Protocol Career
An open grey file folder containing blank cream-colored paper cards on a smooth slate surface. Title: “EY Launch Internship: The Program EY Stopped Listing”, over the Protocol Career wordmark.

EY Launch Internship: The Program EY Stopped Listing

The EY Launch internship lost its blurb in late 2025, and EY's board now shows 92 roles with none named Launch. What the archived postings said, pay included.

9 min read
In short
  • EY published nothing about Launch on 29 September 2026. The blurb left ey.com between the 24 August and 18 December 2025 archive captures.
  • EY's own early careers board was live that day with 92 openings. None of the 100 job titles we collected contained the word Launch.
  • The last readable posting set eligibility as freshman, sophomore or junior status, two or more years from graduation.
  • It also published a pay band of $25.53 to $36.03 per hour, which is the only Launch pay figure EY ever printed.
  • EY's current application windows carry days and months with no year on any of them. We report them as published.

On 29 September 2026 we fetched EY's student programs page, its application timelines page, its sitemap and all eight pages of its own early careers job board. The board was busy: 92 open roles, 100 distinct job titles, requisitions running through Summer 2027, Winter 2027 and a January 2028 residency.

Not one of them was called Launch. The word does not appear on the student programs page either, except as a verb in a meta description.

The board works. The pages load. What is missing is the program itself. EY has stopped publishing Launch, and every guide still describing its application process in the present tense is describing something you cannot currently apply to.

What follows is what EY did publish, quoted, with each capture dated, plus what the firm is running instead. Sources checked 29 September 2026.

What the EY Launch internship was, while EY said anything

The description lived inside the student programs page as an accordion block. It was present in the Internet Archive captures of 4 April 2025, 11 July 2025, 10 August 2025 and 24 August 2025.

"The Launch Internship is an immersive, rotational experience that will help you build the foundation for a career in professional services."

"You'll hone the skills and technical competencies that will contribute most to your professional advancement, beginning with the National Launch Training, which will introduce you to our business and provide exposure to our culture."

"Then, you'll gain valuable experience working on projects alongside professionals from each of our service lines and across a variety of industries."

And on support: "Throughout your Launch Internship you will have access to an extensive support network that will guide you every step of the way, including receiving ongoing feedback that fuels meaningful dialogue about your development and performance."

Four sentences. No year of study, no graduation rule, no major, no dates, no length, no locations, no pay, no process. Everything a reader needs sat in the job postings rather than in the program description. That pattern is common across the large accounting and advisory firms. It is also why their programs are so poorly documented in public.

By the capture of 18 December 2025 the block was gone. Counting from 24 August 2025 to 18 December 2025 gives 116 days: 7 left in August, then 30, 31, 30, and 18 into December. Somewhere inside that window EY removed it, and it has not come back on any later capture or on the live page.

Reading about a consulting firm is not preparing for a consulting firm.

Take the readiness check

What the last EY Launch internship posting required

The most recent EY-owned Launch posting we could read is requisition 1530340, "USA - Core Business Services - Launch - Core & CPA Track - Intern - Summer 2025", captured on 21 September 2024.

Its framing sentence is the clearest statement of purpose EY ever put on this program: "The EY Launch Internship is an internship experience for college students who are two years or more from graduation and is one platform designed to support and develop underrepresented groups within the professional services industry."

Eligibility, quoted:

  • "College freshman, sophomore or junior status"
  • "An excellent academic record in Accounting, Computer Information Systems, Management Information Systems, Business, Finance, Economics or a related subject"
  • "Desire and educational requirements to pursue a relevant certification (CPA, CISA, etc.)"
  • "Ability to travel locally to the EY office, client and/or third-party sites"

One wrinkle in that list is worth naming. A junior who is "two years or more from graduation" only exists on a five-year or 150-credit accounting path. On a standard four-year degree, a junior cannot meet both tests. EY published both and fixed neither.

The posting also carried a pay band: "The salary range for this job, in the US, is $25.53- $36.03 per hour."

That spread is worth a moment. The top of the band is $10.50 above the bottom, and $36.03 divided by $25.53 is about 1.41, so the top rate is roughly 41% higher than the floor. The posting listed 45 cities under one band, with no city-by-city split. One range stands in for the whole US market. A reader cannot tell where their own city sits in it.

Finally, the deadline: "Applications will be accepted until November 23." No year. The posting was live in September and October 2024 for a Summer 2025 internship, so the year is inferable. Inferable is not published, and we are not going to print a year EY did not.

Where three EY Launch internship postings disagree

We read three archived Launch postings across three cycles. The assessment steps are different in each.

Posting, as captured Assessment steps named Pay statement
Core Business Services, Summer 2023 pre-recorded video interviews, then possible live video or in-person interview "The EY Launch Internship is a paid internship."
Strategy and Transactions, 2024 game-based assessments, then pre-recorded video interviews, then possible live interview pay mentioned only for joining full-time afterwards
Core Business Services CPA track, Summer 2025 none named $25.53 to $36.03 per hour

Three cycles, three answers. The Summer 2023 posting states plainly that the internship is paid and gives no figure. The 2024 Strategy and Transactions posting never says the internship itself is paid, and mentions compensation only in a sentence conditioned on joining full-time later. The Summer 2025 posting gives a band and names no interview step at all.

The 2024 posting's description of the game step is the most specific thing EY published about assessing this population: "we also leverage game-based assessments to assess your non-technical skills and attributes in a quick and engaging experience. This includes your collaboration style and your ability to work with information and the use of pre-recorded video interviews (PRVIs)."

A second gap sits above these. The blurb calls Launch rotational, "alongside professionals from each of our service lines". The postings are tied to one service line each. EY never squares the two.

What EY is actually recruiting for right now

The live timelines page lists five windows, and this is where a reader in 2026 should be looking. Quoted exactly as EY prints them:

  • "Consulting and EY-Parthenon" opens September 8, closes September 22
  • "Accounting: 360 Careers and Assurance Advisory practices" opens September 8, closes September 30
  • "Tax Services for Business and Technology majors" opens September 8, closes October 5
  • "JD/LLM roles in Tax Services" opens September 8, closes October 4
  • "MBA intern" for Consulting and EY-Parthenon opens October 5, closes November 29

Ten dates, and not one of them carries a year. We flag it rather than quietly supply 2026. A date with no year is the most perishable thing a careers page can carry. We have made that mistake ourselves.

The rest of the guidance is usable as written. "After applying, you will receive an email invitation within one business day to complete an EY skills assessment." On formats: "The style, format and number of rounds of EY interviews are based on business needs and may include prerecorded video, live video and case study interviews." On authorization: "For most Early Careers opportunities, candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States now and in the future without employer sponsorship." And a limit people breach by accident: "Please apply to no more than two jobs within a six-month period."

Plan around that last rule. Two applications in six months makes the choice of requisition a decision in itself. Apply to everything that looks plausible and the allowance is gone before the right posting appears.

Are you ready to get an offer at a consulting firm?

Take the readiness check

The claim we are removing, and the one we will not make

We will not tell you that EY cancelled the Launch Internship. The firm published no discontinuation notice, no renaming announcement, and nothing on any page we read explaining the removal. Two current EY offerings sit on adjacent ground on the live board: 360 Careers and the EY Career Residency. Whether either absorbed Launch is not something EY states.

What we can say with dates behind it: the description was on ey.com in August 2025 and gone by December 2025, the last readable posting was for Summer 2025, the old student jobs host no longer answers at all, and the current board has 92 roles and no Launch.

Nor will we give you a selectivity figure. The version of this page we are replacing said reported acceptance rates for the program "sit in the low teens as a percentage of applicants" and hedged it as a market estimate. No EY page carries that number. A hedge does not turn an unsourced figure into information. It has been removed.

What an early-year student should do this season

The honest starting point is that you cannot apply to this program right now, and three things are worth doing with that fact rather than around it.

  1. Apply to what is open rather than to what was. EY's board carries Summer 2027 and Winter 2027 internships today, and the five published windows tell you when each family opens and closes. A program with no requisition cannot be prepared for, and time spent hunting for a Launch application form is time taken from a live one.
  2. Spend the two-application allowance deliberately. EY limits you to two jobs in six months. Pick the service line first, then the requisition, then apply. Scattering applications across everything that looks plausible burns the allowance before the right posting appears. The document that decides the screen is the resume, and at this stage it is carrying the whole application because there is no internship on it yet; our consulting resume guide covers what a screener reads for.
  3. Get ready for a one-way video, because EY names it. The firm lists prerecorded video among its interview formats, and an archived Launch posting named game-based assessments on top of it. The habit a recorded answer rewards is stating your answer in the first sentence and supporting it afterwards, which is the same habit a live case rewards. Our EY behavioral questions guide covers the answers themselves, and where we score them the weights are our own scale, described on the method page, because no firm publishes a marking scheme of its own.

Whichever EY role you end up applying to, the screen that follows is published: three sections, one of them timed, and 48 hours to submit. The rules are laid out in our EY online assessment guide.

Sourcing, and how to re-run this check yourself

Three EY properties carry this article:

The archived job postings sit on studentjobs.ey.com, a host that no longer answers at all, and were read in Internet Archive captures dated 15 February 2023, 4 August 2023 and 21 September 2024. Every quotation above is tagged to its capture in the text.

The check takes about ten minutes. Fetch the board with compression on, walk the result pages, search the titles. If a Launch role ever returns, that search finds it before any guide is updated. And the posting will carry the eligibility and the pay band that the program page never did.

Before you go: where do you actually stand?

A short diagnostic: a few questions about where you are, one real case, and a score on the dimensions firms publish. Free, no card.

Take the readiness check

Sources

Primary sources only: the firm, the test vendor, or the institution concerned. Each carries the date we last read it.

eylaunch-internshipearly-careerfreshman-internship
Written and reviewed by
Elias MarchandStrategy editor

Edits the firm and case guides on this site. Reads each claim about a recruiting process back to the firm's own page before it is published, keeps the source ledger dated, and owns the corrections.

How this guide was made

  • Written against a published editorial process, not from memory. Every claim about a firm's process is either linked to that firm's own page or absent. We say what we could not verify rather than filling the gap.
  • Each page carries a dated source ledger, below. When a firm changes a programme or a deadline, the date tells you how far to trust what you just read.

We look for first-hand candidate accounts for every firm guide. Where we found none we could source, the page says so and carries the firm's own words instead. Nothing here is dressed up as testimony, and if your own experience contradicts what you read, tell us and we will correct it and date the change.

Something wrong or out of date here? Tell us and we will correct it and date the change.