Archived
College Students Credit Internships for Later Opportunities
For Adam Lobel, a morning spent reading the paper turned out to be a life-changing experience. The University of Texas student caught sight of an interesting advertisement promoting a contest for the MasterCard Priceless Experience Internship. The idea is to give college students a rare opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the highly competitive fields of sports, music and film.
alu206@nyu.eduFor Adam Lobel, a morning spent reading the paper turned out to be a life-changing experience. The University of Texas student caught sight of an interesting advertisement promoting a contest for the MasterCard Priceless Experience Internship. The idea is to give college students a rare opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the highly competitive fields of sports, music and film.
“To be honest, the decision to apply was made the second I saw the advertisement in the paper,” said Lobel, a self-described sports fanatic.
After sending in the required essay, he was later chosen as one of 12 finalists from the nearly 26,000 that applied in 2003. During his internship, Lobel was able to work closely with the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Mets.
“The experience was amazing, to say the least,” he said. “It is hard not to say the program surpassed all of my expectations because it has inevitably changed my life forever.”
More than 33,000 students have already submitted applications for this year’s internship program to date, but entries may still be received until March 20, 2005. Now in its fourth year, the MasterCard Priceless Internship Experience is looking once again to provide worthy college students with the chance of a lifetime to gain experience in three notoriously hard-to-break-into fields. To qualify, students must be 18 to 25 years old and enrolled as full- or part-time undergraduate students in an accredited U.S. university. Qualified individuals must then submit a 250-word essay that answers the question, “If you were to plan your ideal career in your field (music, film or sports), what would it be and why?”
Based on the essay, 36 semifinalists will be chosen for each industry by an independent panel of judges. The semifinalists will then be required to submit a two-minute-or-less video answering the question, “What is your favorite moment in the history of your industry, what do you like best about it and why?” Twelve internship finalists will then be selected based on their videos.
One of the program’s main goals is to provide students with the chance to meet influential individuals within their particular industry who can help guide them in this experience — and perhaps in the future.
Dave Meyers, a world-famous music video director who has worked with artists such as Jennifer Lopez and Janet Jackson, is a fan of the program. “I was an abused intern once,” he said, with a chuckle during a telephone press conference. “They were not very well-balanced. I know the value of an internship that works. This opens the right doors with the right people, and I really wanted to support a program like that.”
During this year’s program, music interns will work on the Vans Warped Tour, film interns will work at Universal Studios, and sports interns will work with Major League Baseball.
Stephen Levine, a MasterCard program 2004 finalist in the music field, raved about his experience working on two music videos for the band Hoobastank. “With professional writers, directors, designers and producers as our guides, the 16 of us truly created these videos,” he said. “We wrote the treatments, designed and built the sets and costumes, cast the videos, worked on the set, helped in post-production — in short, we did it all. With genuine professionals keeping us on track, we all had a tremendously valuable experience.”
For Jennifer Dutko, who was also chosen as a 2003 finalist for the sports industry, the program allowed her not only to gain a deeper understanding of the many facets of the business but also to tap into a key network of people.
“Immediately after the program, I landed an internship at Octagon Sports Marketing, doing sports marketing for Nextel, through a contact I met during the MasterCard program,” she said. “After a year at Octagon, I reached out to a contact I met during the program, the president of Olympic Sales and Marketing at IMG, the world’s premier sports and entertainment management agency in the world. I went in for a job interview, and the rest is history, as I am now an account executive of Olympic Sales and Marketing at IMG.”
Whether or not the internship had a direct effect on their careers, the program’s alumni all expressed a deep appreciation for the chance they had been given and encouraged others to apply.
“I know this will sound beyond corny,” Levine said, “but it really was pretty priceless.”