Both paid and unpaid internships provide a number of benefits. However, having either paid or unpaid internships can provide valuable experience and training to be successful in your future career. 

As an example, for me an internship would be teaching in a school, because I want to be a teacher.

I prefer paid internships, but I also would not mind doing unpaid internships for a number of reasons. 

Paid internships

Paid internships are essentially an internship where you receive financial compensation. With a paid internship, it can vary on when you get your compensation, but for me I got mine at the end of the internship. 

Paid internships look better for the obvious reason, because you get financial compensation out of it and it is nice, in my opinion, to get essentially a reward for your hard work. 

With a paid internship, however, you may have to do more rigorous tasks. Because you are getting compensation, they usually give you the same or similar tasks that the paid employees typically do, so that could be a con as to why unpaid internships could be better. 

Unpaid internships

Unpaid internships are very similar to paid internships, with the key difference being that you do not get compensation. Even though you do not receive financial compensation for an unpaid internship, you could possibly receive college credit for an internship. 

For example, I am in the Honors program here at NIU and for the internship I had, I could receive engaged points for the Honors program. 

I think there are certain instances where unpaid internships could be better. The biggest pro as to how unpaid internships could be better is that you would not have to do rigorous tasks, which I think gives a better experience. 

Even though you are not getting paid, you still develop good skills and experience that you can add to your resume for when you start to get your first job out of college. 

The biggest con is that you do not receive financial compensation, so no matter how hard you work, you are not receiving anything financial out of it. Also with unpaid internships, there is no guarantee that you will be hired at that specific company. There is still a chance, but compared to a paid internship, you have less of a chance. 

Both paid and unpaid internships can give you great opportunities such as future employment, or even great skills to add to your resume, such as leadership and networking, which could help you out in your future career path.