Summer Research Internship Program
Columbia Business School seeks applicants for the 2021 Summer Research Internship Program. This highly selective program provides interns an opportunity to work with Columbia Business School’s faculty on a research project in finance, economics, marketing, management, decision sciences, operations, accounting, or data analytics.
Under the guidance of a faculty mentor, most interns generally work on one research project. The work may include literature reviews, data collection and cleaning, web scraping, statistical analysis, and in some cases, contribution to a final publication. Behavioral interns may be staffed on multiple projects: conducting literature reviews, coding data, performing statistical analyses, and running experiments with the Behavioral Research lab. All interns will present their final results to faculty at the end of the internship.
The program will run from June 1, 2021 through August 6, 2021 (TBD). This year the program will be run virtually. A stipend will be provided.
Summer-Intern Placement
After graduating from their undergraduate or master’s programs, our summer interns have leveraged their experience at CBS to gain admission to some of the most prestigious PhD programs in Economics, Finance, Marketing, Management, Operations, and Data Science. Since 2012, 43 out of 125 interns have enrolled in PhD programs at schools like MIT (6), Harvard (6), Stanford (5), Columbia (4), Wharton (4), and the University of Chicago (2).
Some interns decide not to pursue their doctorate or defer doing so until after they have worked in industry for a few years. The summer internship experience provides training in analytical and quantitative skills that many employers find valuable. Our summer interns have accepted jobs from prestigious firms in management consulting (McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte) and economic consulting (Cornerstone Research, Analysis Group), financial firms and hedge funds (Goldman Sachs, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Blackrock, Blackstone, Bridgewater, AQR Capital Management), and at technology companies such as Facebook, Nielsen, and eBay. A select number of summer interns return to CBS for our prestigious Predoctoral Fellowship Program (PDF).
Successful Applicants
This is a multi-disciplinary program and candidates from all backgrounds, including business, statistics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, the physical sciences, and the social and behavioral sciences, are encouraged to apply.
Prospective interns should demonstrate an enthusiasm for research and intellectual curiosity. They are expected to have excellent communication skills, basic knowledge of statistics and/or econometrics, and familiarity with statistical and computational software packages (e.g., Matlab, R, STATA, SPSS) and scripting languages such as Python or R. Candidates interested in working with behavioral researchers should have experience conducting experiments and coding data.
For more information and to apply, please fill out the application form found through the “Apply Externally” button on Handshake.
The Application Deadline is 11:59pm EST on March 15, 2021. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The application process is highly competitive, only qualified candidates will be contacted for an interview.
We encourage students from diverse and underrepresented communities to apply.