the year using the application on the NASA webpage with the required information: short essay questions (questions like why do you want to work here?), resume and transcript, and a recommendation.

My mentor reached out to me for an interview around late March. For my first interview, we just discussed my interests and experience. It was mostly behavioral but we did talk about my technical experience. About a week later, I had an interview with the education officer where he updated me about my status as the preferred candidate for this role.

About two weeks later, I received the official offer to be an intern at NASA! I also found out that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the internship would most likely happen and be virtual. I accepted the offer almost immediately because 1.) it’s NASA and an opportunity I could not give up and 2.) because the other opportunity that I was offered looked like it might be due to the pandemic.

Why I Think I Got The Offer

From my experience, it seems like NASA interns are mostly picked by the mentor that would be mentoring them throughout the internship, which means that mentors are probably all looking for different things. In terms of getting hired as an intern, the first step is passing the initial screening so that you can be interviewed. From what I read online, it seems like if you have an interview, you have a pretty good chance of receiving an offer afterward. Factors that I would think are important in passing that first round are grades, experience, and skill. These factors are important in applying for an interview. I prepared for those factors by making sure I got good grades in school, getting very involved in impactful extracurriculars, and working on my resume. During the interviews, it was important to me to explain my contributions to previous project-based work and to show my excitement for the project I would be working on. It also helped that since the NASA internships were hiring later than most other internships I applied for, I had a good amount of experience with interviewing for internship positions. Ultimately, I think I received an offer because of a combination of my leadership involvement on campus, my abilities to work with other people, and my genuine interest in sustainability and climate change (which is what my project is focused on).

What I Learned

I learned a lot from this experience. Like I mentioned before, I applied to over 70 internship positions and either didn’t hear back or got rejected to the majority of them. Now that I look back on it, I’m really glad that I didn’t get the position after interviewing at some companies because I never would have applied to NASA if I had accepted an internship early on in the school year because NASA applications and interviews come much later than most. I learned that rejection is only sometimes an indication of who you are and how qualified you are, but even more of the time there needs to be a good fit. I think the most important thing is just to try your hardest, don’t give up, and to have hope that things will align in the end. If I hadn’t received an internship this summer, I would have started projects of my own and still made things to be proud of.

Originally published at http://merakibeans.com on June 26, 2020.

Ashley is a rising sophomore at Rutgers University studying CS+econ. She loves iced coffee, crime podcasts, and Google calendar.