As someone who just went through the internship process with a few different companies, I find this fascinating. This is pretty much what I expected going into the experience (multiple interviews, at least 1-2 coding questions/examples to do, a test maybe). Out of the few companies I interviewed from, I had nothing as intense as this. The majority of them didn't even test coding/theory knowledge at all. They were just simple interviews that lasted 2-5 hours. The hardest part of any interview was a freaking mental acuity standardized test I took at the company who I'll be working for that wasn't hard, so take the term "hardest" lightly. Good news is I accepted an offer at that smaller engineering company! A good portion of my interviews were for engineering companies because of the employers my university attracts, so that could also have affected the technical parts of the interview.

I'm not sure how I feel about how many interviews and how long this process is. I know some of my fellow students would be completely blindsided by such a long process unless it was clearly laid out. The compensation seems nice from the companies that hire around here (I go to a predominately STEM university in the Mid-West and all the companies I interviewed with came to our career fair in February, which is pretty late in the process). I'll make just over half that much monthly, but it'll be June-December and in STL. The highest I've heard from my classmates is 7k/month, but that was from Exxon Mobile and there was very little technical parts of the interview. He did have to take a hair test for drugs though. Ideally, I believe most of the larger corporations, like Boeing, Monsanto, etc, (like the article said) start interviews after the fall career fair.

Another side note about compensation: Seems to be pretty wide spread between 13-30/hr (without adding in housing) at companies around the Midwest. I don't exactly have the greatest academic credentials though (3.0 gpa), so some of the more selective companies may pay more, especially for graduating seniors. Exxon-Mobile being the highest, Boeing right in the middle of that range, and a local ISP looking for a non-coding cs major on the low end for the curious.

edit: Just adding in details as I get time.

FORGOT THE MOST ANNOYING THING

I was given the offer on Friday and he needed an answer on Monday, else he was going to extend the offer to other candidates. This was pretty obnoxious to me, but I ended up taking the offer because I was interested in it more than my other potential offers, but seriously, recruiters, a weekend is not enough time to get back to you with an offer, especially when other companies are asking you to keep them notified with enough time that they can either speed things up or not waste time on a candidate.