The Ad Agency, Inc.

Monday, July 21, 2003:
The Washington Post: Advertising Students' First Job: Selling Themselves
By Sabrina Jones


  
Since May, freckle-faced, 21-year-old Charlotte G.
  Nichols has melded into the high-pressure milieu of
  the Ad Agency Inc., a District advertising firm. She
  labels herself the agency‘s “go-to girl,” writing ads,
  making publicity calls to CNN for clients and
  making coffee.

  It is the Georgetown University senior's first
  advertising internship and a coveted spot. The
  marketing and finance double major applied for
13 other advertising and marketing jobs this spring in cities as far away as
Cincinnati before landing the $8-an-hour stint through August. She was one of
200 applicants for three internships at the agency.

"I was pretty much looking everywhere," said Nichols, a Sacramento, Calif.,
native who is living this summer in a house in Georgetown with seven other
college students. "It's not easy at all. Most of the internships are unpaid. The
ones that are paid are hot commodities." She still waits tables at Clyde's of Georgetown for extra money.

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