As the school year comes to a close, internship season is kicking off for many students. But not all interns make coffee runs for no pay. In particular, in finance and tech, college interns are paid very well with lots of perks.
Facebook summer interns, for example, earn almost twice what the average American worker makes — $8,000 per month working at Mark Zuckerberg's social media behemoth, according to a new report from jobs website Glassdoor. Annualized, that's $96,000. The average U.S. worker makes $51,350, according to March 2017 data, also from Glassdoor.
Here's a look at the 25 highest-paid internships in America and what it's like being a summer intern at these companies. Observations are pulled from anonymously submitted feedback on Glassdoor.
1. Facebook
Median monthly pay: $8,000
The good: "Amazing perks (free food, snacks, transportation, housing -- own bedroom and bathroom!), as well as completely paid-for intern events on the weekends."
The bad: "Difficult to switch teams and try other options as an intern. ... My team, excluding my manager, also all worked remotely, which made getting help very hard." — Software engineer intern in Menlo Park, Calif.
2. Microsoft
Median monthly pay: $7,100
The good: "Meaningful intern projects. Great diversity of teams: Microsoft has their hands on absolutely everything, so you get to talk to a lot of very smart and interesting people. Probably has the best intern benefits out there. Intern events are amazing. I've had great mentors. It's a great time to join Microsoft in the midst of its reinvention."
The bad: "The internship experience depends a lot on the mentor. Most mentors are great; if you're one of the unlucky few, your internship won't be as rewarding." — Software engineer intern in Redmond, Wash.
3. ExxonMobil
Median monthly pay: $6,507
The good: "Great place to start and develop a career. There is a major focus on professional development and management takes your interests very seriously."
The bad: "It can be difficult to contribute meaningfully at times." — Software development intern in Houston, Texas
4. Salesforce
Median monthly pay: $6,450
The good: "Salesforce truly does a great job of making you feel like a part of the team. They have been very helpful throughout my career."
The bad: "Getting to be a pretty massive company, losing some culture that made it so special. However, it would be almost impossible not to at this point." — Client service intern in Atlanta, Ga.
5. Amazon
Median monthly pay: $6,400
The good: "Great supervisor, great benefits, great location, great work experience. I learned a ton in this position that I believe will serve me well in future endeavors."
The bad: "The full-time post graduation offer was difficult because you don't get to know your location until about a month before you start work — so I had to turn it down." — Intern in Dallas, Texas
6. Apple
Median monthly pay: $6,400
The good: "Very innovative culture, supportive teammates and management; it's run like a series of small startups instead of global company, makes it very easy to take ownership of work."
The bad: "Secrecy got in the way of productivity." — Hardware engineering intern in Sunnyvale, Calif.
7. Bloomberg L.P.
Median monthly pay: $6,400
The good: "Phenomenal company culture, which makes employees excited about coming to work everyday. Great benefits and access to cultural institutions. Beautiful office space in a great part of Manhattan — free food, drinks, etc."
The bad: "Bloomberg's company culture is strong, which is a huge positive of the company, but is negative to some in the sense that there is not that much room to change the path that they have designed." — Intern in New York, N.Y.
8. Yelp
Median monthly pay: $6,400
The good: "Yelp has an amazing company culture. Everyone comes in to work so positive and I genuinely enjoyed everyone I worked with. Your managers are very helpful and are well-trained in guiding you through a challenging role. The free food is definitely a plus."
The bad: "The work is very monotonous, which can be very hard to endure day in and day out. You face a lot of rejection, which you need to not take personally, but that is very hard to do some days. Overall, the role is for some and not for others. ... You have to be very resilient." — Sales intern
9. Yahoo
Median monthly pay: $6,080
The good: "Interns get to work directly with the full-time employees and get a real feel of how full-timers work."
The bad: "I think a significant con would be the general lack of innovation from the company. People may not be connected to their products." — Intern in Sunnyvale, Calif.
10. VMware
Median monthly pay: $6,080
The good: "All of my colleagues were willing to either help me when I got stuck or aim me at the right person to ask -- there was no, 'I'm too busy to help you' mentality there. Also, VMware has a 'use as much time off as you need' policy. As long as you're getting your work done and clear it with your manager, you can take as much vacation as you want."
The bad: "With the Dell acquisition of EMC, there is some uncertainty of how that will affect VMware. However, the message from management is that things will continue 'business as usual.'" — Ph.D. intern in Austin, Texas
11. Google
Median monthly pay: $6,000
The good: "You get to be a part of incredible projects that have huge impacts on many users around the world. Very motivating environment!"
The bad: "Can be rough sometimes, you're surrounded by very smart people and it can be intimidating. You have to learn to work fast." — Software engineer intern in Mountain View, Calif.
12. NVIDIA
Median monthly pay: $5,770
The good: "State-of-the-art technologies. Interns are given real projects, i.e., you are given tasks which otherwise would be assigned to
The bad: "Campus needs a refresh, but it hopefully will happen with a new Endeavor building. Infrastructure and tools must be improved — too much time wasted on fighting with repositories, building and testing systems. FB/Google/MS give better salary." — Systems software engineer intern in Santa Clara, Calif.
13. Intuit
Median monthly pay: $5,440
The good: "Amazing people and culture. Happy and relaxed doing the best work of their lives. Great benefits, bleeding-edge tech, meaningful work and delighted customers."
The bad: "Can be a bit slower if you're used to a faster-paced company. That is changing now though.
14. Juniper Networks
Median monthly pay: $5,440
The good: "Super friendly, everyone is a big team. The company makes an effort to keep you. Cheap food, nice company outings. Great environment."
The bad: "Big company, hard to make an impact. Sometimes it seems that your advice might fall on deaf ears because the company is so large." — Facilities engineer intern in Westford, Mass.
15. Workday
Median monthly pay: $5,440
The good: "Had such a great summer due to this internship. They housed us and had events for us all the time. The employees here are mostly all really nice and the other interns were cool. Working wasn't ever really stressful and felt laid back."
The bad: "If you're in app dev, working in their proprietary language somewhat limits your learning experience for the internship. I felt like I didn't have time to really learn it that well and therefore didn't do as much through the summer." — Associate applications developer intern in Pleasanton, Calif.
16. BlackRock
Median monthly pay: $5,400
The good: "Huge company with lots of opportunities. Respected and dominant in the industry."
The bad: "Bureaucracy and silo effect between teams." — Summer associate in New York, N.Y.
17. Adobe
Median monthly pay: $5,120
The good: "Lots of benefits, great employee perks and events, including a chance to have a meeting with the CEO. Became a full member of a team for three months."
The bad: "A bit of bureaucracy involved in dealing with international team members, and having many remote teammates certainly diminished the experience." — Computer science intern in San Francisco, Calif.
18. MathWorks
Median monthly pay: $5,120
The good: "The work that MathWorks does is pretty awesome and you end up learning a lot. Most developers are young and are quite brilliant. The atmosphere is pretty laid back and there doesn't seem to be too much pressure on people. Close to Boston, which is a very happening town."
The bad: "Sometimes people take a lot of time to respond, which might be due to the laid back attitude in general.
19. Qualcomm
Median monthly pay: $5,040
The good: "You get to work on interesting projects. Great teamwork, side projects, hackathons. Meaningful projects that will impact the company."
The bad: "If you are not an engineer, you might feel left out at the beginning. There are some activities specifically for engineering interns." — Intern in San Diego, Calif.
20. Capital One
Median monthly pay: $5,000
The good: "Very focused on getting you acclimated to the company. Well-managed program, structurally. Top management commitment to program gives interns exposure to high level associates in the bank."
The bad: "Little opportunity to give and get honest feedback to program management— internship feeds into the Finance Rotation Program (FRP) where employees have little say on the types of roles they will be assigned." — Intern in McLean, Va.
21. Chevron
Median monthly pay: $5,000
The good: "As an intern, you are given hands-on real problems and can really dig into and learn what you are doing. They never have you doing administrative tasks, you are treated like a true employee and not an intern. The company culture is great, mostly everyone really does follow 'the Chevron Way,' which creates a good work environment."
The bad: "Because of the history of the industry, there isn't a lot of diversity. One summer I was one of maybe 10 females that worked on the entire floor, which was about 50-60 people." — Environmental specialist intern in Houston, Texas
22. Accenture
Median monthly pay: $4,960
The good: "The people there made the job and long hours a much more fulfilling experience. I liked them a lot. The work was plentiful but it was fast paced. The pay was good for an intern."
The bad: "There wasn't a whole lot that I could really complain about. The hours were long, variable, and I had to work some weekends, but that is nothing to complain about. Time and expense sheets are very tedious." — Intern in Houston, Texas
23. Deutsche Bank
Median monthly pay: $4,640
The good: "Deutsche Bank is a very reputable firm with a great name in the banking world, especially in Europe. Great people, challenging problems, interesting work and great team-oriented culture."
The bad: "Work/life balance is tough in investment banking. Didn't like that you had no control over your schedule and that you had limited say in your work." — Technology investment banking summer analyst in Boston, Mass.
24. AIG
Median monthly pay: $4,616
The good: "The people there are really nice and eager to help me with all my questions. Got to learn a lot of different lines of business and models they use."
The bad: "Some of the teams [where] the interns got placed are not at their busy season, so some interns may not be able to touch the core of the team projects because there are no projects for them to do at that moment." — Summer actuarial analyst in New York, N.Y.
25. Bank of America
Median monthly pay: $4,570
The good: "Good corporate culture, good intern pay, great training, great coworkers. Possibility for full-time employment once the internship is over."
The bad: "Sort of the same thing every day. If you like that, it's great. If you don't, it can get tedious or boring." — Summer credit analyst intern in Fresno, Calif.
See also:
The 17 best jobs in America that pay over $100,000
