The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I am a SMART recipient (Cohort 2014) and ran into this same situation the summer before my SMART fellowship started. I had a summer internship up until my fall quarter university started, so there was about a month of overlap between the service agreement and the internship.

It wasn't an issue on my end, though I definitely worried about whether it would be. SMART requires you to report work accepted while a fellowship recipient, I think to avoid folks picking up a full-time job during an academic quarter while also being on fellowship. Since you accepted your summer internship before you were on fellowship, you weren't accepting outside work as a SMART fellow. Hope that helps!

Thanks a lot for your answers. It really helped me.

By the way, I wasn't clear when my school starts. It starts a few weeks after the internship is over. Late September is when it starts.(it runs quarter system..)
The internship is 10-12 weeks long one outside of the SMART.

Thanks again for your inputs!

I believe the above is correct. But also, if your internship overlaps with school itself, as in the school semester starts but your internship hasn't finished, that may be a problem. I believe there is a clause /section in the handbook that won't let you have employment or an internship while taking classes. I would double check the handbook there.

If you are wondering if you can intern for your SF this summer, the answer is no, if you want to do it through SMART. However, you will have to intern for the SF, if they want you to, every summer in between academic years that you are funded for, anyway.

If you have an internship offer elsewhere already, you CAN take it this summer and SMART can't get you on any violations. If it overlaps your SMART phase 1, you just have to report your internship to them...

You did also state that the internship starts only a few weeks before your fall semester begins... Honestly, that generally isn't enough time to do anything meaningful or learn much (this is especially true for government jobs due to waiting for CAC and computer access, etc.). I also doubt whomever you would do the internship for would be very happy to learn they only have you for 3-4 weeks. If you have already checked with them and they are ok with you only working a few weeks, then go for it.

Hello,

I am a 2016 Cohort student whose phase 1 will start soon.
I am just wondering whether it is possible to intern full-time over the summer before my school starts.

My school starts late September because of its quarter system. But the phase 1 will begin in August and this causes to have some overlap between the summer internship and phase 1. I don't think that it will impact on my academics since my school starts few weeks after the internship. Has anyone experienced this? Any inputs will be appreciated. Thank you.