Sponsored Internships and Experiences
At Claremont McKenna College, we believe all of our students should have the opportunity to explore careers through networking treks, connect with our dedicated alumni and parents, and take advantage of experiential learning. We also believe that earlier experiences are more transformative, particularly during the first two years of college. By junior year, we hope our students have gained enough knowledge, and have built a robust network, to focus on a particular industry or sector in preparation for their post-graduate roles. This is the CMC Career Readiness Effect in action.
The Sponsored Internship and Experiences (SIE) program is unique to CMC in its focus and specificity, allowing students to pursue domestic and international experiences of 4 to 12 weeks in length.
You can help provide this critical experience for students in a variety of ways:
GIFTS OF ALL SIZES assist with the direct support for our students and their internships and experiences, sponsoring this generation of CMC students and helping them gain valuable professional and real-world experience. This includes assistance with expenses such as airline tickets, travel resources, lodging, and the additional support a student might need as they complete their summer experience.
A GIFT OF $5,000 sponsors a single student for a summer, providing a valuable learning experience to a student and potentially altering the course of their future.
A GIFT OR COMMITMENT OF $100,000 provides the resources to benefit a student in perpetuity, sponsoring their internship/experience for all time.
3,266
The number of summer SIE recipients from the program’s inception in 2015 through 2023.
$4,664
The average stipend for SIE recipients in 2023.
#1
Students routinely cite access to excellent internships as the main reason for choosing CMC.
Download the Sponsored Internships and Experiences One Sheet picture_as_pdf
MAKING AN IMPACT
Nicole Jonassen ’24
My internship at Invariant—a top-five lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.—taught me a lot about landmark climate policy that I know will remain relevant in the next few years of my career. It also taught me important skills like hearing coverage and policy research. In addition, being in Washington, D.C. allowed me to network with alumni from The Claremont Colleges who are working in the policy space.
I know that my time at Invariant will be advantageous to my job search upon my graduation in May. I appreciate this contribution to my professional development, and I hope other CMC students can have similar experiences in the future.
Gabriel Yang ’25
During my summer internship with Roche, I was involved with several projects, including anomaly detection and new product forecasting, which will be continuously used for many years to come.
This internship experience was instrumental in helping me figure out which career paths I would be most interested in pursuing. I was working within the finance department, but my work was mostly geared towards tech. I found my fintech work exceptionally interesting and something that I would be thrilled to continue working in.
Rohaan Bhojwani ’26
I am incredibly thankful to the generosity of the Kravis Opportunity Fund and the amazing internship experience I had in Svalbard, which is an island in the Arctic Circle. For my writing project, I focused on oral histories of the explorers and scientists based on the island. Oral histories are narrative stories crafted from several interviews of a subject. I had the opportunity to speak to people from all over the world, in vastly different professions. I truly felt like I was in a melting pot of different cultures, all bound through love, wildlife, and the serenity of Svalbard.
During my time there, I learned how to hold stimulating conversations, while also allowing my subjects to lower their guard and become more vulnerable. I learned, through my lack of access to literary resources on the island along with incredibly spotty Wi-Fi, that I am quite adept at letting go of a past idea and pivoting quickly. This is a skill that will definitely prove useful in a future career.