INTERNSHIPS
Cultivate meaningful professional connections and experience.
Why should you complete an industry internship?
- Learn in a professional setting! You will apply your engineering knowledge and theory in a practical setting and develop your technical skills.
- Cultivate meaningful professional connections; your industry supervisors can become your professional mentors and references for future opportunities
- Previous internship experience will make you more competitive for highly competitive senior-year internships and full-time placement
- Some employers exclusively recruit from their intern pool when filling their full-time positions
- Internships can be a great part of your application for the HWCOE Attributes of a Gator Engineer award application
Whether full-time or part-time, local or remote, semester- or project-based, there is a wide variety of internships available across careers and industries spanning for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental settings. It is never too late to start exploring internship options, but starting early will give you access to the broadest opportunities while also preparing you to apply for last-minute openings. Competitive internship programs and large organizations start hiring interns as early as September for the following summer. Schedule a consultation or email a member of our team.
Explore the internship resources below to start planning your internship!
Earn Academic Credits for Interning
For many career pathways in engineering, supervised hands-on technical experience in the form of an internship or co-op is a professional expectation. That being said, your internship can also be useful towards your degree requirements.
- Completing an internship can be used to fulfill your University Quest 3 requirement.
You can find HWCOE guidance on Quest 3 here.
*Beginning for freshman entering the 2026-2027 academic year, students will be required to satisfy Quest 3 requirements in order to receive their degree. - Depending on your major, you can register your internship experience for course credit.
The process is different for each program, so please check with your department advisor! Oftentimes, the course credit is variable (depending on the number of hrs/wk you are working) and will be applied to your major’s elective requirement.
GENERAL PROCESS
You should add these credits when registering for the semester, as you will be out on your internship. In order to enroll in the internship course credits, make sure you have removed all holds preventing registration. Credits are controlled by departments, so complete your department’s form(s) and submit before drop/add ends (the sooner the better). In general, late or retroactive requests are not accepted.
Other important academic considerations
Full-time internships during the summer are the most common (and popular) time to complete an internship. Or to put it another way, the applicant pool for summer internships is the largest and most competitive. BUT DID YOU KNOW that companies also recruit for interns in fall and spring semesters? Both part-time and full-time. To increase your chances, we encourage you to also apply for fall and spring internships. If a company extends an offer for a fall or spring internship (and it is full-time somewhere far away), this means you would need to drop all coursework for the semester. Therefore, you would need to extend your graduation by at least 1 semester. For many students, delaying graduation by 1 semester to complete an industry experience is a great ROI. Please consult with your department advisor for curriculum feasibility and UF OneStop for financial feasibility.
Please schedule a meeting with our Director or Associate Director if you would like additional perspective on weighing benefits/risks of accepting an offer.
Featured Internships
Global Internships
- You are not restricted to only US-based internships… so feel free to go abroad. The sky’s the limit! Some students identify companies close to family or friends who are abroad. Some students identify companies that have multiple international locations.
- International Industry Internships supported by HWCOE International Engineering
Internship Programs
The HWCOE Center for Experiential Learning has created an ever-growing list of recommended internship programs.
Internship Resources
Resume Review
- General resume guides and reviews by the Career Connection Center
- Get your resume scored by Quinncia (free for UF students)
- Career Connection Center hosts special preparation events in the weeks leading up to Showcase
- Ask a department peer advisor
- Ask an upperclassman in a student organization or design team
- Schedule a meeting with our Director or Associate Director
How to find an internship
Explore here a list of methods to find an industry internship or co-op. This list has been generated by feedback from faculty, advisors, program coordinators, students, and alumni.
Reflect on your experience
While at your internship, make the most of this opportunity. You should meet supervisor expectations and ensure you have built positive professional relationships with everyone in your team. If there is additional time in your day, we encourage you to network with other teams, whether it’s quality, manufacturing, R&D, regulatory affairs, etc. All of these connections can be used for future internships and full-time placements. Ultimately, even if you decide not to work at this firm, you can still leverage these connections to have strong references for other applications.
Your experience can be helpful preparation for upcoming coursework, or maybe you take something you’ve learned and apply it to your student organization.
Use this UF learning guide as you reflect on your experience.
Actions
- Maintain a record of your offer letters
- Collect evidence of your work and develop it into a portfolio that can be shared with others (make sure technical details do not violate the company’s disclosure agreement)
- Ask for feedback and a final evaluation from your supervisor
- Maintain a journal of lessons learned along the way