Partner Companies
ACES hosts guaranteed internships with a network of partner companies who are actively looking for higher quality interns and employees. These employers, not ACES, offers the internship opportunity, while the ACES team organizes and distributes the opportunity to its students.
How are guaranteed internships possible?
ACES’s 1-week internships or guaranteed internship positions are not paid career experiences. Fundamentally, they’re an assessment and a work trial for partner companies looking to hire for real intern or full time roles. Students can think of the internship as an SAT test but for jobs; though the 1-week internship (the “test” in this case) carries standalone value because it provides real work experience working with an actual team from a company.
This assessment based model is what makes this possible rather than enforcing the real companies/employers partnered with ACES to completely hire hundreds of students every year without knowing anything about them. The internship is an opportunity for students, even without experience, to prove their skills and that they can thrive in a company’s actual work environment.
When a student does extremely well in a 1-week internship, the company and their managers actively see and review it. Since the student passed the “test” the employers themselves created, the employers trust to hire the student or at least provide them with a job interview.
Can the ACES 1-week internship be useful on a resume or university application?
Yes, because regardless of the nature of the internship being an assessment, the 1-week internship is still hosted by a real company and involves highly accurate work. It’s not a test or exam where students work on hypothetical case studies or answer rigid questions.
Students complete actual projects they can showcase to other employers, and receive a certificate that is especially recognized among companies who regularly partner with and hire from ACES.
However, if a student does not complete projects, acts unprofessionally in the experience, or inappropriately violates workplace codes of conduct, this experience will not be useful nor recognized on their resume or university application. What a student gets out of the experience (i.e. how valuable it is for their resume and university applications), is completely merit based.
Furthermore, the 1-week internship provides a strong substance for students to discuss in their university applications. It’s a much more credible and unique achievement than what students typically use as extracurriculars (e.g. being a club member, starting a local organization, a part-time job). Students can stand out by pointing to real work experience at multi-million dollar investment funds, consulting firms, and top tech startups backed by accelerators like YCombinator, Techstars, and the League of Innovators. Additionally, employers from these 1-week internships provide signed recommendation letters, especially if the student performs well in the internship.
Is the ACES 1-week internship a pay-to-win or pay-to-play experience?
No. The ACES 1-week internship is completely merit based; it’s similar to how students pay a fixed fee to take the SAT exam, but how well they do is dependent on their own efforts. Students are not paying to get a guaranteed job or an interview, they’re paying to take a 1-week work assessment where if they do well, they can qualify for subsequent opportunities based on merit.
The 1-week internship just so happens to provide guaranteed standalone value to a student’s resume, university applications, and learning. This is because unlike an academic test, the internship provides realistic work experience that is nearly identical to that of full time interns or employees. Students work directly with a real company and managers from that company, and they leave with completed projects that the company’s full-time workers actually worked on themselves.
