Asia Internship Program

An Honest Review

To say that I’ve had a disappointing experience with AIP would be an understatement. They provided little/no guidance throughout my internship search process, they were unresponsive when the company I was placed with was not a good fit, and they made no little/effort to rectify the situation, even after neglecting some of their own terms and conditions.

I started working with AIP in January 2019 in search of a summer internship (starting early June) in Asia. Based on pricing options and speaking to my representative, it was determined that the Placement Package in Singapore would be the best fit for me. After speaking at length about my internship interests and “starting the search process” there were multiple month-long gaps during which they did not communicate with me at all about the search. Only after inquiring would I get updates.

In late April, my profile was transferred to another AIP representative with no explanation. I didn’t hear from my new representative for weeks, and I later learned that no information I had verbally discussed with my previous rep was communicated to him. He did know the general category of the “industry” I preferred, but he did not really understand what I was looking for in my internship. (In late May, after the events below, they reluctantly offered a mere 10% discount on my second payment for this inconvenience.)

It was then not until the middle/end of May that I finally received an interview with a company - one that I immediately expressed to my representative would not be a good fit for me. It didn’t fit my interest areas. The interview was just outside of their two week “placement deadline,” and I was told that I had officially received an offer about 1 1/2 weeks before the start date. They 1) confirmed my internship after the date agreed upon in their terms, and 2) made no effort (at least not they they told me) to try and find an alternative after I immediately expressed my displeasure. But, given that I had just a week and a half to go, I begrudgingly accepted that offer. (I already had flights booked, and they later said that I shouldn’t have booked flights until confirming the internship. This would have meant booking flights around the world with just over a week to spare…)

Upon arrival at work on the first day, my supervisor was 30 minutes late from the time agreed upon by them and AIP. When the supervisor did arrive, I again knew right away that it was not going to be a good fit for me. After doing more research about the company, I also found that they had a history of receiving fines from the government for their poor treatment of employees. Yet, AIP still used them as a placement partner.

The terms and conditions required that I not voice any concerns to the placement company, and that I instead communicate directly with my AIP representative. I did this immediately (via phone call and a requested follow-up email), on my first day, and I did not hear back for week. A full week. Only after that had happened did they inform me why it was so difficult to find an internship for me in the first place (my 8-week timeframe, which is standard in the U.S. and was never raised as a concern from the beginning). They also shared then that their placement team “continued searching” for a new internship for me, but this was never communicated to me when I reached out in desperation for help. Instead, I was left with no response.

I ended up needing to leave the internship and find a new one on my own (which was a learning experience in and of itself) but it was despicable how unhelpful they were throughout the entire process. What made it even worse was that whenever I would express my displeasure via email, they would always turn it on me as if I had done something wrong, even though they were breaking the promises that had been made to me and neglecting some of their own terms and conditions.

Granted, I was on the lowest package, the Placement Package, meaning I was not required to receive any kind of refund from them. But they did not uphold their end of our agreement in a number of ways and I would hate for anyone to ever be treated the same way I was by this placement organization. While I’m still upset and would like, at least, a partial refund of the $1,521 USD I paid them (they have not responded to my last two emails about this matter) they also took away valuable time and energy which is even more valuable to me.

Please save yourself the time, energy, and money by finding yourself a more responsible internship placement company.