Internships 101

It is that time of the year once again. It is just so amazing how fast it flies by, faster than we realise. Our scriptures say ‘Kaala Chakra’, which means the ‘wheel of time’. This also forms a vital part of several other cultures around the world. I believe the engineer in me felt left out over the last few months (mentioned in my first article, do read it if you haven’t). Here I am with the engineering buzzword of the present. Internships.

Before I put out my Internship experience here, I want to tell you all something. Your skill, knowledge or talent is not a representation of the internship you receive. This is important, a lot. Try to figure out what is your interest. What do you like to learn? Is there an issue that you would like to find a solution to? Through your research journey, you will build on this question. If you have not figured that out, don’t panic. You will eventually realise what you wish to learn. This experience will teach you a lot, as it has taught me. I will talk about them along the way.

The first and perhaps the most straightforward internship process is: (Drumroll):-

1. MITACS Globalink

MITACS is perhaps the most uncomplicated internship experience for all of us. The portal is a breeze. All of us were able to avail all documents easily. As far as I can remember, these are the documents it requires:

1. Transcript
2. CV (MITACS format is available in the portal)
3. Letter of Recommendation (LOR) : The professor can privately send it through a link that will be sent by MITACS when you enter the email ID of your professor, or you can upload them. It requires a minimum of one LOR and a maximum of two.
4. Two write-ups of 100 words each: One is about your research experience, and the other is about your special skill or achievement.

The portal opens somewhere in the second week of August. As I write this article, I see that faculty project submission is already going on. So, MITACS will happen next year as well. Let there be no doubt about that. Hopefully, offline. Also, it has a far more relaxed CGPA requirement of 7.5 for Indo-Shastri Institutes (NITT is one of them).

Now, these are some pointers you need to keep in mind while applying for it.

1. Getting LORs from professors: This was a last-minute rush up for many of my classmates. Get in touch with two professors beforehand. Let them know your interest in applying for this internship. Many professors do not prefer giving more than a small number of LORs (I know professors who gave just 2, Many don’t like giving more than 5), mainly because many are eligible for MITACS.
2. Obtaining transcripts: The Student Council will step in if there is a delay in receiving it, since many students eligible, people who apply for it are pretty high. So, you don’t need to panic if your transcripts are getting delayed. MITACS will accept MIS screenshots along with a document released by the Dean Office (through the Student Council) conferring equal importance to them, treating them on par with the transcript. This happened to me as well, so the formalities will not be a problem.
3. Writing 100-word articles: I personally hate them. Just far too little room to express our ideas. But, work on it. Keep it original and creative. It should reflect what you are. As simple as that.
4. Choice filling: This is also a very cumbersome task. Shortlisting 2000 odd projects into seven is quite tedious. MITACS also requires you to choose from a minimum of 3 provinces. For Example: A simpler way of looking at this is that your seven projects cannot be just from British Columbia. It needs to be at least from British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario. I would highly recommend all of you to fill in choices that pertain to one research topic. For Example, if you are a Structural Engineering person, refrain from Water Resources or Hydrology. (Kindly bear my Civil Engineering references). The point being all seven topics should be more-or-less the same domain.

My MITACS experience

Well, here goes my MITACS story from GT to BT? Brace yourself.

It was about 1 AM local time, where I had a priority notification spring on my phone. I have priority notifications for emails, letting that out. The subject was ‘MITACS Interview’. I was elated but calm so that I don’t wake my mother from sleep. Throughout September and November 2020, I had three amazing interviews. All my professors liked my past research work. One of them told me, “I like the way you explained your research background, and I will nominate you for the internship.”

This is one Interview call.

I was hopeful, but still, I applied for other internships as well. Then came the dreadful day of 11th December where I got waitlisted. How? Why? It kept lingering on my head for that day, but then I realised something. I talked to myself about something. That something was this.

“I had given my best for the internship; the process was enriching. I got to know three amazing professors. This was not in my hand; I could not control this. It is sad, but I have to pick myself up.”

I did that. And, throughout your internship journey, you will have to pick yourself up. A number of times. The faster you do, the better you place yourself back into the right frame of mind to carry on.

You might get interviews, or you might not. I know people who got the internship without getting a single interview. I also know people who got three of them and still were waitlisted (I’m one of them, sigh). The matchmaking process is just so random. It got me thinking about how an astrologer could be on the MITACS board. Honestly, why would someone waitlist a candidate whose professor also likes him/her? It has to be something in my horoscope or no ‘Nakshatra Poruttham’ with my MITACS professor (Rough translation is ‘The stars of my would-be professor and I don’t align). Anyways, moving on to the next internship. The ‘BAAP’ of all internships. Drumroll, please.

DAAD-WISE

This is the most prestigious and most sought-after foreign internship for all third years. I have a good story to say about this, but not so good (sigh again). Anyway, I’ll talk about it in detail.

DAAD is a tedious process. Let me tell you all that. Not so encouraging CGPA requirement? Yes.

My suggestion to you all is this. I am a 9 pointer, not flexing, but I am telling that out to tell you where I stood with regard to DAAD. But I am not a 9.5+ person. I am letting that out as well. Now, there are two ways to look at this. Anyway, I will not get this internship, so I should not waste time on this. Two is my kind of a choice. What is going to happen anyway? What do I have to lose? So, I had a conversation with one of my seniors who told me to apply right away, and I decided to do just that. To get to the bottom of DAAD.

The process of DAAD is not as simple as that of MITACS. We need to send emails to potential German Hosts way before the formal application process begins. This is something that people miss out on.

The following is the stepwise process of DAAD-WISE:-

1. Approach a German Host: This is a crucial starting point in your DAAD journey. Check out TU9 universities, to begin with. These colleges have a reputation like the IITs back home in India. Shortlist professors who align with your interests. Check their profiles on Google Scholar, Researchgate and Linkedin for this; you might get a sufficient idea. Do this background work diligently. My list had around seven universities and over 100 people, along with their Email IDs. It included not only Professors but also Research Assistants (RA), PhD scholars and Technical Staff. They are always connected to a professor, so the chances that RAs respond to your email is higher. Keep this tip in mind, not to exclude RAs and PhD scholars in your master list.

This is a sample of how you can organise your prospective German hosts

• This can give you some idea about how it can look. You can make it colour-coded, add other columns to make it more organised. But it should serve the purpose. As long as it does that, whichever way you adopt is fine. I did this in a notebook. Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve started using software’s a bit more to get organised — one good thing about all that is happening around.

2. The Million Dollar question here is: When do I start sending emails? How many emails do I need to send? And how should I send them? Let us break this question up. I started the ‘Email Marathon’ towards the end of July. It was a late start, honestly. I would suggest everyone begin by the last week of June. Do not wait for your 4th-semester results. I made that mistake. Professors do not check your CGPA that much. The ones who do is the DAAD Selection Committee. So, the earlier you begin, the better it is. What I did for the second question was this. I had ammunition for about 100 emails. I scheduled about 30 of them on a Monday, 10th August 2020, at 9 AM CET. It is around noon in India. Check the time zone depending on where you are located currently. 9 AM to 10 AM on a Monday would be ideal. Some people prefer sending it at Noon CET. I do not like it. Call it a superstition maybe?

• How to draft an email is an important question. Being part of CFGL in college, drafting emails is a bit easier, considering we do that a lot. Our work at CFGL is centred on sending emails and the radius being every other activity we do. The stronger the centre is pinned to the ground, the more stable the circle is drawn. Similarly, the more you make your emails better, the more chances you have of getting replies. This is my way of sending out emails:
• The Introduction paragraph is read, always. So, keep it short, and you can use ‘bold’ to highlight the crucial parameters that could help you stand out. I write my name, department, college and CGPA. That’s it. If you wish, you can add more details, but I don’t prefer it.
• The next paragraph is the Body. I do it this way. I try to answer the following questions. What am I interested in? What study or experience do I have in it? If you do not have experience in it, that is also fine. Try answering the question, why do you want to learn or study this topic? What intrigues you most about it?
• After that, I slot in the Speaker Specific Paragraph. This is our CFGL way of doing things, which I am putting out for the greater good of helping people find better opportunities. It is an ingenious way of getting replies, and if lucky, it also paves the way for getting acceptances. In our emails, we keep talking and ranting about ourselves, our experiences, how worthy we are, how we have excelled in everything under the sun. But we choose not to talk about the person to whom we are sending the email. Isn’t that selfish? I find it to be that way.
• I include sentences answering these questions. Why did I choose to mail this professor? What specific research paper or article published by the professor got me interested? I sometimes include personal details as well. If the professor has a blog where he mentions his love for cricket, I will most definitely include that in this paragraph.

It is not stalking in this case. (Okay, a bit of stalking is fine, I guess?)

• The point being, make emails as personalised as possible. Do not send bulk emails as BCCs. Will we respond to such emails if we get them? It is more likely that we respond to emails that are curated to that individual. It is a wholesome experience reading such emails.

3. What next after sending emails? Simple answer, you wait. Send follow-ups. Keep track of all your emails. You will get replies, positive ones and not so positive ones. I was lucky in that respect. One of my first emails turned out to be a successful confirmation. It is pretty irritating if you do not receive positive replies. You will feel discouraged and demotivated in that case. But, here again, like I said earlier. You need to pick yourself up and carry on. Most certainly, you will get a confirmation.

4. After getting a prospective match (thank the stars for this), you might be called by your professor for an interview. It can be technical or non-technical. For me, it was somewhere in the middle. My prospective German host asked me if one of my professors could join the meet. I asked a professor here at NITT, and he was happy to be a part of it. It was a lovely meeting. In the end, all of us were pretty happy to collaborate.

5. Now comes the formalities part. Again, it isn’t very pleasant, unlike MITACS. The DAAD portal opens somewhere towards the end of September and closes on 1st November. Keep that in mind. There is a list of documents you need to submit in the portal.

1. CV
2. Transcript
3. Approval Form from German Host (Template available in the DAAD website. It talks about what the project is and what will your role be as an intern)
4. Letter of Invitation from German Host (No Template necessary, needs to be duly signed by the host on their letterhead)
5. Application Form (To be filled online, editable PDF. Template available on the DAAD website )
6. Research Proposal / Study Motivation
7. No Objection Certificate (Duly signed by HoD/Dean Office at NITT)
8. Any other achievements (which could add weight to the existing application)

Conclusions

1) I spent a lot of my time on the Research Proposal. It was a 7–8-page long document on Why I chose this topic? What has been done on this topic in the past? Is it sufficient? If not, why has it not been done? What is the study methodology I would be adopting? What does currently literature rely on? Is there something wrong with it? Do we need some changes to it? Why? Why not? What are the tools that would be used in the research? These were a few questions that this document answered. It took around six weeks to get this finalised. My professor at NITT was extremely helpful in getting this done. If not for him, I would not have done this at all. I did not write the study motivation because I felt a proposal is a technical document that covers the motivation part since it covers the Whys of choosing this topic.

2) Now, the central part is this. You can only begin your application online once you have all these documents ready. Unlike MITACS or NTU Connect (Will get to that later), you cannot save and return to it later. So, make sure you have these timelines in your mind. I kept a cut-off date of 25th October to get all my documents ready, which I did. I uploaded them to the portal on 27th October. Keep your German host posted about these dates so that they will get back to you accordingly.

3) After you have submitted your documents in the portal, can you relax? Not really. You need to send your Application Summary, which will be generated shortly after submitting your documents in the portal via post, to the DAAD Head Office, Delhi. The address is available on the DAAD website. The post needs to reach them by the first week of November, say 7th November. Keep this in mind as well.

4) Finally, the DAAD process is done, and now you can relax. Ideally, the results will be out by the end of January, but this year it got delayed a lot due to you-know-who.

My DAAD-WISE Experience

Long story short, I got rejected. The rejection letter was just so sweet, I felt sad, but that letter made me feel hopeful. This is a sneak into it. I hope you all get to see the ‘Letter of Acceptance’ but nonetheless, this is the letter I received.

Though I felt bad about not making it despite putting so much effort, I sat back and introspected. The process was gratifying. I got to know how to write a research paper. I realised how important friends are. It was my roommate who posted my Application Summary to Delhi. I couldn’t do it since I wasn’t in India at that time. I got acquainted with an amazingly considerate and knowledgeable professor with who I am still in touch. I did not get the privilege to be called a ‘DAAD WISE Scholar’. That aside, I learnt a lot from the DAAD WISE process. I just realised ‘BAAP’ and ‘DAAD’ are similar in meaning, just Wow! (‘BAAP’ means father/Dad in Hindi, lame but still. ) Anyways, the next internship that I applied for is NTU-India Connect. Let’s jump right into it.

3. NTU-India Connect

Like MITACS, the portal of NTU Connect is a breeze. You need a few conventional documents, including Transcript, CV and LORs. It also requires a Checklist to be filled and uploaded, the template is available on the NTU Connect website. Apart from that, the process is not tedious at all. Projects are fewer, compared to MITACS. So, choosing them won’t be a problem. But, like MITACS is the randomness of the process. Enter the astrologer in the NTU-Connect board and the ‘Nakshatra Porutham’ once again. Be that as it may, it is a good internship which many aren’t aware of. There is a small amount that one has to pay if they get selected. Check the NTU-Connect website for the exact amount in INR.

My NTU Connect Experience

I got rejected, again. I received a sweet rejection email, again. But I told myself the same thing, again. You need to pick yourself up and carry on. Which I did.

Before I forget, do check about the SN Bose Scholarship. It was canceled this year due to you-know-who, once again. Top 2 students of the department are eligible to apply for this scholarship. Do check about this, it is most likely to happen this year.

CHARPAK Internship (France)

This is an Internship that I missed out on, unfortunately. My understanding of it is this. It is very similar to DAAD; we need to approach a French host independently. It could be a French Institution or a Laboratory. After that is done, the process is relatively simple. Documents need to be uploaded in the portal, like DAAD-WISE. Only 20 people are selected throughout the country for this scholarship, which makes it highly competitive. Check on this as well online, don’t miss out on this as I did.

Indian Internships

SRFP/ SPARK /IITs

The process is quite simple again. The portal will be guiding you with respect to what documents are required. That said, it is quite random (again, unfortunately). For SPARK, CGPA plays a very crucial role along with the research expertise mentioned in the Statement of Purpose (SOP) [I will spend some time talking about SOP, soon]. Give it a shot. Don’t be without trying. I believe in this a lot, trying is important. Carrying on is important. Like what MS Dhoni says all the time, the process, taking the game deep is important. Being there, staying on the field is important. That is what I think, I did. It brings me to the last internship I applied to, and fortunately (thank the stars again) this is the internship that I managed to get.

Professor G.S. Ramaswamy Internship CSIR-SERC

First things first, only Civil and Mechanical Engineering students are eligible to apply. It has a CGPA requirement of 8 and is highly competitive, considering they select only 10 students from all over the country. The documents required are quite similar. Transcript, CV, Rank Card, No objection Certificate from the department and SOP. I can tell with some amount of surety, since I received this fellowship, that your SOP decides whether you make it to the 10 or no.

I have my own style in writing, it applies to SOPs as well. I try to keep it natural and free-flowing. It talked about what exactly I want to learn and why. As much as you can, try to keep your SOPs original. People can give you ideas, yes. But, those 500 words should reflect you. If someone were to place a mirror over my SOP, my image would definitely pop up. And, that is a learning that I can share with you all. Originality is the ultimate sophistication.

That brings me to the end of my internship search for this year. It began in June 2020 and lasted for almost a year. Over the last year, I have learnt so much. Getting Research internships is quite challenging even in normal circumstances. Now, it has just become more strenuous. But it should not bother you at all. I told my roommate that I want to get a ‘Flexworthy’ Intern for the summer. How stupid was I?

I wanted to go to Europe; as a DAAD scholar or to Canada as MITACS scholar. When I received the email from my German host, Rick Steves suddenly was all over my YouTube feed. The song ‘Ilahi’ became the only song that I heard for weeks. (That song is fantastic, do hear it if you haven’t) But, that did not materialise. We are all stuck in front of our laptops.

But there are far more essential things that we all are blessed to have. Sometimes, we need to think about what we have more than what we aspire to have.

I am sure you all will make it to Europe/Canada/US/Singapore next year. Or even work with outstanding professors back home in India at IITs/IISC/CSIR etc. I wish you all the very best in your internship search. I hope you have an easy internship experience. But remember, each time you get rejected, each time you see your friends getting interns, and you think, ‘What am I doing here?’, each time you feel down and out, think about what I said earlier, You need to pick yourself up and carry on. It is easier said than done, for sure. It is normal to feel this way too. But you will grow as a person as a result of this process.

PS: For people from NITT: At the end, if nothing works out (I know something will click, but for your sake, just letting it out), Pride of India will come to the rescue! Get in touch with your professor back in your department, and get it done.

Any other queries, I would be happy to help via email or the comment section.

I hope this reaches out to many people. Cheers!

~Sudharsan R

(sudharsanrathnakumar@gmail.com )