How Many Internships Should You Apply To?
The honest answer is a range, not a number — and it depends far more on how you apply than how many times you apply.
· Bob
Most students should apply to between 30 and 60 internships across a full cycle, concentrated in the August-to-October window when the largest employers open. Volume alone does not fix a low response rate: the average tech internship posting drew 273 applications in 2024-25, so being one of many is the default condition, not a problem you can out-type. A smaller number of well-matched applications with real follow-through beats several hundred sent blind.
Every student asking this question has already been told "just apply to more." It is the most common advice in the category and the least useful, because it answers a question nobody actually has.
Here is the number, and then here is why the number is the least interesting part of the answer.
The range
30 to 60 applications across a full cycle. Below about 30, a single bad month of timing can wipe out your entire season. Above about 60, almost everyone is copy-pasting, and the response rate falls faster than the volume rises.
That range assumes you are spreading across employer types — a few very large companies, a larger group of midsize ones, and a handful of small teams where a real person reads your application. If all 50 of yours are at companies whose names you would recognise from a billboard, treat it as if you applied to five.
Why more is not the lever you think it is
In 2024-25, the average tech internship posting received 273 applications.
<small>Handshake Internships Index 2025. Tech postings only, 2024-25 cycle.</small>
Sit with that number for a second, because it reframes the whole question. Being one of hundreds is not a sign you did something wrong. It is the normal condition of applying. And it means the marginal value of your 61st application is close to zero, because it lands in the same pile as the other 272 and competes on the same terms.
What actually moves your odds is being non-average inside that pile — applying in the window when the pile is smallest, matching roles where your background is genuinely relevant, and following up in the two weeks where a follow-up still gets read.
The three things that beat volume
Timing. The pile is smallest in August through October, when large employers open and most students have not started. The same application sent in February lands somewhere much worse. If you only change one thing, change this one.
Fit. Not "am I qualified" — a job description is a wish list, not a bar. Fit means the person reading it can see in ten seconds why you are relevant. Applying to a data role with a résumé that leads with your retail job is a fit failure, not a qualification failure.
Follow-through. Most students send an application and never think about it again. Knowing which of your applications are still live, which have gone quiet, and which are worth a nudge is worth more than another twenty submissions.
So what should you actually do
Pick a target in the 30 to 60 range. Start in August if you can. Split it roughly half large employers, half small and midsize. Track every one. Then spend the time you would have spent on applications 61 through 100 on following up with the ones you already sent.
The students who do well are almost never the ones who applied the most. They are the ones who applied earlier and kept track.