A Michigan computer science major says he sent out 456 internship applications and only got 3 offers

“I started applying in July, and soon I hit 200 applications,” Oliver Wu, a computer science major at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek. alvarez via Getty Images

• Scoring a summer internship can feel like an arms race these days.
• Oliver Wu, a junior at the University of Michigan, said he applied to 456 internships. 
• The computer science major landed three offers and will be interning at Ford this summer. 

Computer science major Oliver Wu says he pulled out all the stops in his quest for a summer internship.

“456 applications, 56 interviews, and 0 sleep in 4 months, all for 1 internship,” the University of Michigan junior wrote in a TikTok post published on January 11.

Wu, whose post has been viewed more than 2.9 million times, told Newsweek that he started applying even before classes resumed in the fall.

“I started applying in July, and soon I hit 200 applications,” Wu said, adding that he was making 15 to 20 applications a day before the school term began.

Wu told Newsweek that he did feel “burned out” from the long-drawn search, which saw him receive “hundreds of rejections.”

“The hardest part was staying positive and working hard,” Wu said.

But Wu remained unfazed and pressed on with his search.

“I did not want to feel regret that I could have tried harder, so I made up my mind to pursue this with everything I had,” Wu told the outlet.

Wu’s efforts eventually paid off. He secured three offers and will join Ford as an enterprise technology intern this summer.

“I was in class at the time, and I remember stepping out, going into the hallway, and jumping up and down while silently screaming in excitement for around 10 minutes,” Wu recounted to Newsweek.

Wu isn’t the only one who has had to struggle with a slowing job market for tech.

The industry-wide layoffs, which began in end-2022, don’t seem to have abated. Tech companies have continued to ax staff to streamline their operations.

Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told staff to brace for more job cuts this year. Pichai said the layoffs were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.”

Wu did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.