I feel so defeated. I don't know what more I can do.
I'm a junior (rising senior this summer), and I was looking for a high-level, startup, or interesting robotics or aerospace internship. I should start by saying I know I'm fortunate in this market because I got a return offer from my previous internship at a major car manufacturer, but I hated the role, location, and industry last summer. I hated working in manufacturing and the overall team environment. So I was determined this year to get an internship I actually liked.
I would like to think I'm a high-level candidate as I go to a T10 overall school, have a 3.3 GPA, previous summer internships at two F100 companies, and have good extracurriculars with SAE club experience. But this cycle just destroyed me.
I applied to 250+ internships and got about 15-ish interviews. Overall, I was happy with this because I only applied to roles that I considered more interesting or "better" than my return offer. These interviews were from top companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, SpaceX, Muon Space, Vast Space, Northwood Space Anduril, etc., and a few really interesting startups. I think my interview skills are solid. I consistently got past the first round for most companies and got to 8 final rounds. Almost every final round felt pretty good in my opinion, as I've been grinding really hard on my technical and behavioral answers.
Also, throughout the process, my luck was so terrible, and it really burnt me out and left me mentally exhausted. I had interviewers not show up for interviews, HR forgetting to schedule interviews after reaching out for a time, and a startup that wanted to offer me a role but realized they didn't have enough funding. I ended up not getting a single internship offer.
Now, I know I'm lucky that I have a solid return offer to fall back on, but after all this effort, it just feels terrible to fail each time. I probably spent close to 80+ hours this year on applications and interview prep. I'm honestly not sure what else I could've done.
I really needed to rant, so thanks for reading.