2019 Kapani Metcalf Summer Internship Program
Kapani Metcalf Summer Internship Program for Undergraduate Economics Students2019 Guidance for Students
The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) at the University of Chicago invites students at the University of Chicago to apply for posted summer internship opportunities and/or propose to BFI staff an internship program for funding. Funding is made available through BFI’s Kapani Metcalf Internship program.
BFI will support the selected summer internship candidates with a stipend of $4,000 for their summer position. Available positions will be posted on Handshake and on BFI’s website and, which will include Research Assistant positions with faculty at the University of Chicago as well as external internships across the country. External internships include opportunities ranging from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers to municipal government finance. These internships will allow for real world experience and impact.
If you are interested in proposing your own internship program and plan, BFI welcomes such proposals subject to specific guidelines as follows:
- Proposed scope of work or research project that can reasonably be accomplished in a 10-week (average) window in 400 cumulative hours;
- Specific economic training or skills (such as STATA programming) required for the position;
- Detailed description of how the internship relates to your study of economics;
- Name of designated intern supervisor, his/her title, and office or department; and
- Any other information that would be relevant in selecting a successful candidate.
Proposals should be sent to Tyler Blackwell (tblackwell@uchicago.edu) by April 4, 2019. Please submit the materials via Handshake as well.
Decisions will be made on a rolling basis.
For students who apply to existing opportunities posted on Handshake, the organizational sponsor will make the final selection. We anticipate a highly competitive process.
For students who pitch their own internship proposal to BFI, a committee will review the proposal along with the criteria to decide which proposals are funded.
Examples of 2018 internships supported by BFI include:
Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, Office of Budget and Innovation
Louisville Metro Government Office of Performance Improvement and Innovation
Tulsa Mayor’s Office, Office of Performance and Strategic Innovation
The White House’s Executive Office of the President, The Council of Economic Advisers
Research Assistants for Professors Hortacsu, Tintelnot, Mahoney, Dinerstein, Gallen, and Hubbard (UChicago)
Students had meaningful and impactful experiences last summer and we look forward to students having great experiences again this summer. Here are two testimonials from last year’s BFI interns.
Nirali Trivedi interned at the Council of Economic Advisers and said, “As a UChicago economics student, my training prepared me for everything from writing literature reviews on cybersecurity to interpreting large sets of data on Chinese currency reserves from the Bloomberg Terminal.”
James Lee interned in the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office and said, “The work I was doing made me feel like I was contributing to the public, since my work may influence future funding or policies. I’m now more excited to look for positions in government or nonprofits or research firms where I can create results that can help the public.”
For more information, please contact Tyler Blackwell or visit our website at http://bfi.uchicago.edu.
The Kapani Metcalf Internship program is made possible through a gift from the Kapani Foundation.