Internships
Internships
The widest path for a college student looking for a career as an actuary is through an actuarial internship, often after junior year of college, at an insurance or actuarial consulting firm. Internships offer students a chance to get a sense of what work is like at a company and as an actuary. For the company, they are a way to see how a student works in a professional setting and whether they would fit in at the company as a full-time employee.
UCLA is one of the most heavily-recruited colleges for actuarial candidates, with over 20 companies each year coming to campus to recruit or interview. Every year, the bulk of companies that hire actuaries open their applications online early in Fall Quarter. Recruitment continues in force through Fall Quarter, but some companies will still have applications available in Winter and Spring. Your biggest resources during this period will be Bruin Actuarial Society's Career Fair in October, and Handshake, the UCLA Career Center's job site exclusively available to UCLA students and alumni. You'll also find internship applications on companies' websites online, on LinkedIn, and job boards.