Do schools give out student's info? (and internship questions)

[Mrs.W]

I think this is only my second time to post on the college board, but I've benefited so much from your collective wisdom the last few years -- thank you!

 

DD, my oldest, is going to be a freshman at a small engineering college halfway across the country. She received an email from a local engineering firm VP saying he got her contact information from personal sources (lists two people, neither of whom we know) and invited her to send a resume if she's interested in applying for a summer internship. The email was sent to her personal email address, not her school one. 

 

So, I'm curious if this is normal. Do schools give out a student's personal email address? It doesn't look like the firm knows anything about her other than the school she's going to because the email just mentions engineering, while my daughter is actually architecture & engineering (I think if they knew her major they would have mentioned it since the firm does both). And I guess I'm just surprised that they contacted her -- do firms recruit for summer interns? Do we assume they send out a million of these emails or would this indicate they like her school? Or is there really that big a shortage of women engineers? And is she supposed to be starting now to look for internships for next summer? She's not even packed for school yet, so updating the resume was not on our list of things to do this week!  :crying:  But if this is legit then I guess we need to add the resume to the to-do list.

 

 

 

 

[JanetC]

Schools can release "directory information," but not educational records. So, knowing her major would definitely either be from a source other than the school or the school breaking the rules. If she is not sure, she could ask around.

[Twigs]

You can check out the law here: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

[Daria]

My guess is that she knows someone who knows someone.   I've gotten referrals that way.   Someone will call me up and say "I understand you do tutoring . . . " and I'll say "How did you hear about me?" and they'll name someone I've never heard of, but usually we can eventually trace it back that this unknown person was looking for a tutor, got my name from someone I do know, and then changed their mind so they passed my name on to a friend.  

 

That's how I got my first job out of grad school.  I had applied for a job at school X.  They looked at my resume, decided it wasn't quite right, and forwarded it to school Y who called me out of the blue, interviewed, me and offered me a job all within about 48 hours.