These are tips and tricks that our 8 interns compiled based on our personal experiences with the application process:
Written Application
- Identify core values/goals/things that ISB focuses on and then state how your experiences tie to those things and how they can help you contribute to ISB’s goals
- Tie your personality into your experiences: you are more than your position!
- Show off what you have done and the impacts you have made in your past experiences/clubs/etc.
- Identify labs and people you want to interview/work with. Try to look at past projects to understand what is feasible and who may be an eligible mentor.
- RESEARCH! Find out everything you can about ISB, and this means going through past intern websites, ISB websites, lab pages, etc.!
- Quality > Quantity, even though there is no word limit (our answers ranged from 150-1000 words)
- You can apply even if you are out-of-state!
Telephone Interview
- State some background about yourself/your interests and then tie those to ISB’s vision and the projects that interest you
- Identify around 1-2 projects from research to talk about- more than anything else they are trying to match interns and potential projects
- Connect their projects to your experience
- Have (many) questions prepared!
- Prepare a document with a series of attributes, experiences, and interests that you want to cover
- Practice answering questions, even though you don’t know what you will be asked.
- It’s not a test! Most of the time will be spent talking about you and your interest in ISB because they want to see why you are interested.
In-Person/Video Interview
- Have questions prepared
- Try to be as outgoing and enthusiastic as possible (but genuine)
- Don’t be too modest, try to sell yourself!
- Be prepared to answer questions about your personality, not just science
- This is your first face-to-face impression, so use this opportunity to be professional: this quite literally means, dress to impress!
- Be really friendly and thank the interviewers for their time, smile, use manners, compliments, etc.
- Have your interview in a place you’re comfortable in so you can focus solely on your interview
Feel free to contact any of us if you have questions! Our emails are in our bios 🙂