An Actuarial Summer Internship Could Be The ThingAnyone who is interested in an actuarial career would be well advised to do one or more actuarial summer internships during their college career. There are a lot of advantages to actuarial summer internships. 1) Students who participate in actuarial summer internships get a chance to see what the day to day process of being an actuary is like. They can see whether or not they really like this career before they make too much of a time commitment to it and can study the various types of actuarial model to see them in a real environment. 2) Students who participate in an actuarial internship get a chance to gain real world experience which can help them get future jobs. The work students do during internships is work that an actuary would have to do if not for them, it is real actuarial work. It is a valuable learning experience rather than an actuarial exam, learning all about real world risk and actuary service. 3) They give students and companies a chance to test each other out and see what they think of each other. A student can try out a company and see how they like working there, without any long term commitment. 4) Summer internships can lead to full time positions after completion of a student's university degree. Not all internships actually lead to full time positions, but a good percentage of them do, especially if they are an entry level actuarial position as part of the internship. Even if a student does not get a position with the company they interned with, the experience will help them to get a position with another company since they can be said to have some consulting experience. 5) An internship is usually a paid internship, so a student can make some money during the summer rather than just sitting at home. An internship or summer job is definitely a better option than a non career related summer job or having no summer job at all, and especially given that actuarial salaries can be very decent even at entry level. Students interested in an actuarial summer internship should check with the career centers at their university to try to find out about possible summer internship opportunities. They can also go to the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) online listing of Actuarial Training Programs. This list includes a lot of actuarial summer internship and summer job opportunities. However, not all opportunities are listed, so if a student is interested in an internship at a particular company that is not listed, they should contact the company directly as there may still be an opportunity available to them. There is definitely no harm in trying, and a request of this nature can lead to a position. |