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"This post is part of Mashable's Startup Review series, which highlights great unsung startups. The series is made possible by Sun Startup Essentials.\nCompany Name\nInternshipRatings \n20-Word Description\nInternshipRatings.com is a resource for college students to rate and research internships in various industries across the United States \nCEO's Pitch\nLauren Grunstein and Stephanie Gurtman launched InternshipRatings.com in February 2008. After meeting at Boston University's College of Communication, Lauren and Stephanie went through the process of selecting their summer internships together. At the end of their terms, the two realized their experiences were the exact opposite of their expectations. They felt that it was necessary to create a resource for students to share both the positive and negative aspects of their experiences at companies with the hope of helping prospective interns select the best opportunities. \nMashable's Take\nInternships can range from being a great experience that paves the way for a solid start to your career upon graduation to being a huge waste of time that teaches you nothing and ruins your summer.  The aptly named InternshipRatings.com aims to help students make the right decision about which internships to pursue by allowing others to rate their experiences at different companies.  \nThe site lets you browse internships by location, industry, or specific company.  Then, for each internship, users can leave an overall ranking of 1-5 coffee cups (cute), and then provide additional feedback indicating how well the internship pays, whether or not the hours are fair, and if they got a letter of recommendation out of the experience.   Further, they can take a more comprehensive survey about your experience, letting people know if it was good for networking, \u201Cinvolved a lot of grunt work,\u201D and other attributes.  \n\n\n\n\nI love the idea for InternshipRatings \u2013 it certainly would\u2019ve been helpful back when I was in the market for internships.  However, there are a few flaws in the site that they\u2019ll hopefully address.  For one, the service appears to allow for anonymous reviews \u2013 in other words, someone could completely trash an internship experience unjustly, even if you didn\u2019t actually work there.  \nAlong those lines, InternshipRatings should provide some sort of a verification process, as well as a way for employers to clearly respond to rankings.   It was also be nice if you could send private messages to the people who post the reviews so you can ask them specific questions about their experience.\nWe reviewed a similar service earlier this year called RateInternships.\nEditor's Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.\nSponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/12/12/internship-ratings/>