Program Reviews

A 10/10 experience, being a Sage Corps fellow has been absolutely incredible! I just spent 8 weeks participating in the Barcelona summer internship program, and I have to admit that I was pretty nervous before I arrived since this was the first year Sage Corps has ever had a cohort in Barcelona and I wasn’t sure how great my startup work experience would be as a result. Once I began working, I was completely blown away by my startup and the professional experience I gained in addition to the strong mentor relationship I developed with my bosses. I worked at an experience-sharing social media platform doing business development directly under the COO, and I was encouraged to pursue my passions within the company and develop skill sets beyond my defined role. The skills I’m taking away will certainly apply perfectly to future coursework and positions I’m seeking in business strategy.

Sage Corps worked very closely with me throughout the entire matching process to make sure I was not only satisfied with the company I would be spending my summer working for, but actually really excited by the work I would be doing and the people I would be working with! Without Sage Corps, I never would have been able to work directly under an executive of a company and take ownership of projects that will tangibly affect its success while also having conversations for hours about life and career advice!

In addition to the professional experience I gained from this summer, I also had the opportunity to connect with other students from all across North America through my Sage Corps cohort and many more international students through our residence. We had tons of fun exploring Barcelona and traveling the rest of Europe together! From the random kitchen hangouts to the beach trips to the events organized by our awesome city leads, we spent a ton of time together and I’m lucky to call my cohort some of my closest friends :)

I’m so glad I took the leap of faith to spend my summer abroad, gain valuable work experience, and make great friends simultaneously, and I couldn’t have done it without the immense help of Sage Corps! Thank you!

After spending the summer working and living in Stockholm, I can say I would definitely recommend the program. I had an amazing experience with my cohort; collectively, we were able to maintain a nice work hard, play hard balance. The housing accommodations were also great. We were placed in a modern apartment/hotel where there was weekly cleaning and free on-site laundry.
On the professional side of things, my experience was okay. Many times, the other intern and I were the only ones in the office (the company was small - 2 people total). Our bosses were open to messages, but they weren't always super responsive, so it was hard to get feedback and move on to next tasks. In addition, the networking/cultural events were rarely beneficial and seemed to be a waste of time. Although, I don't necessarily blame this on the city lead as they've obviously never attended the event so they also wouldn't know what to expect.

I had an amazing experience thanks to Sage Corps. Before coming to Australia, I thought I would be so worried and nervous about working in another country for 2 months. Surprisingly, I wasn't. I wasn't stressed because Sage Corps organized my housing, connected me with potential employers, and had city managers I could talk to about my life in Melbourne. The only thing I had to do was book flights. Even though it would have been nice to get a detailed schedule of the program before it started, the city and community managers of Sage Corps were very responsive to my inquiries.

I am so glad I decided to do this program because I had the best internship experience. I thought my first ever internship would mostly be composed of printing documents and getting coffee. However, my experience was the total opposite. I was given a lot of responsibilities and all of my work went into great use. I was making a difference in my workplace. My coworkers were very welcoming and inspiring. At the end of 2 months, I didn't want to leave.

I loved the city of Melbourne as well. It is filled with culture, kind people, and good food. The architecture is beautiful and the wall arts give the city more character. It is easy to get around the city thanks to all the public transportation. Also, there is always something to do, ranging from visiting the winter markets to going on a bar crawl.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this program. It was one of the best experiences I've had.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that Sage Corps provided me with to gain valuable work experience while traveling to new destinations around the world.
In December of 2016, during the first semester of my junior year of college, I had no idea what I was going to do the following summer. I was living with two guys who were going to study abroad, and I was very jealous of them because my curriculum did not allow for me to take a semester to study abroad. It was always something that I had planned on doing and looked forward to doing, but I was not able to. I did not have a summer internship lined up and I knew that I needed one. So at this time there were two things on my agenda: find a summer internship and find a way to travel abroad.
In comes Sage Corps, who allowed me to do both. After a few discussions with Matt Meltzer about the program, I knew this was something I wanted to do. The application process was very smooth, and thankfully I got accepted to go work and live in Sydney, Australia for three months.
Another thing that attracted me to Sage Corps was the exposure to the startup industry. My previous work experience was with bigger companies, and I was very intrigued by the opportunity to go work at a smaller company where I had more responsibility and freedom within my role. In addition, Sage Corps staff connected our cohort in Sydney with a local individual in the startup community there who brought us around to networking and teambuilding events.
Overall, I really enjoyed my summer with Sage Corps in Sydney and would highly recommend the program to anyone trying to broaden their work experience while traveling to new places that you might not get to travel to otherwise.

I just returned from my Sage Corps experience in Sydney, Australia. Sage provided me with a great internship, set up well located housing for me and put me in contact with a member of Sage Corps in the city for questions, recommendations and advice. I left Sydney (reluctantly) with not only lifelong friends, connections and one of a kind experience, but a job offer as well. As with anything, the Sage Corps experience is what you make it. Sage gave me all the resources I needed to get settled into a new city and job and then was very hands-off, save the weekly talks they set up.

The decision to intern abroad through Sage Corps was one of the best decisions I made in college. The experience I had was incredibly valuable, and certainly a big factor in leading me to the job I have today. My Sage Corps summer fellowship took place in Singapore. Part of the reason I chose Sage Corps was because they offered a program in Singapore. This city is at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and entrepreneurship. There’s an incredible amount of opportunity and energy there that I wanted to experience it firsthand.

Professionally, the internship I had was unbeatable. I worked for a startup called billionBricks. billionBricks is a non-profit design studio that creates sustainable housing solutions to solve homelessness around the world but mainly focusing on India and Southeast Asia. My roles included marketing, business development, and strategy. Specifically, I helped implement a marketing campaign at the beginning of the internship and then focused on developing corporate partnerships during the rest of my time. I was even able to work with companies like IBM. I learned an incredible amount about social entrepreneurship while at the same time building valuable soft and hard skills.

The Sage Corps programming also added to my experience. Our cohort got to know each other really well and some of us traveled to other Southeast Asian destinations like Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand - certainly unforgettable weekends. In addition, our city manager coordinated professional events that really stood out. Some of the more memorable events were our meetings with local Venture Capitalists as well as our meeting with Singaporean Government Officials. These events offered unrivaled insight into the current state of Singapore and really opened my eyes to how successful the city is at fostering innovation. Singapore is definitely one of the top tech hubs in the world and it was an exciting time to be there.

I am overjoyed with my 2017 internship through Sage Corps at Increase, a FinTech startup in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over the course of three months I worked side by side with the CMO, CTO, and CEO as the company transitioned from Google’s OKR management system to a Holacracy. Though I took on many roles as a business associate, I feel that my most valuable opportunity was in helping with the restructuring of the company. My contribution came in two forms. The first was an extensive competitor analysis for each department within the startup, from Sales to Development. Through analytics, working closely with each team, and understanding the core mission of the startup, I was able to produce the second piece of my contribution: a strategic plan for the 2017 year for the Sales and Marketing teams. My time at Increase was invaluable as it taught me to approach each challenge with a holistic, open-minded and client-facing perspective. Beyond the internship, Sage Corps provided a number of networking, learning, and professional development opportunities and the city of Buenos Aires gave me the time of my life! The combination of individual, professional, and intellectual growth that Sage Corps provides their interns with is unparalleled.

I had an amazing Sage Corps experience. At my internship, I wasn’t running errands or getting coffee- all of the work that I completed at the startup went into production. I was able to collaborate with the cofounders, CEO, and founding partner on a daily basis to help make strategic decisions about the future of the company. I listened to the cofounders pitch to investors, took ownership for a very critical project, and built a robust professional network in HK. Outside of work, I had so much fun exploring the city with my cohort and friends from work. I also got to explore nearby countries like Vietnam and Japan during the summer. When I returned to campus, Sage Corps helped me land my full time role in consulting, as the experience was so unique. It was one of the best summers of my life and I’d definitely recommend the program to others!!

I recently finished an internship with Sage Corps and they were *very* unhelpful. They didn’t find me an internship until ONE WEEK before we were deployed to our cities, and two of the interns showed up without work assignments. One of them got paired with a “startup” that was just a woman freelancing web design out of her *apartment*. Another girl didn’t have a job for the first two weeks.
I was lucky with my work experience, though - my company was supportive and patient while I learned new programming languages and technologies. The problem though is really with the “network”, which is completely a product of the imagination. A few of our fellows went to another city and tried to contact the fellows in that city to meet up, and they didn’t even respond. The male city manager (there are two of these who are supposed to be your point of contact in case of emergency and hold weekly professional or social events) unsolicitedly messaged me and another girl, attempting to engage us in one-on-one hangouts that neither of us accepted for obvious reasons.
Yeah, that *totally *makes me feel safe going to him in case of emergency.
Don’t even get me started on the “helpfulness” and “support” they provide you! You get zero value for your money. The professional events they took us to were random events they found on the Meetup website, and most of them were a complete joke. We went to a talk given by the CEO of a cryptocurrency, who was fined for embezzlement mere weeks later.
Additionally, one of the members of my cohort was posting racist content in the GroupMe and Sage Corps did nothing about it.

Oh - and one of my roommates went outwardly hostile on me because I didn’t get out of the house when she wanted me to (I only had a one-hour warning, mind you) and cursed me out and used very abusive language. I had seen the warning signs when she quit her job halfway through and blamed everyone around her for her problems, and used her French boyfriend to get free drinks and fought with him when he said he couldn’t give her drinks one night, and tried to ask Sage Corps nicely to move me to another apartment owned by the same housing company. Sage Corps *outwardly lied to me* and said that there was nothing they could do and no other apartments were available. During check-out, I turned my keys in in-person at the housing office and they told me no one from Sage Corps had contacted them, advocated on my behalf, or even identified that I was having a housing issue.
On to stipends…the CEO of my company signed the paperwork for my stipend to be released twice, and Sage Corps kept saying they didn’t receive it until I sent them a screenshot of it. Then, they tried to say he hadn’t disbursed the funds from the bank, and I sent a screenshot of that as well. Magically, the funds appeared in my account that afternoon after they’d told me “they hadn’t received anything.” I got paid a full month after I was supposed to. Luckily I took money with me to survive, but had I depended on that stipend to get by, I’d have been starving on the streets while Sage Corps kept the money in their account, presumably to rack up interest.
Overall, disgusted with the experience. You’d have a better chance at cold-calling companies in your target country.

Interning in Santiago, Chile for the summer with Sage Corps was the best decision I made in my college career. I spent my summer building 3-D printed prosthetic limbs for a start up, and learned so much in such a short time period. Not only did I had freedom in my work, but I had the freedom to explore a new country and immerse myself in a culture. My experience gave me an edge on my resume and friendships to last a lifetime.