I wonder how significant it is in the US, but in France, securing an internship is hardly difficult.

Interns tend to barely get paid (when they do) and a lot of companies have no problem letting them rot for half of the internship duration.

You could probably get an internship almost anywhere if you're willing to do the most annoying crap half of the day, and nothing the rest of the time.

So, I don't know how significant is "I got an internship through this method" to prove that a method is good (but then again, maybe in the US culture it's actually something significant !)