UCLA Fielding Biostatistics students share lessons from summer internships

Five students in UCLA Fielding’s Department of Biostatistics spent their summers working across biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, defense and technology. Karen Harrison, a MDSH student, interned with Centrillion Technologies; MS students Julian Gavino and Siddhant Patel interned with Lockheed Martin and ASML, respectively; and PhD students Darren Lin and Yanlong Bai interned with AbbVie and Genentech. 

The students spoke with UCLA Fielding’s Cindy J. Pang about their internship search, the application and interview process, their experiences on the job, and advice for students considering internships of their own. 

Q: How did you find your internship?

All: LinkedIn, Company Websites, getting referrals, leveraging alumni connections, and Handshake. 

Patel: I applied sometime between November through January ... [In] Total I spent 3-5 hours a week at most between browsing LinkedIn and applying.

Bai: I started my application from September or October and got the first interview in early February next year... I still recommend starting it [application] as early as possible. I spent about 2-3 hours/day to search for openings and have filled out over 100 application forms.

Gavino: I started in late September and got my offer in mid-April, but I would do a little bit of searching every day.

Lin: I applied sometime between November through January... I applied to a few internships over the course of a couple weeks.

Harrison: I started my summer internship search the beginning of January and was sending applications until May. My strategy was to stress the quality ... over quantity. I created a detailed recruitment spreadsheet. ... Over the course of 5 months, I applied to 103 positions, received 3 independent interviews, and one offer.

Q: What did you do to prepare for your interviews? Is there anything you wish you did differently?

Patel: I leveraged my connections and my network's connections, scheduled coffee chats with as many people as I could in the field most relevant to what I wanted to pursue. ... [If I did anything differently,] I would say start earlier.

Bai: 1) Understand what titles or roles are relevant, and what knowledge or skillset they are looking for. Different tracks may have different requirements, e.g., data scientists/engineer track [is different from] biostatistics track. So make good use of AI tools for information gathering. 2) Optimize and refine your resume. If you want to apply for multiple roles, prepare role-specific resumes. 3) Practice for your interviews ... and be confident.

Gavino: I become a stronger storyteller during my interviews when talking about my experiences and wish I had a few more stories prepared beforehand.

Lin: For the interviews themselves, my LinkedIn and website helped visibility and giving the managers a sense of who I was before I met with them... I was ready to talk about my research interests and my goals. I was very honest about my intent with doing an internship, which was that I was still trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to do into academia or industry after graduation. ... I wish I had applied to more tech-heavy jobs (i.e., Google, Apple, etc.) and jobs in other fields.

Harrison: I watched data science YouTube videos to help prepare for AI and ML topics (StatQuest with Josh Starmer is a great creator). For each interview, I created Docs and took detailed notes on the company. I practiced recording myself and answering out-loud example interview questions that I would cater toward the specific position. I would then iterate by watching back the recording and retook it if I wanted my answer to sound more refined. ... One thing I'd do different is apply to more jobs so I could have more options ideally and interview practice.

Q: What surprised you most about the internship itself – whether about the work, culture, day-to-day rhythm, etc?

Patel: To be honest, I thought my schedule would look like a typical 8-5... [but] I do my work, deliver my results, and network, but I'm also spending time playing pool with other interns and exploring the office campus.

Bai: The working pace in industry is pretty fast and compact. My calendar was generally filled up with meetings and my manager and collaborator usually expected to have some progress every week or every other week. ... Regarding career prospects, before this internship, I had heard that advanced degrees could play an important role in long-term career development in the pharmaceutical industry, but I did not have a clear sense of what that meant in practice. Through this experience, I gained a better understanding of the different career paths within the industry and saw that, particularly for more research-oriented or scientific leadership roles, having a PhD can be a valuable advantage and is quite common among people who advance in these areas.

Gavino: I was surprised about the amount of freedom I was given to complete my projects.

Lin: “I was surprised by how organized AbbVie is. Everything is centrlized and incredibly streamlined... through Microsoft Teams, it was incredibly easy to get in touch with other employees, set up meetings, book rooms, etc... The biggest surprise was the difference in what industry emphasized as important. Academia is very focused on cutting-edge research, with a strong emphasis on AI and more niche methods of statistics. In industry however, I learned that they place a very strong emphasis on popular interpretable models instead. ... Good presentations are king (i.e., Beamer is frowned upon and dense text-heavy slides are discouraged).

Harrison: One of the most surprising parts of my internship experience is how independent you become, and confident you must be... I am there to learn and grow my own skillset, which can feel scary at times, but it is the best experience for growth. 

Q: What is one piece of advice you'd give to a student who is just starting to think about internships?

Patel: It's a numbers game. Your resume needs to stand out, and what that looks like for everyone is different, but apply to anything and everything, if it's moderately related to what you want long term. Pay doesn't matter so much for an internship; it's all about the experience and what you can speak to.

Bai: Think early, move early, and do not give up easily.

Gavino: Prioritize networking over applying online. For example, finding recruiters through campus events would be very helpful.

Lin: Do an internship early. It will help immensely with figuring out what you want to do after graduation. It also gives you a much wider perspective on how statistics is used broadly. For instance, I've learned what academia prioritizes is very different from what industry prioritizes. I've also learned a lot of skills and information that are hard to pick up on in the day-to-day of school (e.g. making good presentations, potential FDA policy changes, networking, how companies in pharma rank against each other, etc.). These things have actually given me some ideas on the direction to take my own research. It's been great being able to step back a bit just to get some perspective on the field.

Harrison: Start. Early. I cannot emphasize this enough. If I were to go back and do it all over, I would start looking for internships throughout the entire school year, even the summer prior, just to send out applications early, and save dates when you know certain companies will be opening up their applications so you don't miss the deadline. Even just dedicating 1 hour a week to recruitment starting in September will pay dividends.