SEC 1L Honors Internship Summer 2012 Forum

[LawIdiot86]

I'm a 2L, and I just accepted an offer with the Atlanta office. For the student who also did an summer there as a 2L, did you feel that the experience was very beneficial for your future job search? Thanks!

Sorry to answer your question with a different, unrelated question, but have you or any other SEC 2Ls been offered a paid internship this summer? My interview is this week and I'd like to have some idea.

Unless you're coming into some sort of weird program like WRP or SCEP, there are no paid internships at any division of (even OIG/OGC/Commissioners) of the SEC. They don't even have transit subsidy for interns.

hmm. Well, how do the other 2Ls out there feel about taking an unpaid, albeit awesome, position? I'm torn, especially considering I don't know how much of a boost, if any, it will provide when it comes to permanent post-grad employment. It would really suck to work for free for yet another summer. I pretty much need the money.

I haven't even been offered anything yet; I'm just playing out scenarios. Pay is a factor. So is potential boost for employment upon graduation/how many grads are projected to be hired 2013.

I don't know where this meme that the SEC is an "awesome" internship got started, but it isn't accurate. The SEC takes in the range of 150 summer honors interns and 75 more observer interns each semester; that's 300 kids plastering "SEC intern" on their resume. And they don't hire from their intern program; in a good year they hire 3-5 new graduates. Internships at the CFBP, OCC, FDIC, and especially the Federal Reserve (even a regional Fed program like Richmond, NY, or Cleveland) are a large large step above the SEC/CFTC/FINRA both in post-grad hiring potential and firm "boosts" in name recognition. The SEC is far better than say the NYS Dept. of Finance, but isn't "special."

[Anonymous User]

LawIdiot, do you have a source for those statistics? I am not sure what's with your attitude. I was only trying to find answers to some of my questions. I wasn't trying to state any strong opinions. I guess "awesome" is a subjective term. I just meant that it would be good for me since I am interested in securities.

When I said "boost" I didn't mean prestige or competitiveness, which I don't care about. I just mean a path to permanent employment on graduation.

Not everything has to be a damn argument.

[LawIdiot86]

LawIdiot, do you have a source for those statistics? I am not sure what's with your attitude. I was only trying to find answers to some of my questions. I wasn't trying to state any strong opinions. I guess "awesome" is a subjective term. I just meant that it would be good for me since I am interested in securities.

When I said "boost" I didn't mean prestige or competitiveness, which I don't care about. I just mean a path to permanent employment on graduation.

Not everything has to be a damn argument.

I've interned at the SEC and FDIC and interviewed at the OCC, CFPB, Richmond Fed, NY Fed, and CFTC, as well as having friends/contacts at those agencies. I've also met or interviewed with every major banking or securities practice outside of the V10 and am doing a securities LL.M., so my statistics come from talking to those people. My attitude is with people (even OCS) talking up an SEC internship because in the past the SEC actually hired people post-graduation through advanced commitment and firms viewed a 2L SEC summer as something to trade on at 3L OCI. But then the SEC's budget got cut and they couldn't hire anyone into advanced commitment and with staff cuts, realized they could backfill career positions by increasing their intern hiring to off-load work to interns. Securities (lit or corp), finance (structured or project), financial services (IM or consumer), and banking are decently fungible for entry level hiring (IM and consumer to a lesser degree), so if you can avoid the internship that least differentiates you and has the lowest prestige among the financial agencies, I would.

[llam77]

Interviewed at the end of January for the DC headquarters office as a 1L and heard back the following week. I've accepted the position at the Division of Trading and Markets. Anyone else work in that office before and can comment on the type of work to expect? Or anyone going to be there this summer??

[Anonymous User]

For those who got it: how long was the wait between the phone interview and the job offer?