This is really skewed to recent or new graduate and elite universities. When I was out of college, 15 years ago, some of the internships listed were hard or near impossible to get into. Take for example Goldman Sachs. They should be listing more regular internships and not those who managed to matriculate into the elite of the elite (hint: not a meritocracy). If anything it creates disillusionment that STEM careers are a straight path to being the next Bezos. It is like golfing: pick up golf to play golf not to play on the PGA tour.
This is a pretty garbage take. Goldman Sachs is easier to get into as a software engineer than any FAANG. And every FAANG I know takes the majority of their new grad hires from public universities which, at least in California, are banned from affirmative action and legacy admits. Despite the UC administration's best efforts to remove merit from the equation by not counting standardized test scores admissions into a top UC is still merit-based.
Software engineering is not investment banking or law.
