Ugh. I hear that first step can be rough. I took a non-traditional path so it wasn't an issue for me. I didn't realize internships were so hard to get, though.
Internships are tricky for a few reasons, I think. For one, a lot of college students tend to have very generic/entry level engineering skill sets (not really any fault of their own) so it becomes quite difficult to differentiate oneself from the hundreds or thousands of other people who are applying for that one internship slot.
I think a lot of folks tend to only focus on the large, well known companies when applying to internships, which I think exacerbates the first problem. I've told some friends who are still in college to try and apply for places beyond the major Silicon Valley companies and that pretty much any company that they can think of 1) Leverages software engineering heavily 2) Has an internship program.
I think it'd be interesting to see a "wage-distribution" style chart of who gets internships in Fortune 500 companies. When I say that, I don't mean actual wage, but moreso "what percentage of engineering students are getting what percentage of internships" and similar questions.
Worked in tech (ISPs, support, then unix sysadmin) in my teens and after graduating high school, quit my job to go back to college at 21. Worked part time in IT dept during college and summers, remote part time work for a web hosting company during summers as well. Business major, not CS.
It seems like dev jobs in particular are interview meat grinders.
