ACM Intern Experience

The ACM Internship Program is designed for all interns to find a community, to meet peers and upperclassmen mentors, and to cultivate leadership and technical skills 🥳. Whether the applicant is a first-year or a transfer student, someone with no coding experience or a seasoned developer, there’s a home for them at ACM at UCLA.

ACM Internship Program Overview

The ACM Internship program facilitates the transition of UCLA students to ACM officers. Interns learn about the ACM committee they are interning for and about ACM in general to prepare them for becoming an officer.

Applicants apply through the general ACM Internship program application (found on our ACM website), where they can indicate which committees and positions they are interested in. The application itself has three parts: general background questions, general ACM questions, and committee-specific questions. To decide which committees interest them, applicants can attend the ACM General Meeting and the committee specific general meetings held at the beginning of each academic quarter.

After applications are released, ACM holds an “All Internship Panel” where students can get their questions answered from ACM Officers from each committee. Students also get to hear about the experience of our officers back when they were all interns and learn about how the internship program helped them in their transition to becoming ACM officers.

The written responses on the applications are reviewed by committee officers so they can select applicants that move forward the interview round. Within ACM, only the President, Internal and External Vice Presidents, and the Internship Director have access to all information about the applicants. We do the pre-processing of application responses so each committee can get the option of reviewing internship applications blind, removing all identifying information that would make it possible to assign scores based on demographic information, rather than merit. In terms of the information omitted when reviewing applications blind, we don’t provide access to the applicant’s name, gender, sexuality, work authorization, address, email, or phone and were also prevented from accessing links to their GitHub or social media accounts.

ACM’s mission is to create a community that is driven by passion regardless of background. We are incredibly committed to welcoming people of diverse backgrounds through numerous recent efforts, such as our Justice, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) initiative. We hope to facilitate an environment where you are able to thrive no matter what, both inside and outside of ACM. Having a blind application review procedure was put into place in accordance with ACM’s Diversity and Inclusion Policy to prevent inherent bias and ensure that each applicant is given a fair shot.

Committees can, however, review the applicants’ activities, hobbies, interests, time-commitment to other clubs, and all free response questions. Committees can also choose to ask for a portfolio from the applicants if they feel it would be beneficial to the review process, but it must be an optional part of the application to make it beginner friendly.

Each committee has their own process to review written application responses. The standard procedure is to have at least two people review each applicant and score each applicant in several categories. ACM looks for applicants who want to create a positive impact on the UCLA community as well as society. Let’s see what each committee specifically looks for while reviewing applicants:

• Board — Each Board officer reviews applicants they get for their own position and have specific criteria that they look for, but the common factors include interns who enjoy making an impact on a larger scale and love meeting and working with people across different disciplines.
• Dev Team — The Dev Team is a part of ACM Board, but to make the application process easier, we have a separate section for the Dev Team. Dev Team does not require any experience to apply, they look for students who love to build scalable and impactful applications.
• ACM AI — Applicants should apply to AI if they would like to learn more about AI and improve their knowledge of the field. Also, if they enjoy teaching and building courses.
• ACM Design — ACM Design look for interns who love design, or want to learn more about design and are interested in exploring how technology and design can merge!
• ACM Hack — ACM Hack’s mission is to empower the community by providing the means to build amazing things and explore what is possible through code. Anyone wanting to give back to the UCLA community by mentoring, teaching, and making CS more accessible and fun to everyone — especially those who might be beginners or are non-CS majors should join!
• ACM ICPC — Applicants with a passion for algorithms and an interest in teaching with a goal of spreading the love of creative thinking and problem solving to the greater UCLA community should apply.
• ACM Studio — As an intern for Studio, they will learn and grow as a game developer. They could help in teaching Studio’s E96 class, creating assets for the club to use, or helping host external collaborations with organizations and industry professionals. They’ve fostered a community of people passionate about video games!
• ACM TeachLA — Interns for TeachLA can be a part of curriculum where they will be working students at local schools and creating a computer science curriculum and work on program logistics. Interns could also be a part of the TeachLA Dev Team where they will be working on a project team developing educational technology. Either way, interns will be making computer science more accessible in education and inspiring the future generation of engineers.
• ACM W — Applicants who can bring their unique experiences and ideas to promote diversity in tech through mentorship, networking, and professional development opportunities should apply for ACM W. W interns can get more involved with UCLA’s Computer Science and Technology initiatives and have a positive impact on UCLA’s Tech Inclusivity.
• ACM Cyber — This year, Cyber chose not to partake in the intern process.

This application cycle (Fall ’23 and Winter ‘24), we received a total of 325 applications. After reviewing all apps, a total of 188 apps were selected for interviews, which is 58% of the total number of people who applied.

Each committee scheduled 15–30 minute interviews with the applicants they selected for interviewing with at least two people who would take the interview. Ensuring that there is more than one person in the interview panel is vital for the process to be successful, having diverse perspectives and opinions and having a shared decision making process improves fairness and effectiveness of the interview process. While the written application questions can be general at times, the interview questions will be both introductory and role-specific so interviewers can decide if the interviewee is a good fit for the role and club. Interviewees get a chance to ask questions about the position and committee so they can get a better understanding of the position they applied for. If applicants are interviewed and accepted by two different committees, they can choose which committee they prefer to be a part of. The in-person or online interviews help both the applicants and the officers decide if the applicant would work well with the team, ensuring that both parties have a clear understanding of expectations, work culture, and potential contributions.

Internship — By the Numbers

Out of the 188 applicants interviewed, 78 were extended an offer to be a part of ACM, all of whom accepted the position. The acceptance rate for the batch of interns for 2023–24 was 24%. We accepted interns spanning across 4 different graduation years and 18 distinct majors. Here is a complete breakdown of the interns according to their majors:

*Students with double majors have been counted twice.

The information about the number of applicants for each year of graduation year is given below for the 2023–24 batch of interns (Class of X):

Transfer Analysis — Almost 9% of the people who applied (29 out of 325 applicants) were transfer students, 10.6% of the people who were selected for interviews (20 out of 188), and 10.25% of the accepted applicants (8 out of 78 applicants) were transfer students. The percentage for the transfer students who applied is very consistent with the students who were extended an invitation to interview and the students who were accepted.

First Generation — The numbers for first generation college students are also pretty similar. Almost 17% of accepted interns, which is 13 out of 78 people, were girst gen students, compared to 19% of applicants selected for interview (36 out of 188) and 24% of the applicants who applied were first generation students (78 out of 325). While there’s a gradual decrease in the proportion of first gen students as we move from applicants to accepted interns, the changes are relatively small. This suggests a level of consistency in the representation throughout the process.

All of this information — the year and major, whether the applicant is First Generation or a Transfer student — is removed in the pre-processing of the applicant information to make it a “blind review process”. After the applicants offered a position at ACM choose to accept to be an intern, they are given an Onboarding Document detailing the ins and outs of ACM. They are also required to attend an ‘Intern Welcome’ which is an orientation event where they get familiarized with all committees of ACM and the nitty-gritty of how ACM works. At the end of winter quarter of the academic year, each intern may either choose to become an officer for the position they were interning for, or they can run for the PVP (President, Vice President) Elections if they wish to lead the club!

Conclusion

The internship program is not the only way to get involved with ACM! We have dozens of weekly events (found at uclaacm.com/events) and have a membership portal and several member-facing socials.

Check out ACM’s website to learn more about what we do: www.uclaacm.com. We hope to see you at our events and workshops!

Thank you for taking the time to read our post! We aim to have given you a deeper understanding of the inner mechanisms of our internship program.

Do you have any thoughts or feedback? Please don’t hesitate to contact us at internship@uclaacm.com, your input is highly valued!