Yup, having an internship opens so many doors and if you're not going to a top school you hardly get a response from Google/Amazon/Facebook etc. I'd also bet t

Yup, having an internship opens so many doors and if you're not going to a top school you hardly get a response from Google/Amazon/Facebook etc. I'd also bet that anyone who can build a Django photo sharing app with auth has a much better skillset than what I'd expect from a first-year intern. Intern's at Amazon, etc, tend to be pursuing a Masters and usually have some experience. One intern project was adding Jepsen testing to a distributed database, for example.