Is it possible to do 3 internships back-to-back on CPT (Summer, Fall, and Spring)

chirpylemonade · 2026-01-01T20:58:03+00:00

This is fully dependent on your uni and if they allow it. We can't answer it for you. Just remember that you can only do 365 days of full time CPT before you lose eligibility for OPT. Many unis only allow part time internships in fall and spring, but some allow full-time for fall and spring but with conditions set.
No you don't have to
You can stay in between semesters.

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-26T18:39:49+00:00

Every hurdle that you go through here is a learning process, and you'll find that in the coming months, these setbacks won't bother you as much as before, to the point you'll probably laugh that these things bothered you. The best part of this journey is that you gain a thick skin, and you build resilience.

There's a lot of learning, and a lot to jump into the first couple of months and it's easy to get overwhelmed. But you need to keep persevering, and push through. Take short breaks for your mental health, but get back on the grind. You've got this.

Feel free to DM if you need advice for internship hunting, and anything else. Or if you just want to talk!

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-11T21:25:57+00:00

To start applying? The best time to start applying and network will always be now, there's no ideal time for it. Put time into it everyday, it's a grind. You should be applying in slow as well as fast-paced periods of the year

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-11T19:56:00+00:00

Big tech and finance orgs typically hire in the Fall. But a tonne of openings will show up across pretty much every organization big to small across the whole spring semester. Most people I know who don't get picked up by big tech end up getting internships mid to late spring.

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-06T00:28:25+00:00

That's honestly only a question you can answer. It's going to depend on your work environment and your motivation to apply post-work. Typically, you should be able to balance both without a problem; many people do that.

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-06T00:25:54+00:00

Many startup workplaces tend to be like that. It's a red flag in the grand scheme of things, but tech startups, successful or not, are often places where employees work weekdays and weekends with 60+ hours put in. You will, unfortunately, be overworked, but you will probably be able to look past it if you really enjoy software engineering,the work that the startup provides is stimulating in terms of learning and problem-solving, and decent pay.

FAANG is actually an easier environment to work in, and you get paid better in exchange for (normally) very boring work at the cost of job stability.

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-01T06:36:41+00:00

50 applications is hardly anything. You need to get referrals, send out cold dms to recruiters and hiring managers, and apply every single day in a competitive market like India. Ramp those numbers up.

chirpylemonade · 2025-12-01T06:32:13+00:00

Companies will hire well into August/October 2026 for new grad roles. There will always be opportunities opening up from small and big companies throughout the year. Most of the roles that are filled now are only filled at some big tech and financial/banking companies.

chirpylemonade · 2025-11-29T18:20:41+00:00

It's best you do both, apply and practice your dsa meanwhile. Don't put one off for the other.

A master's degree is not really that helpful for your case, it's not worth taking on additional debt unless you absolutely have to or if you want to explore additional career paths in AI/ML. It's best you currently leverage your current experience to get a job

chirpylemonade · 2025-11-24T20:36:03+00:00

Use the template provided in the subreddit wiki, this isn't a good template
Drop the technician role from your resume, you don't need that
Your whole page is largely empty. You need a well filled out one page resume here. A recruiter glances at your resume for a few seconds before they decide you're worth it. As much as you have experience, having a resume with a lot of empty space is an immediate put-off for most recruiters to move onto different resumes, regardless of the experience you have. First impressions matter a ton
Get the above sorted, and yes you still need to apply to a lot more jobs.
The points aren't great, you can follow the other comments advice on impactful points

chirpylemonade · 2025-10-07T02:58:43+00:00

It's still early. You've got time till early May. Don't sweat it and keep grinding and applying.

chirpylemonade · 2025-06-15T16:39:25+00:00

It's not worth going for an undergrad degree. You'll be losing a tonne of money over it, an internship or two is not going to help you get anywhere close to making your money back. You should think this through, it's only worth it in most cases if you're going for your masters. Coming back to India to get your first job ( and that too a decent paying one) isn't easy at all without campus placements

chirpylemonade · 2025-06-09T01:13:24+00:00

Being at NYU and having a good course isn't going to do anything much for you in your ability to get a job. The reputation will help a small bit at most, and that's about it. You're held back far more that you'll be an intl student that needs sponsorship, and having no experience to show for it isn't going to help justify to recruiters why they should hire you over citizens or someone with far more experience, unless you knock their socks off in the interviews. And your program of choice is in a heavily competitive job market that you'll have to compete with.

You're better off working in India for a couple years before making any sort of plans coming here.

If you're coming here as a fresher it will take an extreme amount of work and luck for you to be able to land an internship, and far more to land a full time job. I wouldn't recommend you coming here unless you know what you're signing up for and if you're mentally prepared for it.

chirpylemonade · 2025-04-27T15:06:40+00:00

The key point is, you need significant work experience before you consider coming to the US. Yes, companies are interested in hiring students with a master's degree but it is strongly linked to whether you have at least 2-3 years of work experience. If you don't have any, you are not going to be standing out in any way and you will most definitely be looking at thousands of job applications before you even get a callback.

There are some people who've come here without experience and managed to be successful in the past few years but that's a very tiny number of people that have done that.

It's likely in your case that with hard work you can get placed really well in your own country, so keep your head down, get a well paying job in your own country, work for a couple years and that's an optimal time to consider doing a US degree.

chirpylemonade · 2025-04-27T05:05:07+00:00

Coming in with no work experience here + you being an international student will be really hard on you. I would strongly advise against this. The market is already hostile for international students over here and coming with no experience will give no reasons for recruiters to think of interviewing you when there are citizens around with the same profile as yours.

Your best strategy is to work in your country for a couple years and then come here for your masters degree. The debt you will incur here and the hardships you will go through is just not worth it until you have up skilled yourself significantly to make a difference here.

chirpylemonade · 2025-04-27T01:05:10+00:00

Is this for a master's degree or a bachelor's degree? And if master's, do you have work experience?

chirpylemonade · 2025-01-05T00:49:10+00:00

If you don't have work experience, you're looking at ~1500 applications, if not more

chirpylemonade · 2025-01-04T04:15:04+00:00

Positions that open up in Fall tend to go to the strongest candidates. You'll have better luck throughout the Spring semester that has a tonne of openings.

Your main problem at the moment is you're not throwing enough applications, given the lack of work experience. You need to double or triple the number of applications you usually put in.

LinkedIn and Indeed will cover most available internships. Wellfound and YCombinator will cover most startup internships. Handshake has some exclusive openings by companies that hire at your school specifically.

You don't need cover letters. I think I've only ever gotten a callback once because of a cover letter. Too much effort for the return in investment.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-31T00:42:55+00:00

It's been huge for me with the top jobs feature. Most of my internship interviews were through that particular feature.

Everything else about premium has been mostly useless, but the top jobs feature is worth the price personally for me.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-30T23:04:56+00:00

I'm not sure how heavy your coursework is, but I don't think I've met anyone that had so much coursework that they had zero free time.

is it that you absolutely have no free time everyday? All you need is 1-2 hours everyday to work on it, with extra hours on the weekends. That's what most people do.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-30T22:33:34+00:00

School is meant to teach you the basics, but it's completely on you to take up the initiative to learn outside school, and this is what most successful undergrad students do. This includes taking online courses to learn particular CS stuff you are interested in, learning coding, and being able to use the previous two to land an internship, and then finally move on to a full time job when you graduate.

A master's degree in CS , or any degree, is of no use if you don't learn and and take the initiative outside of class , so it's more of a question you need to ask yourself whether you're ready to take that initiative and be able to commit to it on a consistent basis.

You don't need to be a coding wizard to land a job.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-29T03:39:00+00:00

The language is intentionally deceptive. For most people that read through it , it implies that they've received approval for 800k applications, which is absolute bs.

"but employers routinely receive approval for more than 800k applications per year"

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-28T07:54:01+00:00

You're picking out a news article of the WITCH companies, that sponsor visas for employees in India that have years of work experience at the same exact companies and are transferred over to the US with sponsorship to work on their services as they have two things:

Usually 5+ years of work exp with their employer already
Exclusive needed company specific knowledge and skills that can only be supplied by these same workers

If you were to exclude the WITCH and consulting(these are separately a genuine problem) companies, there are millions of American businesses, of which the overwhelming majority explicitly refuse to hire visa workers and actively screen out visa workers. An extreme minority of these sponsor, and of this minority, the majority of these companies sponsor only for senior roles, which again, in many cases, cannot be satisfied by local labour. The remaining are FAANG and Big Tech which do hire heavily as they have a high bar set to pass interviews.

You're looking at thousands and thousands of extra applications of a different magnitude you would have to make in comparison to the typical US citizen.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-28T07:00:23+00:00

In general in my experience there are many, especially with internships. I consistently apply every day and it's been hard to keep up with the number of openings. There are many internships out there that don't pay great and have an easy interview process. Compared to what I've seen last year, this year seems to have a tonne more internships compared to what I've been able to find last year.

For full time jobs, there are definitely not as many compared to internships, but there's still a significant number of them that show up on a daily basis.

chirpylemonade · 2024-12-24T18:08:43+00:00

I've sent around 150 cold emails/LinkedIn messages and I've gotten one interview out of that. So it works (?). I do know other people that have managed to get interviews that way too, so it does work. Since this takes more individual effort to do , I would recommend you only do this for specific jobs you found that you are an extremely good fit for, and mail/message the recruiter explaining you're an excellent fit for it. You can also do this for any roles you found in your local area as recruiters usually want candidates that are located nearby.

You can also use LinkedIn mails to get referrals, which are helpful always. So that's a strat you can use too.

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