Earn Credit For Your Internship, Practicum, or Research Experience

UConn has about 75 internship, research, and practicum undergraduate courses, with most coordinated through academic majors and minors. To earn credit for them, undergraduates must be in good academic standing, which means a student must have at least a 2.0 GPA, both overall and in the semester when completing the opportunity. 

The Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills offers a one-credit course and a zero-credit transcript notation option, for all undergraduates (freshmen through seniors), of all majors, at all campuses. These courses may be taken twice and do not count towards a student’s major or minor; students apply through the linked pages. 

There can be specific policies and requirements around the courses (earned x number of credits for example) and the number of permissible credits a student can allocate for the experience. Credit for an internship, practicum, or research ranges from 1-15 credits. 

• The formula for credit and logged hours: 1 credit hour = 42 logged hours; 6 credit hours = 252 logged hours; 12 credit hours = 504 logged hours 

• Most experiences for credit run for 10-14 weeks, typically ranging from 5-15 logged hours a week. 

Discuss the idea of completing one of these options with your academic advisor to determine the best time to pursue it (during the semester and/or summer) and if your department has a course. If it does, review the requirements to see if you are eligible and the next steps you need to take. If it doesn’t, or you don’t meet the requirements to take the course, you can investigate the Career Center’s courses and/or other majors that have internship, practicum, or research classes, as you might meet their requirements, if they allow non-majors to take the course.  

You can find internships, practicums, and research courses in the catalog with suffixes of 89, 99, 80, 90, 81, and 91. Example: The Career Center’s internship courses are UNIV 1881 and 1981. 

There is no retroactive credit awarded after the experience ends. UConn also does not accept transfer credit for these types of experiences. 

• Deadlines: Course credit must be approved before the start of the semester or summer session for which you hope to earn credit and scheduled before the internship starts; verify the last date you can enroll with the course instructor. 

• Cost: Students are always responsible for any tuition, fees, and charges associated with earning academic credit. Credit internships that take place during the academic year are included in the tuition for the semester for full-time students. Course tuition and fees are associated with academic internships completed during breaks. 

• Summer internship rates can be found through the UConn Summer Session Dates and Fees page. 

• Credit and Compensation: Credit is not the same as Compensation 

• Only the course instructor can determine if an experience is credit appropriate, determining if an internship meets educational objectives for academic credit. 

• Employers decide if an intern will be paid.  

• Employers pay the student a salary, an hourly wage, or a stipend.  

• Credit is not a form of payment, though some employers list it as compensation. They often do not realize that a student pays for internship course credit. 

• Most internship courses at UConn allow a student to earn money and earn credit. Discuss the specifics with the instructor for the course you wish to take. 

• Unpaid Internships and the Law 

• Unpaid internships in the US are subject to scrutiny by the Department of Labor and the Courts. When participating in an unpaid internship, students are encouraged to ask if the employer is aware of the guidelines in the Fair Labor Standards Act to ensure liability compliance.  

• A quality internship does not exploit or take advantage of the student. They don’t expect a student to put in extensive hours without fair compensation. 

• All internships are expected to provide substantial opportunities for mentoring, networking, shadowing, and learning about the career field through meaningful work and contributions to the overall organization. 

For graduate students engaging in an internship and planning to earn academic credit, there are multiple internship course optionsavailable through the Graduate School. 

Questions about the process and your next steps? Contact the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills Internship Team at internships@uconn.edu or make an appointment with a career coach. 

Majors/Minors With Internship Courses