The CUNY Career Launch Healthcare Hub Is NOT What They Promised
Honestly, the CUNY Career Launch Healthcare Hub process has been extremely disappointing and misleading.
From the beginning, they made it sound like there were going to be 500+ internships and tons of opportunities available for students. They had us ranking 10 internships each and made it seem like there would be plenty of options and interviews for everyone.
But when the actual internship applications opened, there were only around 164 internships available TOTAL. And those 164 included ALL boroughs — Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island — and even some locations farther out. So realistically, the options become WAY smaller depending on where you live and what you can actually commute to.
A lot of us are students who can’t travel 2+ hours just for a 19-hour internship. So once you remove internships that are too far, unrelated to your major, or already full, your choices narrow down FAST.
What made it worse is that students literally asked if more internships were going to be uploaded later because the number felt extremely low compared to the amount of students in the Healthcare Hub. We were told NO — the 164 was the final number.
Mind you, there are HUNDREDS of students in the program competing for these placements.
Then when interview scheduling opens, it honestly feels like the Hunger Games. You have to rush and pray interview slots don’t disappear immediately. Some internships filled up almost instantly. Some students were barely able to schedule anything at all.
And another thing that made absolutely no sense was the email saying students could only sign up for a MAXIMUM OF 2 interviews because of “limited interview slots.” TWO interviews. Meanwhile they had us rank internships from 1 through 10 beforehand. So what was even the point of making students rank 10 internships if we were later going to be told we could only apply to two interviews at first and then “wait to see if more become available”?
That right there already shows there weren’t enough interview opportunities for the amount of students in the program.
And another crazy part is that some organizations don’t even use the CareerEco scheduling system. They give students a separate list of organizations that may contact you on their own outside of the platform. So basically, if they never reach out to you, then you don’t even get an opportunity to interview with them. And if you don’t hear from them by a certain date, that usually means they already moved on with another candidate.
But what’s even MORE confusing is that some internships that students applied to on InPlace aren’t even showing up on CareerEco at all, and they’re not even included on the separate list of organizations that are supposedly reaching out independently either. So students are left confused wondering what’s even happening with certain internships they applied for because there’s literally zero information or updates about them.
I even saw students from other hubs complaining about the exact same thing.
And even if you DO manage to schedule an interview, that still doesn’t mean you’re getting the internship. You can literally see multiple interview time slots getting taken by other students at the same time, so obviously these organizations are interviewing multiple people for the same role. So students are basically fighting just for the CHANCE to compete for a spot that still isn’t guaranteed.
So students are basically left waiting and hoping organizations contact them while also fighting for the limited interview slots on CareerEco at the same time.
And then they tell students “everyone is guaranteed a placement,” but a lot of us are worried that means being thrown into random positions that don’t even relate to our major or career goals just to say we got “placed.”
The whole thing feels very unorganized and honestly misleading compared to how it was advertised in the beginning. If they only had a limited amount of REAL opportunities, they should have been transparent from the start instead of making it sound like there were endless healthcare internships available for everyone.