Sorry, just to be clear: I like the idea of pairing new devs with experienced devs in an apprenticeship-like role, especially since the software industry tends to lean pretty heavily toward the weird "You need experience for this entry-level job" thing (especially for stable jobs with larger organizations).
I'm not so convinced of a 4 week internship trial thing when it's structured like this though.
Yeah, it sounds like you're just going to end up wasting the senior engineer's time hand-holding the intern for 4 weeks while they learn an existing codebase, and then they go off on their merry little way. The concept is interesting, but 4 weeks just really isn't enough time to get a new-hire up to speed to be very helpful with software in most corporate settings.
That would mean the final exam is optional - and most students will not take it (at least until the fellows program gains more traction to take on more students).
This is _not_ the final exam. Your comment is uninformed.
I'm not so convinced of a 4 week internship trial thing when it's structured like this though.