Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: September 5, 2026

 

The EY summer leadership program is a retired name: EY now runs four separate early career programs for underclassmen, ranging from a virtual course to a paid eight-week strategy internship. This article shows you which one fits your year in school, what each pays, when applications close, and how to get an interview.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

EY no longer runs anything called the Summer Leadership Program, so anyone searching that term should be targeting Expedition EY, the EY Launch Internship, the EY-Parthenon Explore program, or the EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders internship instead.

 

• Glassdoor's EY Summer Leadership Program page was last updated in April 2019, which is roughly when the name went dormant

 

• Expedition EY and EY Launch serve freshmen and sophomores, while EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders is a paid eight-week sophomore internship

 

• EY posted its 2026 early careers roles on September 8, with Consulting and EY-Parthenon applications closing September 22

 

• EY's Summer 2025 EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders posting listed hourly pay of $45 in the US

 

• EY limits you to two applications in any six-month window, so choose your track before you apply

 

What Is the EY Summer Leadership Program?

 

The EY summer leadership program was a short leadership conference EY ran for underclassmen exploring careers in accounting and professional services. EY later renamed it the Emerging Leaders Program and eventually folded it into a set of separate early career programs. No program carries the Summer Leadership Program name on EY's careers site today.

 

The original format was an unpaid externship lasting one to three days, hosted regionally so students could attend the program nearest the office where they wanted to work. At its largest, it ran as the Emerging Leaders Summit, a three-day event in Washington, DC. Sessions covered executive presence, business excellence, and integrity, with heavy networking built around them.

 

The clearest evidence that the name is retired sits on Glassdoor's EY Summer Leadership Program page. It holds 21 interview questions and 18 interview reviews, and the page was last updated in April 2019. A live program at a firm of EY's size would not go seven years without a single new report.

 

EY's own internships and early careers programs page confirms it. The page lists service line internships and EY Next Steps virtual events, and nothing bearing the old conference name.

 

The term survives because university career centers, older forum threads, and prep sites still use it. All four Big Four firms ran near-identical summer leadership conferences for years, so the category name stuck even after the individual programs were rebuilt and renamed.

 

Which EY Programs Replaced the Summer Leadership Program?

 

Four EY programs now cover the ground the old conference used to cover. Two are exploratory and open to freshmen, and two are sophomore-specific. The table below shows how they compare.

 

Program	Who it is for	Format	Pay
Expedition EY	Freshmen and sophomores	Virtual, app-based course	No hourly pay
EY Launch Internship	Two or more years from graduation	Paid rotational internship	Paid hourly
EY-Parthenon Explore	Sophomores	Three-day immersive event	No hourly pay
EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders	Sophomores	Eight-week summer internship	$45 per hour (Summer 2025 posting)

 

Sources: EY-Parthenon Associate Program page, EY Summer 2025 job postings, and campus career center listings.

 

Expedition EY

 

Expedition EY is the entry point. It is a virtual, app-based program built to prepare first-year and second-year students for a professional services career while introducing them to EY's culture and service lines. Two tracks exist: business and technology.

 

Treat it as a signal-building exercise rather than a job. It puts your name in front of EY recruiters a full year or two before you can apply to anything with a paycheck attached.

 

EY Launch Internship

 

The EY Launch internship is the closest modern equivalent to the old summer leadership program, except it pays and it lasts longer. EY describes it as an exploratory experience that opens with the National Launch Training series and then places you on real projects alongside professionals from multiple service lines. It is open to students who are at least two years from graduation, which usually means freshmen and sophomores.

 

EY's postings state a strong preference for students affiliated with organizations committed to racial diversity and inclusiveness, naming groups such as NABA, ALPFA, and HBSA. Membership is not a formal requirement, but it appears in the posting language every cycle.

 

EY-Parthenon Explore

 

Explore is the program that most resembles the old conference. Campus career center listings describe it as a three-day immersive experience for undergraduate sophomores, built around what a consulting career looks like and how EY-Parthenon Strategy and Execution works. The most recent listed session ran from the evening of February 12 through the morning of February 14, 2026.

 

Notice the timing. Despite what the phrase "summer leadership program" implies, this one happens in February, and the information sessions that gate it happen the previous fall.

 

EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders

 

Emerging Leaders is the prize. EY describes it as an eight-week internship for undergraduate sophomores that combines learning sessions with hands-on client engagement work in strategy consulting. It sits inside the EY-Parthenon Associate Program as a specialized track, which is why it is one of the few genuine consulting internships for sophomores at a top-tier strategy firm.

 

The bar is different from the other three programs. EY-Parthenon postings ask for outstanding academic performance and quantitative coursework in finance, mathematics, business, economics, biological sciences, or engineering, plus a proven history of leadership in a campus club or society.

 

Who Is Eligible for EY's Summer Leadership Programs?

 

Eligibility comes down to how many years you have left before graduation, not your major. EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders requires college sophomore status, while EY Launch requires two or more years remaining. Expedition EY targets first-year and second-year students.

 

Here is what to target by class year:

 

• Freshmen: Expedition EY, plus EY Launch if you have two or more years left after the internship summer

 

• Sophomores: EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders and EY-Parthenon Explore, with EY Launch as a parallel option

 

• Juniors: The standard service line summer internship, which is the one that converts to a full-time offer

 

• Seniors and MBAs: Full-time roles or the MBA internship track, which posts on a later calendar

 

EY does not publish a minimum GPA for any of these programs. The postings ask for "outstanding academic performance" and leave it there, which means a strong transcript helps but a specific number is not the gate. In my experience coaching candidates through Big Four recruiting, a thin resume kills more sophomore applications than a 3.4 GPA does.

 

Location matters more than most applicants realize. EY-Parthenon Strategy recruits US interns into nine offices: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Tysons, Virginia. If you list a city with a small team, you are competing for a handful of seats.

 

How Much Does EY Pay for These Programs?

 

The old conference paid nothing. Of the four programs that replaced it, EY's Summer 2025 posting for the EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders internship listed hourly pay of $45 in the US, with EY noting that individual salaries vary by education, geographic location, and market data. Vault lists EY-Parthenon internship compensation at roughly $5,000 per month.

 

Run the math on an eight-week internship at 40 hours per week and $45 per hour, and you land near $14,400 in gross pay for the summer. That figure is illustrative, since actual hours and rates vary by office and cycle.

 

Expedition EY and EY-Parthenon Explore carry no hourly pay, which is normal for exploratory programs of that length. The value there is access, not income. If you want the full compensation picture across levels, the EY-Parthenon salary progression tells you what these programs are actually feeding you toward.

 

When Should You Apply and What Are the Deadlines?

 

EY posts all of its US early careers roles on a single date and then closes them on staggered deadlines a few weeks later. For the 2026 cycle, everything posted on September 8, 2026. The table below lists EY's published deadlines.

 

Role group	Posted	Deadline
Consulting and EY-Parthenon	September 8, 2026	September 22, 2026
Assurance: 360 Careers and specialized	September 8, 2026	September 30, 2026
Specialized roles in Tax	September 8, 2026	October 5, 2026
JD and LLM roles within Tax	September 8, 2026	October 5, 2026
MBA internships	October 5, 2026	November 29, 2026

 

Source: EY early careers deadlines and application guidance.

 

Consulting and EY-Parthenon close first, at 14 days. That is the tightest window of any EY track, and it is the one sophomores targeting Emerging Leaders have to hit.

 

One rule catches people out every year: EY asks you to apply to no more than two positions within any six-month period. Fire off applications to five postings and you have spent your allowance on tracks you did not want.

 

What Does the EY Summer Leadership Program Interview Process Look Like?

 

The process runs in four steps: apply through EY's early careers portal, complete an online skills assessment, interview with EY professionals, and receive a decision. EY sends the assessment invitation by email within one business day of your application, and your application is not considered complete until you submit it.

 

1. Apply: submit through EY's US early careers site during the posting window
   
   
2. Assessment: complete the online skills assessment inside the stated time frame
   
   
3. Interviews: expect one or multiple rounds of prerecorded video, live video, or case interviews depending on the subservice line
   
   
4. Decision: EY-Parthenon typically communicates offer decisions within a week of your interviews

 

The EY online assessment is the step candidates most often treat as a formality and then fail. Submit it the day it arrives.

 

Interview format depends entirely on which program you targeted. The EY-Parthenon Associate Program page states that candidates should expect a mix of behavioral and case-based interviews with multiple EY-Parthenon professionals. The EY Launch and service line tracks lean far more heavily on behavioral questions and video interviews.

 

Glassdoor data on the legacy program shows what the old conference interviews looked like: 88% of reported stages were one-on-one interviews and 12% were phone screens, with candidates rating difficulty 2.6 out of 5. Reported hiring took an average of 5 days, against roughly 29 days for EY overall. Campus recruiting produced 87% of those interviews.

 

Real questions candidates reported from that program include:

 

• Tell me about a time when you had to manage multiple responsibilities at once

 

• What service line are you interested in and why

 

• Tell me about yourself

 

• What position are you applying for and why

 

• What is your location preference

 

Those questions still work as prep for the EY-Parthenon behavioral round. Where the sophomore strategy track diverges is the case, and that is where most candidates lose the offer. If you want to learn case interviews quickly, my case interview course walks you through proven strategies in as little as 7 days.

 

How Do You Get Into an EY Summer Leadership Program?

 

Getting in comes down to picking the right program, applying the week it opens, and showing up to interviews with proof that you can think quantitatively. Six tips separate the candidates who convert from the ones who get a template rejection.

 

Tip #1: Use the current program name in every conversation

 

Walking up to an EY recruiter and asking about the "summer leadership program" signals that your research stopped in 2018. Say "Emerging Leaders" or "Launch" instead.

 

Precision on program names is one of the cheapest credibility wins available to a sophomore. It costs you nothing and it immediately separates you from the applicants working off outdated blog posts.

 

Tip #2: Pick one track before you apply, not after

 

The two-application cap forces a choice. Decide whether you want strategy consulting at EY-Parthenon or broad professional services exposure through Launch, then commit.

 

A sophomore who applies to Emerging Leaders and one service line internship has a coherent story. A sophomore who applies to whatever posting is open has none.

 

Tip #3: Put quantitative proof on your resume

 

EY-Parthenon postings explicitly name quantitative coursework in finance, mathematics, business, economics, biological sciences, and engineering. List those courses. Then show a result you produced with numbers attached, even if it came from a campus club budget.

 

Sophomore resumes are thin by definition, so the ones that advance are the ones that read as analytical rather than as a list of memberships. My resume review and editing service comes with unlimited revisions and a 24-hour turnaround if you want a second set of eyes before the deadline.

 

Tip #4: Start case prep in sophomore summer, not sophomore fall

 

Applications close on September 22 and interviews follow within weeks. Starting an EY case interview prep plan in October means you are learning frameworks while you are being tested on them.

 

Having coached hundreds of candidates one on one, the single strongest predictor of a sophomore offer is how many live cases they did before the application even opened. Twenty is a reasonable floor.

 

Tip #5: Treat the fall information session as round zero

 

EY-Parthenon gates Explore and Emerging Leaders behind virtual information sessions that run in the fall, each with its own registration deadline roughly a week before the session. Recruiters take notes.

 

Register for the earliest session, ask one specific question, and follow up by email the same day. That single email is often what turns a borderline resume into an interview slot.

 

Tip #6: Align your city preferences to where the team actually is

 

EY tells applicants to pay attention to the locations noted in each job description and to align city preferences accordingly. Applicants ignore this constantly and then wonder why a strong profile went nowhere.

 

List a large office such as Boston, Chicago, or New York unless you have a genuine tie to a smaller one. A geographic story you can defend beats a preference you picked for the weather.

 

Is an EY Underclassman Program Worth It?

 

Yes, for one reason: these programs are how you skip the line for the junior-year internship that actually converts to a full-time offer. Nobody gets hired full time out of a three-day February event, but plenty of sophomores who attended one walked into a service line internship the following summer with a recruiter already advocating for them.

 

The honest downside is that the two unpaid programs cost you time you could spend on a paid internship elsewhere. Weigh that seriously if you are choosing between Explore and a paying summer role.

 

The EY-Parthenon route is the exception, since Emerging Leaders pays and does real client work. That is also why an EY-Parthenon internship is far harder to land than any of the exploratory programs.

 

If you searched for the EY summer leadership program, the single most useful thing you can do today is figure out which of the four current programs matches your graduation year and put the September posting date in your calendar. Everything else, the resume, the assessment, the cases, follows from applying to the right thing on time.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Does EY still have a summer leadership program?

 

Not under that name. EY's early careers page lists service line internships and EY Next Steps virtual events, with no program called the Summer Leadership Program. The underclassman programs that replaced it are Expedition EY, the EY Launch Internship, the EY-Parthenon Explore program, and the EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders internship.

 

How much does the EY summer leadership program pay?

 

The old conference format was an unpaid externship. Among the programs that replaced it, EY's Summer 2025 posting for the EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders internship listed hourly pay of $45 in the US. Vault lists EY-Parthenon internship compensation at roughly $5,000 per month.

 

What year in college should you apply to an EY leadership program?

 

Sophomore fall is the main window. The EY-Parthenon Emerging Leaders internship requires college sophomore status, and the EY Launch Internship is open to students who are at least two years from graduation. Freshmen who are too early for either should start with Expedition EY.

 

Is the EY summer leadership program hard to get into?

 

The legacy conference was not especially hard. Glassdoor users rated its interview difficulty 2.6 out of 5 and reported an 81% positive experience against an EY company average of 74.2%. The programs that replaced it are much more competitive, particularly the EY-Parthenon sophomore internship, which uses case interviews.

 

How many EY programs can you apply to at once?

 

EY asks candidates to apply to no more than two positions within any six-month period. That limit appears in EY's application guidance and in individual job postings. Pick your two applications deliberately rather than applying to every early career posting you find.

 

Does the EY summer leadership program lead to a full-time offer?

 

Not directly. These programs feed the next step in the pipeline rather than producing full-time offers on their own. Expedition EY positions you for EY Launch or a sophomore internship, and a strong sophomore internship positions you for the junior-year service line internship that converts to a full-time offer.

 

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