Computer Science major applied to 456 internships and received 3 offers

• These days, scoring summer internships can feel like an arms race.
• Oliver Wu, a junior at the University of Michigan, said he applied for 456 internships.
• The computer science major has received three offers and will be interning at Ford this summer.

Oliver Wu, a computer science major, said he tried his best to land a summer internship.

“456 applications, 56 interviews, and 0 hours of sleep in 4 months, all in one internship,” the University of Michigan junior wrote in a TikTok post published on January 11. I wrote.

Wu, whose post has been viewed more than 2.9 million times, told Newsweek that she started applying before classes resumed in the fall.

“We started applying in July and quickly reached 200 applications,” Wu said, adding that before the new school year started, he was receiving 15 to 20 applications a day.

Wu told Barron’s that he felt “exhausted” from the long search after receiving “hundreds of refusals.”

“The hardest part was staying positive and working hard,” Wu said.

But Wu remained unfazed and continued searching.

“I didn’t want to have any regrets that I could have tried harder, so I decided to pursue this with all my might,” Wu told the outlet.

Wu’s efforts ultimately paid off. He has earned his three offers and will be joining Ford as an Enterprise Technology Intern this summer.

“I was in class at the time, and I remember walking outside into the hallway and jumping up and down for about 10 minutes, silently screaming in excitement,” Wu told Newsweek.

Wu is not the only one who has had to struggle with the slowing tech job market.

Industry-wide layoffs that began at the end of 2022 appear to be unabated. Tech companies continue to cut staff to streamline operations.

Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told his staff to prepare for further job cuts this year. Pichai said the job cuts are aimed at “removing layers to simplify execution and increase speed in some areas.”

Wu did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment outside normal business hours.