Internships at CSAIL for non-MIT Students

CSAIL is a very large research laboratory with over 460 MIT graduate students working on their thesis research. We give priority to students who have been admitted to MIT. If you want to work on your dissertation at CSAIL, your best bet is to become an MIT graduate student by applying for admission to one of the departments.

Most CSAIL faculty will not take non-MIT students as visiting students/interns (MIT sees these two terms as interchangeable, and uses visiting student most often), as we admit as many MIT students to our program as we can reasonably supervise. There are rare times, however, when a faculty member might decide to take on a visiting student. These type of positions are not paid and may run anywhere from three to eighteen months. The visiting student is here to work on a specific research project, not attend classes. Each visiting student must find their own housing and have their own funding.

International Visiting Student Information

The appropriate visa for international visiting students is a J-1, which means that the student has to fulfill the monetary requirements, i.e., must have a financial certification form completed with the supporting financial documents attached. Please note that more than 50% of the visiting student's funding must come from a source OTHER than personal or family funds. There are other requirements that are better discussed at the time such an appointment might occur.