About this guide

Working in Congress can be a great way to make a difference and get hands-on experience with the legislative process. Internships are among the most common entryways for staffers working in Congress, and they are also a highly valued credential among other policy institutions, like executive agencies and think tanks.

This guide has two parts:

1. How do congressional internships work, and why should I apply for one? (this article) explains what a congressional internship involves and how it might prepare you for an impactful policy career
2. How to get a congressional internship? explains the application process and provides application advice.

While it’s not necessary to understand this guide, we encourage you to also read our in-depth working in Congress guide to learn more about Congress as an institution, what it’s like to work there as full-time staff (or a fellow), how to network with congressional staffers, and many other important Hill-related questions.

Take all the following advice with a grain of salt, as congressional internships vary greatly by office and committee. Even the same office’s internship program may vary from year to year, depending on which staff member leads the program, how much funding the program receives, and whether the office is in the majority or minority. This guide is a starting point, but we recommend investigating particular opportunities in more depth through online sources and conversations with current/former staff and interns.

How do congressional internships work, and why should I apply for one? 

Congressional internships are an important staple of the DC ecosystem. It’s commonly said that “DC runs on interns”, and Politico estimated that 20,000 students intern in DC each summer. More than half of full-time Congressional staff are former interns, as are many Members of Congress.¹ Prominent examples include Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Eric Swalwell, Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Mark Warner.

How do congressional internships work?

Congressional internships occur either in the personal office of one of the 535 Members of Congress or with a congressional committee, either in the Senate or the House of Representatives.² 

• Internships in personal offices can occur in the Member’s state/district office(s) or in their DC office. Legislative interns are in the DC office, media/communications interns can be in either office, and other interns are typically in the state/district office(s). 
• Internships on committees are all based in DC, and are attached to one of the 20 committees in the House or 16 in the Senate.³ Committee internships are generally more prestigious—and therefore harder to get—than member office internships.

Many congressional internships take place in the summer, but there are also semester internships, for example in the fall or spring. These semester internships have the same benefits as summer internships, but they can be less competitive.

There are several kinds of congressional internships. The most common internships involve general office work, and are often marketed as adjective-less “internships.” There are also more focused internships (“legislative interns”; “legal interns” or “law clerks” for law students; “press interns” for communications staff; “digital interns” for office management assistance; etc.). Responsibilities will vary by the type of internship.

This post focuses mostly on general and legislative internships (in either personal office or committee) since they are the most common and relevant for policy work. But much of this guide, including the section on how to apply, likely still applies to non-legislative internships.

Most interns are undergraduate students, but it is not uncommon for graduate students to do Hill internships; recent graduates are eligible for full-time roles but might also need to do an internship to get their foot in the door.

What do congressional interns do? 

Interns in Congress typically perform a wide range of tasks. In a personal office, regular interns often serve at the front desk of the office, answering phones and mail; give building tours to constituents; write memos; attend hearings and briefings; and assisting with administrative tasks. In a committee office or in a legislative/legal internship, an intern’s work tends to be slightly more substantive, for example involving background research for hearings, investigations, or legislation.

The ratio of substantive, policy-related tasks to administrative work varies widely, but often more important than any particular experience is the opportunity to interact regularly with staff and, occasionally, members themselves. 

What are alternatives to congressional internships? 

Congressional internships are often quite competitive, and getting one is far from guaranteed. If you don’t have previous experience on the Hill, you may want to apply to other policy internship opportunities in addition to Congress, which may provide many of the same benefits (including facilitating a congressional position or an alternative policy position down the road).

These alternative policy internship opportunities include:

1. Think tanks, like Brookings and the Nuclear Threat Initiative
2. Federal agencies, like the State Department or Department of Defense 
3. State-level agencies
4. Congressional support agencies, including the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), or the Government Accountability Office (GOA)⁴
5. District offices of Members of Congress
6. State or city legislators’ capitol or district offices
7. Government contractors or consultancies (i.e. private companies consulting the government or implementing government programs)
8. Policy-relevant media institutions, like the Washington Post or Politico
9. Volunteering for a political campaign (especially for an incumbent Member)

Why apply for a congressional internship?

The benefits of a Hill internship are similar to those of interning in other policy institutions. Internships are among the best ways to test your fit for policy careers and advance your professional development, including getting your foot in the door, gaining an important credential, expanding your professional network, and building relevant knowledge and skills.

How to decide where to apply?

There are multiple decisions you’ll make when choosing where to apply. This section addresses the following questions:

1. Should I intern in a personal office or with a congressional committee? 
2. Should I intern in the Senate or House?
3. How can I learn whether the office has a good environment?
4. How important are personal ties to an office’s constituency? 
5. Should I only apply to offices of my political affiliation?
6. How much should a Member’s issue areas or committee matter? 
7. Should I apply for a summer or semester internship? 
8. Does the internship pay its interns?

Should I intern in a personal office or with a congressional committee? 

Which options to prefer is a personal decision and depends on your circumstances. In general, congressional committee internships are more prestigious and tend to be “more policy-focused than internships with individual Congressmen or Senators.” They are also typically more competitive, especially if you lack prior DC experience. The best approach may be to apply simultaneously to both personal and committee positions, with the understanding that the latter is less likely to pan out now, but could become more feasible once you have completed an internship in a personal office and can benefit from that credential and network.

Part 2 of our Congress guide compares committee with personal office work.

Should I intern in the Senate or House?

Although there are broad differences between the average Senate and House internship, there’s also a lot of variation among internships in each of these categories. Senate internships are often viewed as slightly more competitive and sought-after. A senator’s office is typically larger, more streamlined, and better funded.⁵ You’re likely to form close working relationships with your manager and other interns, but less likely to form close relationships with everyone in the office. House internships are slightly less competitive, but you’re more likely to do a higher percentage of substantive work (drafting memos, offering your opinion in meetings, etc.) and form close relationships with everyone in the office. But again, each office offers a different experience, so these are only general heuristics to go off of.

Part 2 of our Congress guide compares working in the Senate and House. 

How can I learn whether the office has a good environment?

Members have great latitude in how they run their offices. Since a Member’s personality and management skills can vary widely (from excellent to alarming), many aspects of Hill offices are similarly variable, including the treatment of interns and the formality and organization of an internship program. 

Some offices pay interns, consistently give them substantive tasks in their policy areas of interest, and host events or provide formalized mentorship for interns. In contrast, others do not offer payment to their interns and restrict them to performing only administrative tasks. They may require interns to work more than 8 hours a day or isolate them from the rest of the staff by assigning them to work in a separate room.

You should try to seek out the better-run internship programs, not only because you’ll grow and enjoy yourself more, but also because these tend to be in well-run offices with talented, high-value staff, who you get to learn from and network with.

Some rough signals of a high-quality internship program include (1) paying interns, (2) having a well-run interview process, and (3) having office programming or events dedicated to interns. But you’ll gain much more reliable information from conversations with current or former interns and staff. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions during a formal interview for the role.

Assessing an office’s environment can be difficult when first applying to congressional offices. Here are a few tips for assessing an office’s environment:

• Reach out to previous or current interns of the office (via LinkedIn, your school’s career center, or personal connections) and ask them if they’d be willing to talk about their experience. This can be a cold email/message (see here for example cold emails from a congressional context).
• During an informational interview, ask questions about the internship program. The more you can make these questions specific to the office you’re applying to, the better. Generically, this may include questions like:
  • “What would it look like if an intern really excelled at their role?”
  • “Does this office run any intern-specific programming?”
  • “What is your favorite part about working in this office?”

How important are personal ties to an office’s constituency? 

Personal ties to an office’s constituency are preferred but not typically essential. Hiring managers in Congress generally prefer applicants with strong connections to the district or state the office represents, especially if you’ve lived there (either at home or during college). You might also highlight if you have a close relative or if you frequently visit the jurisdiction.

If you don’t have ties to the district or state, you may be able to substitute ties to the jurisdiction with ties to a given office from your network. If you’re applying to an internship where you lack a tie to the district, you’ll want to prepare a compelling story for why you’d like to intern in this office.

Offices vary in how strong their preference is for applicants from their district or state. When it comes to the House, being in the same district is ideal, but being in the same state as the office’s constituency is still good. In other words, the difference between having ties to the district or the state is significantly less than the difference between having or not having ties to the state. 

Should I only apply to offices of my political affiliation?

We recommend generally favoring offices of the party you’re affiliated with for the reasons outlined in Part 2.

In brief, (1) an ideologically aligned office is more likely to offer you an internship; (2) you’ll likely get more value from the internship, in terms of personal enjoyment, building a professional network, and the possibility of the internship leading to a full-time staff position; and (3) your office choice can influence your future policy opportunities, including further work in Congress or in partisan think tanks. But, in most cases, interning in the office of a Member not of your party is unlikely to significantly harm your career, particularly if you grew up in the district/state of the member you interned for.

How much should a Member’s issue areas or committee matter? 

Prospective interns often wonder how much to consider a congressperson’s issue areas when deciding whether to apply to their office. In general, you don’t need to intern for a member specializing in any of your top issue areas to receive the main benefits of a congressional internship.

But some of these benefits will probably be larger if you can intern for a member with a relevant specialty. It’s more feasible to intern for a Member with a relevant specialty in the House, where members tend to each specialize on a smaller number of issue areas than in the Senate. While interning for a member that shares your interest areas, it will be easier for you to build relationships with policy professionals working on your issue area and generally collect information about the landscape of organizations, people, and ideas relevant to your issue. Your credential of having interned for that Member may also be more respected by people in that field.

Yet, when deciding where to intern, most people should probably prioritize a good office environment over issue alignment per se—especially since, by asking colleagues for introductions, you can probably still manage to network with staffers and other policy professionals in your area of interest no matter which member you work for.

To find out more about a Member’s key issue areas and beliefs, see Part 3 of our Working in Congress guide and check out the Member’s website or other relevant resources. You can find a history of the congressperson, what bills they’ve voted on, how their ideology compares to other Democrats or Republicans, and more at Ballotpedia and GovTrack (these links go to Senator Alex Padilla as an example).

Should I apply for a summer or semester internship? 

While more summer internship positions are offered on the Hill in total, summer internships are generally more competitive since many more students apply for them. If you’re willing to take time off school and feel that you might not otherwise be able to get a congressional internship you’re interested in, applying to a semester internship may be a good choice.

Alternatively, your university may have a Semester in DC program, which would allow you to continue taking classes for credit while doing the internship and also support you in your internship search. For example, your school’s program may help revise your cover letter and resume or connect you to individuals in certain offices or committees. While this is not the case for all schools, you may have a much better chance of getting a competitive committee or Senate internship through your university.

If you’re interested in a full-time position on the Hill, it may be wise to do an internship the semester before you want a full-time job. You’re more likely to hear of job opportunities and get offers if you plan on staying in DC, whereas it can be difficult to maintain relationships with people on the Hill while you’re back in school or outside of the Hill ecosystem. It’s also not uncommon to do an internship after graduating from your bachelor’s or master’s, if your goal is to get a job on the Hill after; you may struggle to get full-time entry-level staff positions if you haven’t interned on the Hill previously. 

Does the internship pay its interns?

Historically, Congressional interns have typically been unpaid (or underpaid), making it harder for those from low-income backgrounds to get a foot in the door in Congress. Fortunately, this trend has partly reversed in recent years, with many Senate and House offices now offering to pay their interns. As of 2021, Senate interns receive a stipend of ~$2,000 per month, which is a substantial increase from just a few years ago. In 2019, the average pay for Senatorial interns was $2,000 for a 6-week internship, while House interns received $1,600 on average.

Of course, many people cannot afford to complete an unpaid internship. If the congressional internship you’re applying to does not pay interns, you might still be able to get financial compensation—Congress allows outside entities to pay Congressional interns, subject to certain conditions. Consider looking into whether you can get funding via:

1. Your university may offer to fund unpaid congressional internships, such as via a Semester in DC program; you can find out if this is an option by checking with your career center. 
2. Some third-party organizations give stipends for unpaid congressional internships. You can find more by doing your own research, but some examples include:
   • The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) offers scholarships to students who are participating in DC internships.
   • The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars offers need-based scholarships to students participating in DC internships. 
   • There are several demographics-based Congressional scholarship and fellowship programs, including:
     • Women’s Congressional Policy Institute (Congressional Fellowships on Women and Public Policy Program)
     • Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (Internship and Fellowship Programs)
     • The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute
     • Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (Internship and Fellowship Programs)
     • Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation (Native American Congressional Internship Program)
     • Victory Congressional Fellowship for LGBTQ+ young professionals
     • National Italian American Foundation Congressional Fellowship
     • Islamic Scholarship Fund Congressional Policy Fellowship

The cost of living in DC is 13% higher than the national average. The average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is around  $1,700 per month, and you can expect to spend between $115 and $170 per week on food, transit, and other personal expenses. There are various resources you can find online to help you budget while you’re in DC, including this and this.

Footnotes