What are your top developmental opportunities?

What are some good summer research opportunities for an economics undergraduate in the United States?

• Preferably, funded internships that have due dates in mid-February or even later.  Please  help!!! :D I don't have a lot of credits, but I'll pledge 1000 credits  for any answer that looks useful, and 10,000 if your advice directly  helps me into getting accepted to any summer internshipsI. As background, I'm a Junior in a small liberal arts college right now(not very well known nationally). Ideally, I would like to go to a Top 30 graduate school in Economics, with an emphasis on developmental economics/poverty alleviation. However, I have not prioritized my time last semester or the winter break correctly, (ie, didn't start researching what internships to go to, solicit recommendations, etc). Now I am panicking somewhat since a lot of research opportunities have deadlines by the end of this month and I have no idea what I will be doing this summer. At this point, I almost think that any internships with marginal funding and a research focus that would accept me would be great, though obviously I'd prefer opportunities that could potentially open more doors to T-30 econ programs. I absolutely do not care about location and I relatively do not care about the specific topic (almost everything in Econ is interesting to me). Obviously, I'll be more "passionate" about a few specific areas, but it's debatable how important passion is to approximately 2 months of research anyway. I have taken Intermediate Macro and Micro, and also upper-undergraduate level courses on the business cycle and the labor market. I am also taking/have taken several mathematics classes: Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Statistics and 2 course sequences in Mathematical Statistics and Abstract Algebra. Generally A's in those clases, with a few A-minuses and no B's. (Also technically a math major, but I feel like the class choices are more important). I'm reasonably confident that I'll get good to stellar recommendation letters, if my professors were given 3-6 weeks of advance warning. I'm comfortable with Excel and STATA. I have very little experience with Mathematica or Python, but I know what they are and there's ~ a month between when my spring semester ends and most internships start...which I think is enough to familiarize myself with the basics so that I can learn on the job/Google, for undergraduate projects that aren't explicitly built around programming. (This applies to essentially any skill where ~150 hours of experience and low to zero non-time investment is sufficient for basic familiarity) This will be my first true internship.

• Answer:

  10,000 Credits! Supply and Demand! I'm incentivised! Moody's Financial Services offers a number of internships targeted at college students. The job listings are obscure and hard to find. I know they invite applications through various organizations who bundle them together and send them in a batch. My son was invited to apply because he was a winner in a math modeling contest they sponsor. I'm posting a link to the job descriptions he received. Look for the "Rising Senior" job listings. I'm not sure where you would send the applications - you'll have to call/email Moody's. Message me if you have difficulty accessing the folder. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0r2bCKoo-FxWW13eHQtbE42U1E/edit?usp=sharing