EA orgs should accept Summer 2023 interns by January

Obviously it would be more convenient if EA orgs accepted interns earlier, and I totally agree that it destroys value when we don't :(

Moving EA program deadlines up to compete with industry might be challenging for orgs that aren't 100% sure what kind of funding they'll have for summer programs. In this case, consider what kind of guidelines you can provide to prospective candidates to give them a better sense of how likely they will be accepted for a summer program at your org. Also, consider doing early acceptances if an extremely talented student contacts you with an exploding offer from another organization, and publicizing this policy if you decide to enact it.

FWIW in Redwood Research's case, our main bottleneck isn't funding, it's that we aren't sure what our org is going to look like in eight months' time--we might be feeling like we're doing a great job and have lots of management capacity and space for interns, or we might be feeling like we're wandering in the desert and don't know what research we should be doing, in which case interns will be a dangerous distraction.

I think the right comparison to draw is between EA orgs and similarly small startups; my rough experience is that small startups are similarly uncomfortable making internship offers far in advance.

bizarrely, some companies even have different deadlines for students from different universities

I believe this happens because some universities are pushing back on the deadline arms race where things move earlier every year. Those universities say that any company that wants to recruit on campus can't have a deadline earlier than a specific date.

Thank you for writing this -  as a current undergraduate myself, this has been a very uncomfortable dynamic that I've been struggling with as I debate whether or not I want to pursue a standard CS internship, or take a chance at getting into a program related to AI-Safety.  Personally, for us CS majors at my school, there is a lot of pressure to get a CS internship before winter break (these are usually higher quality); unfortunately, from what I've seen, most AI-Safety-related programs or internships don't open their applications until the spring.

I would love to do research or engineering for anything in the AI-Safety space,  but when I evaluate my chances of getting into said AI-Safety programs, I grow wary and debate just settling for a standard CS internship :/

I do understand why these kinds of programs might need to start applications later; but, as you said, it would be tremendously beneficial to have some programs run their application processes earlier, if possible. 

It's not obvious to me that January is correct. For instance, at Yale, more than two thirds of CS majors received their full time job offers in December or earlier (most of these are likely in the tech industry). You often don't have very long to reply to these offers so I wouldn't be surprised if many had to accept prior to January.

I agree that April is later than nearly anywhere else; but I'm also not convinced that January would be better than November. I basically agree with this post but I think people should do their own research on what they're competing with  rather than just deciding on January on the basis of this post.

See also: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bmwwQoFznjRwswCbz/announce-summer-ea-internships-farther-in-advance 

This isn't exactly related to the post, but I am a little bit wary about the connotation of more students should have internships / work experience at EA Orgs rather than corporate roles.

I talked to some EAs that say that it's good for EA uni students to get a job outside of EA first. This makes me think that the issue of EA Orgs not having that many uni interns aren't actually a big problem.

Why it may be good to pursue a corporate role:

• Mistakes made earlier in my career will be much more low stakes
• Experiencing the world outside the EA bubble
• Skills such as dealing with people in a workplace, learning how a company runs things are transferrable
• Financial independence from EA
• Other personal reasons (financial independence in general, funding for self-improvement stuff like coaching and good therapy)

On the other hand, there are good reasons for EA Interships

• EA internships can be good for community building because it makes uni students more excited about EA!
• students can test fit for wide variety of cause areas sooner rather than later.
• Depending on what you are interested in doing, the skills might be less transferrable (From Charity Entrepreneurship: "Our data shows that a founder who starts now and runs a charity for three years will outperform (at running a charity) someone who does two years work experience in a consultancy and then starts running a charity for a year." -https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xHC9AYLGjMoZbEWkX/ce-who-underrates-their-likelihood-of-success-why-applying)