10 Colleges With the Highest Rate of Student Internships

The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College and The Short List: Grad School to find data that matters to you in your college or grad school search.

It's a tough job market for recent college graduates.

Of the workers who graduated from college in the past two years, 41 percent say they are underemployed and working in jobs that do not require their college degrees, according to a 2013 survey from Accenture, a consulting company.

And even with their degrees, nearly 63 percent of recent graduates said they will need more training in order to get the job they want, the survey states.

[See which college majors lead to jobs.]

Faced with this reality, many college students are doing everything they can to be more marketable after graduation.

More often than not, landing an internship is key to that strategy - and rightly so. Employers made full-time offers to 56.5 percent of their interns last year, according to a survey of more than 1,000 employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers released earlier this year.

[Find out how to land an internship after freshman year.]

On average, 37.7 percent of students in the class of 2012 interned at some point in their undergraduate career, according to data reported by the 317 ranked colleges and universities that reported the data in an annual U.S. News survey.

Among the schools with the highest internship participation, an average of 96.5 percent of students held internships. Eight schools, including Bennington College, College of the Atlantic and Delaware Valley College, reported that 100 percent of their graduates participated in an internship during college.

[Learn how to land a career mentor in college.]

Below are the schools that produced the largest percentage of interns among the class of 2012. Due to ties there are more than 10 schools on this list.

Schools designated by U.S. News as Unranked were excluded from this list. U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for Unranked programs, because the program did not meet certain criteria that U.S. News requires to be numerically ranked.

School name (state)

Percent of undergrads graduating with internship experience

U.S. News rank and category

Bennington College (VT)

100

100, National Liberal Arts Colleges

College of the Atlantic (ME)

100

93, National Liberal Arts Colleges

Delaware Valley College (PA)

100

22, Regional Colleges (North)

Holy Cross College (IN)

100

25, National Liberal Arts Colleges

Lasell College (MA)

100

25, Regional Colleges (North)

Massachusetts Maritime Academy

100

7, Regional Colleges (North)

Wagner College (NY)

100

24, Regional Colleges (North)

William Peace University (NC)

100

RNP*, National Liberal Arts Colleges

Burlington College (VT)

94

RNP, National Liberal Arts Colleges

American University (DC)

90

75, National Universities

Bentley University (MA)

90

4, Regional Universities (North)

Husson University (ME)

90

RNP, Regional Universities (North)

Taylor University (IN)

90

1, Regional Colleges (Midwest)

*RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its rankings category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find internship participation rates, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed nearly 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2013 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News's data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools. The internship data above are correct as of Oct. 22, 2013.