James Steele, Contributing Photographer

The Office of Career Strategy recently released their “Summer 2022 Activities Report,” providing insight into the internships, lab work and study abroad programs that Yale students took on last summer. 

The report compiles data from a survey administered in early fall 2022. The survey was completed by 3,630 students and reported 4,410 summer activities in total, with incoming sophomores accounting for nearly 40 percent of аll reported activities. The report includes information on summer activity type, activity type broken down by class year, activity length, location, funding and employment function, among others. Just over 75 percent of the activities took place in the United States, and two-thirds of the respondents stated that their activities were “highly related” or “related” to their field of study.

“Once we’re in the research, internships and funding, we’re only reporting about the summer,” said Jeanine Dames, director of OCS. “What I think is interesting about the relatively low number of summer research students, is what we’re not capturing is the high number of students that do research during midterms.”

According to the report, only 16.6 percent of respondents participated in some form of research, whether that be in the laboratory, in the field or in the library. According to Dames, many students like to find research opportunities during the semester and leave internships or study abroad experiences for the summer. 

The report data also seems to support this finding, as 48.1 percent of the respondents spent their summer in an internship or in academic study, including language study.

“There’s a lot of different funding around Yale,” Dames said. “What this summer funding means is that funding is received from a Yale source.”

When asked about how their summer activities were funded, 29.8 percent of respondents indicated that they received funding from Yale in some way. According to Dames, there are a large number of sources within Yale for summer funding. Some of the largest include the Office of Fellowships, the International Study Award, the Summer Experience Award and Yale Summer Session financial aid awards. Additionally, the report states that exactly 5.7 percent of respondents received funding through the Summer Experience Award. Only 3.8 percent of respondents were funded by an organization other than Yale.

Kayla Hoovler ’23, who used the Summer Experience Award after her first year to fund her research at Cornell University, shared her gratitude for the stipend.

“I definitely think the summer experience award was huge not just in my research but in my life in general,” Hoovler said. “I definitely think that I would be in a lot worse position right now if I didn’t get that award.”

In the summer before her senior year, Hoovler also took part in Yale Summer Session in Siena, describing her experience as “absolutely amazing.” She added that she was “really excited” for that opportunity especially given the impact of COVID-19 on many summer activities in 2020 and 2021.

Indeed, past OCS reports reflect that in 2019 a total of 4,942 summer activities were reported compared to just 4,657 in 2020 and 4,277 in 2021. The summer of 2022 also saw the return of study abroad, which had been suspended the prior two summers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Kelly McLaughlin, director of study abroad and deputy director of the Center for International and Professional Experience, the goal of CIPE is to “offer a range of opportunities and support for study, work and research both domestically and abroad for summer and for term-time.”

“We are always eager to make our portfolio of programs as diverse as possible while meeting student interest,” McLaughlin wrote to the News.

At the same time, McLaughlin noted the challenges of creating and setting up programs abroad.

“We first need to partner with the relevant Yale department to tackle a range of academic, logistical and health and safety matters associated with running such programs,” McLaughlin explained.

He added that while setting up a “one-off program abroad” is relatively easy, they “aim to put programs in place that will reliably run for several years uninterrupted, building up student interest as we go.”

Data from the report can be accessed via the “Yale College First Destinations Interactive Search Tool.” Members of the Yale Community can request the full document by contacting Yale OCS.