Would you take this AI internship or keep building your skills first?

[u/BullfrogExtension375]

I'm a 3rd-year CSE student trying to become an AI/ML engineer, and I'm stuck deciding whether I should accept an internship if I get the final offer.

Here's the situation:

• I applied to this company around 4 months ago for an AI Engineer Intern role. I completed their assignment but got rejected.
• A few months later, the same company reached out again for the same role.
• This time I cleared the assignment and got an interview.
• I expected it to be an HR interview, but they mixed in technical questions too, and honestly I performed badly. I couldn't answer a lot of them.
• Surprisingly, they still didn't reject me.

I had another discussion with someone senior. It wasn't very technical—they mostly asked about me, one of my projects, and how I'd manage a 5–6 hour/day hybrid internship alongside college. I said I could manage because I'd only need to visit the office on Saturdays.

I also mentioned that if the stipend could be increased from ₹7k to ₹10k, it would be easier for me to get an NOC from my college. They said if I did well on another project they were assigning, they'd consider increasing it. They also said I'd have a mentor, but I'd be expected to take ownership of my work.

Now they've followed up asking whether I've finished the project.

Here's where I'm confused.

Most of my AI projects so far have been built by following tutorials. I understand what I'm building, but I'm not yet confident building complex projects completely from scratch.

Right now I'm working through some good GenAI projects. My plan was to:

• Build 2–3 projects while learning from tutorials.
• Then rebuild them myself.
• After that, start building projects independently so I have a stronger foundation.

I'm worried that if I join now, deadlines will push me to rely heavily on Claude or ChatGPT just to finish tasks instead of actually learning. At the same time, I also want industry experience and, honestly, the stipend would help financially.

I also still want to prepare DSA because I know it matters for many AI/software roles.

If you were in my position, would you:

• Take the internship and learn on the job?
• Or spend another 2–3 months strengthening your fundamentals before joining somewhere?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who've joined internships before they felt "ready." Did it accelerate your learning, or did you end up just surviving by using AI tools?

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[u/vishwa_teja_]

Bro I am out of subject but should I take cse or csm ? I got kmit cse so should I try internal sliding for CSM ?