Summer Internship Funding and Career Exploration Grants

Experiential learning, such as internships, research, or long-term volunteer service, provides a student with the opportunity to contribute and work alongside industry colleagues in a professional environment. The setting could be in-person or remote. These roles are intended to help students gain first-hand experience, build skills, test different work environments, and grow their professional networks.

Experiential opportunities differ from training programs, courses, or credentialing programs, whose primary objective is learning a skill through classroom instruction, with, at times, applied components. Students seeking funding to participate in CNA, STNA, EMT, or phlebotomy training; business courses; design courses; language programs; field school; coding boot camps, or the like should apply for funding through the Career Services Microcredential Initiative.  

Students should consult with a career adviser to determine which source of funding best fits their proposed experience(s) prior to submitting any applications.

No. At the point of application, students may have accepted an offer or still be in the process of applying. We recognize that the outcome of this grant process often impacts which experiences are accessible. All applications are scored with the same criteria, regardless of whether a student has accepted an offer. 

Students will have until June 1 to accept an offer and complete all grant paperwork.

For Career Services funding, “international” is defined as travel to a location outside a student’s home country or the United States. Any location within a student’s home country is considered a “domestic” experience.

Career Exploration Grants may only be applied to domestic, in-person experiences; no remote shadowing or observation opportunities will be funded. Alternatively, students may receive Summer Internship Funding to participate in an international opportunity, as defined above, as long as it meets the following criteria:
 

• At least five of the required eight weeks of the experience must be in the proposed international location. Short-term travel is disproportionately expensive and is not the best use of Colgate’s resources.
• Locations must be deemed to be at a reasonable level of risk. No grant funding will be approved for locations for which a U.S. Department of State level 4 travel advisory is in effect during any stage of this process. Level 3 destinations that reflect considerable health or safety concerns will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Students are encouraged to research travel advisories on the U.S. Department of State website and discuss plans with Career Services before requesting funding or accepting an experience. As conditions can change quickly, students are also highly encouraged to consider a domestic backup plan.

Unpaid experiences do not offer any form of compensation. Underpaid experiences provide some compensation, such as a stipend, a metro pass, or an hourly wage; however, it is insufficient to cover a student’s maximum allocation for each category of living expenses within the Summer Internship Funding budget sheet.

Only expenses incurred during the time students are engaged in their experience and are related to it are eligible for consideration. These grants cannot offer funding for lost wages or the cost of academic year expenses.

Once a student is offered a Summer Internship Grant, they will attend a mandatory budgeting workshop and submit a budget proposal. Grant amounts will reflect the specific circumstances of one’s summer experience, such as its duration, location, etc.

Awards will be calculated using this equation: Total cost of living expenses (up to the maximum amount per expense category) minus a student’s total compensation.

Maximum awards for summer 2026 will be $4,500 for experiences where students are living at home or completing a remote opportunity, and $7,500 for experiences that require students to live away from home due to a commute longer than one hour. Maximum awards will only be offered when the student’s budget calculations within the form warrant it.

Note: Summer Internship Funding is designed to make the experience more accessible, not to meet all financial needs or desires of applicants. It is highly unlikely that a student’s grant will fully cover all of the expenses of living in a high-cost metro area. Students will need to employ a variety of cost reduction strategies — such as sharing spaces with roommates, cooking on a budget, using public transportation — or consider lower-cost opportunities.

Every student offered a Career Exploration Grant will be disbursed $750 to offset commuting costs or basic supplies needed to engage in their proposed job shadow or volunteer opportunity. 

Students are not required to submit a budget to access their grant. However, they must attend a mandatory orientation session to learn how to make the most of their summer opportunity, then confirm the details of their plan with Career Services before funding is disbursed. 

Our goal is to support students in pursuing these essential career development opportunities while also creating access for as many students as possible. 

Students are welcome to apply to the Microcredentials Initiative and Summer Internship Funding or the Microcredentials Initiative and Career Exploration Grant program. They may not apply for consideration from both the Summer Internship Funding and the Career Exploration Grant Program. Each program has a distinct timeline, different maximum awards, and different expenses that qualify for funding support. The team in Career Services can support students to determine which program is best suited to their career development goals.  

Students will learn the outcomes of all Career Services’ grant processes before responding to any offers. If a student is fortunate to receive more than one offer, they should carefully review each to determine which they will accept. Consultations with Career Services staff assist students in understanding which path will support them to achieve the broadest scope of their proposed opportunities.   

Per labor laws, students may only access one full-time funding offer per summer. Students who have committed to receiving funding from the Lampert Institute, Upstate Institute, undergraduate summer research, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, or Colgate summer employment must withdraw their funding application from Career Services funding. Likewise, students who commit to accessing Career Services funding should withdraw from other on-campus funding application processes.

Students may request up to $1,500 to cover program fees associated with using a placement agency or third-party vendor to secure a summer experience, if their budget has space (up to the maximum allocation) after calculating related living expenses. For most pay-to-participate experiential programs, the fees widely outweigh our available funding. Students will need to be realistic about whether these experiences are affordable to them.

Students will receive notification of tentative grant offers in early April. These tentative offers become finalized once a student secures their experience, attends the mandatory orientation, and submits final paperwork. Grants will then be disbursed within two weeks. All tentative offers must be finalized no later than June 1.

Unfortunately, we cannot notify grantees of their status before early April. If you are asked to commit to accepting an experience before this time frame, you should consider whether this is an experience you can afford if you do not receive funding. With respectful communication, your employer may also be willing to extend the time frame by which you need to respond to your offer. Please connect with our advisers to discuss how to approach this negotiation.