Accounting and management information systems student Charlotte Tran hadn’t even begun classes pertaining to her major — much less the internship she was interviewing for — when the Big Four accounting firms came recruiting summer interns this spring. But the rising sophomore wasn’t coming unprepared. Instead, she was ultimately preparing for an internship experience she wouldn’t see for another year and a half.
“Honestly, it was a little difficult, considering the fact that we are going into recruiting not knowing anything regarding accounting,” Tran said. “We haven’t started anything regarding the classes pertaining to our major. Going into it, everybody is just kind of blind guessing, you know? Do I do audit? Do I do tax? I did neither, just because of the fact that I didn’t want to subject myself to a pathway where I didn’t know if I was going to like either of those things.”
Tran’s experience isn’t a miracle or isolated event — it’s the reality she and her peers in the Hankamer School of Business and across a growing number of academic disciplines face when it comes to landing the right internship and, subsequently, the right post-graduation job.
NACE’s 2025 Student Survey found that 84 percent of 2025 graduates took part in an internship, co-op, or other experiential learning program. That’s an uptick from previous years in line with employers’ increasing expectation of graduates to enter the workforce with relevant experience.
Employers cite having internship experience with their organization or industry as the most influential deciding factor when choosing between two otherwise equally qualified job candidates, according to NACE’s 2026 Job Outlook survey. Just 42 percent of employers screened candidates by GPA, the report states, placing pressure on students to gain crucial out-of-class experience.
“I hate to say it, but everything truly is a resume booster, and that is something that a lot of people really do need,” Tran said. “So yeah, I just think that it is really imperative that people put themselves out there. Academics alone cannot be the only thing that carries them through getting a job, unfortunately.”
The pressure for internship experience isn’t solely about post-graduation job prospects. Research from Gallup found that graduates who participate in an internship tend to feel more prepared for life and are more likely to be engaged at work.
Students are picking up on the pressure to secure an internship at the same time that placements are becoming more competitive. A 2025 report from Higher Education Today using data from the employment website Handshake found that internship listings have decreased by more than 15 percent. That decline is even harsher in high-paying fields, the report states, as “technology postings dropped by 30 percent, and professional services postings dropped by 42 percent” on Handshake.
Internships at the Big 4 accounting firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC — have the potential to be highly competitive, but they may also be highly rewarding.
In fact, interning is “the single most reliable path into the Big 4,” as conversion rates from internship to full-time roles consistently sit between 75 and 90 percent, according to Big4Events. Baylor’s Success Data Dashboard lists the four firms as the top four employers of undergraduate students coming out of the Hankamer School of Business, which boasts a 95 percent full-time job placement rate for the spring 2025 graduating semester.
Internship applications for these firms open as early as August of the year before the internship period, meaning even though Tran began her application process in the fall 2025 semester, her internship wouldn’t occur until the summer of 2027. She applied for each of the Big 4 firms, receiving just one offer back from PwC’s Digital Assurance and Transparency group based in Houston.
“I actually only got one offer back, which was the firm that I signed with,” Tran said. “It was incredibly, incredibly competitive. The best way to prepare yourself for going into the workforce is to do these internships.”
An international studies student on the pre-law track, junior Natalie Stratton was more than happy to give up her summer for the chance to intern in the nation’s capital.
Summer internships in Washington, D.C., are highly competitive — a fact even acknowledged on the U.S. House of Representatives’ website — but Stratton’s not new to the Hill. Stratton said a fall 2024 experience interning with Congressman Michael Cloud as part of the Baylor in Washington Program scratched her itch for domestic policy research, steered her toward foreign policy research, and ultimately informed her next internship decisions.
Read more: Lessons from Washington, D.C. — Baylor Interns Take On the Government Shutdown
Stratton said she applied to about 15 different internship programs, with most of them requiring an application submission and a handful of short-answer responses. She said she applied to The Heritage Foundation in December 2025 and finally got a response in February 2026.
“I applied and I hadn’t heard back, and honestly I didn’t know if I was going to get it because it’s super competitive and I was just kind of aware that it might not be in the cards for me,” Stratton said. “But then I got an email. It was a very quick turnaround. They asked if I could interview … and then the next day they offered me the job.”
Ultimately Stratton was selected to The Heritage Foundation’s summer 2026 internship program in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
When looking at his options, sophomore Luke Dragan noted many of his peers on the pre-medical track and fellow biochemistry majors are participating in a variety of summer preparatory experiences, whether they’re earning certifications; preparing for the MCAT, DAT, or other graduate education entrance exams; participating in research labs; or interning in summer fellowships.
“I was nervous because my previous summer wasn’t really spent with a lot of activities really connected or related to pre-health. So this was kind of my first experience with that,” Dragan said. “I definitely felt the need to buff up my resume and change it to point out the more pre-health and science-related experiences I’ve had.”
Dragan’s pre-medical options looked different from the structure of Tran’s accounting program and the competition for Stratton’s position on Capitol Hill. He said he focused on internships that would give him new experiences, allowing him to determine what kind of medicine to pursue in the future.
“I’ve always wanted to go into medicine,” Dragon said. “It kind of just stemmed from an interest in science first and then just a further interest in the betterment of people’s health and being able to help them in that area of life.”
Similar to Stratton, he submitted his application, answered a few essay questions, and was ultimately lucky enough to secure an interview. He landed a spot in the University of Pittsburgh’s Public Health Undergraduate Scholars Program where he works with the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, supporting its mission and conducting research.
Dragan had a unique recruitment process because he studied abroad in Ireland while he was actively applying and interviewing for summer opportunities. Navigating the time differences, he said, was an interesting adjustment he had to make.
“I just had to be intelligent about utilizing my time and ensuring that I was putting enough time into the applications to really make them the best that they could be to give me the best shot at being able to participate in one of them,” Dragan said.
Although Tran, Stratton, and Dragan followed very different paths, all three said they viewed their summers as investments in their futures. Whether through early corporate recruiting, policy internships, or public health fellowships, each student entered the summer with the same goal: gaining experiences that would prepare them for careers waiting beyond Baylor.
When applying for internships and considering summer plans, Dragan encouraged students to be open to whatever opportunities come their way.
“I think just really be open to whatever you can find,” he said. “I certainly didn’t think I would be spending my summer doing a public health internship at the end of my sophomore year. Just based on the opportunities that came my way, I’m really excited to see what I can learn from an internship focused on a field I haven’t had much experience in.”
