Sprinternships

These quick (hence the sprint!) immersive paid internships give you work experience and a tech-industry résumé credential that can help you to land your first summer tech internship.

Sprinternships are a key part of Break Through Tech Chicago’s mission, which is to advance the tech careers of women and nonbinary people and enhance gender diversity in the tech sector. Sprinternships are designed for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors at UIC who plan to pursue a tech education and career.

While certain majors and minors (such as computer science, data science, CS + design, or computer science and linguistics) are more common among Sprinterns, we are happy to receive applications from UIC students in other majors who have career plans that involve technology or tech innovation.

Sprinternships

Three transformative weeks.

Sprinternships are designed by the organizations that host them, so each experience is unique in many ways. These are three weeks that you can call your own. However, all Sprinternships are built around several common features:

  • Company overview: Knowing about the inner working of organizations can help you to think in new ways about the career paths that might be in your future. You will meet with a range of your organization’s internal departments and learn more about what people do.
  • Challenge project: Your Sprinternship organization will identify a business problem for you to work on. You’ll have the chance to collect background information, size up the problem, come up with a creative solution that uses technology, and pitch it to the leadership team.
  • Teamwork! In real life, challenges are solved when people work together. Employees from your sponsor organization will work with you, providing details and guidance along the way. You might have a chance to work with other Sprinterns, too.
  • Résumé reviews: You likely get résumé help at school, but an industry perspective can offer extra value. Staff from your Sprinternship organization will review your résumé and give suggestions for new experiences you could seek out to improve it even further.

Additional program details can be found in the tabs below.  Application information will be made available on this website as soon as it is live.

Who can apply?

We welcome Sprinternship applications from Break Through Tech Chicago members and UIC undergraduate students (freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors) who are interested in pursuing a career in tech. Most Sprinterns major or minor in computer science, data science, computer science and linguistics, or other tech-oriented disciplines, but students in other majors who have a strong interest in a tech career also are welcome to apply. To apply for a Sprinternship, you must:

  • Be enrolled in and actively taking classes at UIC during the spring semester immediately before the Sprinternship takes place
  • Have a GPA of 2.5 or higher
  • Have the required work authorization to work within the United States, if you are an international student
  • Feel a sense of alignment with Break Through Tech Chicago’s mission of preparing more women (cis and trans) and nonbinary individuals for jobs in the tech world

Timeline

Sprinternships take place over the course of three weeks in the month of May. We chose this time frame because it is between the end of the spring semester and the start of the first summer session at UIC. Applications for May 2024 will open in fall 2023.

Sprinterns are required to be at their work site (which may be in person or online, depending on the organization) for eight hours per day, Monday through Friday, for all three weeks of the Sprinternship. The exact work hours will be determined by the organization, but you can generally expect them to be 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Pairing and Compensation

Break Through Tech Chicago staff members review applications for Sprinternships and assign applicants to partner organizations based on the students’ strengths and the partner organizations’ needs and challenge projects. Participants apply for the program in general, not to a specific Sprinternship.

The compensation is approximately $15 to $20 per hour for a 40-hour work week.