A USC sophomore majoring in accounting and finance had his summer internship offer with the State Department rescinded. The student requested anonymity due to the sensitivity around the topic and the current political climate.
“I was kinda expecting it, so I wasn’t surprised or anything, but still very frustrating. Especially given they communicated so late into the spring semester, so I definitely had to scramble around to get something for the summer,” the student said.
He said that he was in the midst of receiving his security clearance, and was receiving communication from December until the start of March about his background check. On March 13, he received the email saying his offer was being revoked. He said he wishes they had announced their plans to cancel the internship earlier.
“In accordance with the President’s Executive Order entitled Hiring Freeze and the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management’s joint Memorandum entitled Federal Civilian Hiring Freeze Guidance effective January 20, 2025, the Department hereby rescinds your tentative offer to participate in the Student Internship Program,” the email read.
Now he will be working on a research project with a professor and interning with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra as a finance intern. He said that because of the uncertainty with the current administration, he would give more weight to a private sector job now, even though his long term career goal is to work in the federal government.
“I was just always really curious about working in the federal government, what a career in it would look like. And long term career wise I want to try to become a foreign service officer in some way, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to get a foot in the door.”
Steph Domond, the student program manager at the Center for the Political Future at USC, said that the application processes for federal government internships are some of the most intense. He said that, in some cases, students are applying for these summer internships as early as September.
“You are very rigorously vetted, they do various background checks, they check up with your recommenders, so it’s not one of those things that you just apply for and you get,” Domond said.
He said he does not think the effects of people being denied internships will be on full display until less people are working in government.
“These are people, generally speaking, that want to do work in the public sector, who want to work in government, who want to make a difference, and we are essentially taking that opportunity away from them and we’re making it less attractive,” Domond said. “The idea of civil service and giving back to America, giving back to your community is very admirable and it sucks that these people aren’t going to be given that opportunity and in some cases are now denied an opportunity that should have been given.”
Belsem Aljobory, a sophomore majoring in international relations at George Washington University, also had her internship offer with the U.S. Foreign Service Internship Program rescinded after the program was cancelled.
“I’m hopeful that things won’t necessarily continue like this, and I’m hopeful that the administration will reinstate similar programs,” Aljobory said. “A lot of people have been telling me, ‘You got it once, you can get it again.’”
Aljobory said that she received a security clearance and her final offer to the position when rumors started circulating among others who were selected. She said she was accepted to the program on October 1, and the internship program was cancelled on March 14.
“There was a lot of talk within a WhatsApp group chat… about Trump’s hiring freeze and how that might possibly affect us,” Aljobory said. “There was a lot of different opinions. People are hopeful, people are negative, given the climate of how other internships had been canceled, and how maybe, because this is diplomacy, it might be saved.”
Aljobory said that although she was upset by the cancellation, she always thought it was a possibility.
On April 17, the White House announced an extension of the hiring freeze through July 15, 2025, and the future of federal internships for college students remains unclear.