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.
Response from Sage Corps
Hi Nainika,
First of all, I'm incredibly sorry that you felt as though your experience with Sage Corps was subpar and did not meet your expectations. We work hard to ensure each student has a meaningful, safe, and productive experience in our program.
We are thrilled that you had such a positive professional experience. We work hard to ensure that each student learns and grows professionally. And as you'll see, this specific experience will prove incredibly valuable to prospective employers when you apply/interview for full time roles.
As we have previously discussed with you, we recognize that we failed to deliver the high quality personal experience and service that you deserve. We have identified the areas in which we failed, especially with respect to the conduct of other students in the program who failed to live up to our code of conduct that each of you agrees to. We have already begun putting even stronger processes in place to ensure these issues do not happen again. We appreciate your open and honest feedback, and take it very seriously.
Regarding the issue of racism within the cohort group chat, that was resolved directly with the offending student as soon as we learned of the issue. We take issues like this very seriously and our team addresses them as soon as we are made aware. I apologize if it was not communicated to you that the issue was taken care of. Again, we should have done better.
As for housing, we apologize for the miscommunications/lack of communication between members of our team. We understand how stressful a negative housing experience can be, and will work much harder to resolve these types of issues quickly in the future.
When it comes to stipends, each company handles those agreements differently. We work hard to ensure the hundreds of students in our program are receiving their stipends as soon as we have the funds from our partner startups. We have our startup partners sign an extensive consulting agreement at the beginning of the program in order to guarantee they follow through on agreed-upon stipends. We cannot, however, disperse those funds to students until we have received them. Our team works as quickly as we can to ensure stipends are dispersed on time, but just like you, we're human. I assure you that we sent you the funds as soon as we received them - we have no interest in withholding stipends from stipends, obviously.
Again, we appreciate your honest and open feedback, and truly hope that you were able to find value in your abroad experience.
As always, I am happy to discuss these issues with your further. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly at cara (at) sagecorps (dot) com.