RYAN BURNSIDES SPENT THE summer of 1998 immersed in video games and got paid for it. He got to live in sunny California, took in a couple of ball games and participated in video game tournaments. One might think that Ryan was getting a free ride from Electronic Arts, the company that foot the bill for his summer adventure, but the company was actually the one that reaped the benefits.

The video game maker, which hired Ryan to work on game design, invests in its internship program and woos its summer interns hoping that they will return for full-time employment after graduation. In this case, the investment paid off for Electronic Arts. "The internship gave me a chance to see what it was like to work at EA," says Burnsides, now a software engineer in the company's Tiburon Studio in Maitland, Fla. "I realized this was what I wanted, a job I could really care about."

Increasingly, companies are turning to interns as a way to entice well-educated, highly skilled students to work for them after graduation. State Street Corp. in Boston, for example, set up its internship program to get a head start on the whopping 4,000 new employees it hires every year. John Fiore, State Street's executive vice president and CIO, says the program provides several benefits to the bank. "We can show potential new hires what kinds of technology they'll be working with and give them some experience using it," he says. "And it's a good way to get good, enthusiastic and dedicated resources focused on a particular need."

The statistics tell the real story: Fifty-two percent of interns accept full-time jobs at the companies they've interned with, according to a recent poll of 430 National Association of Colleges and Employers member companies. With this in mind, a variety of companies, including IBM, Merrill Lynch and Electronic Arts, have retooled and refined their programs over the past two years to bring in more and higher-quality interns in an effort to recruit future full-time employees.

Many of the big players pour money into their intern programs, recognizing that the payoff will come in easier recruiting and a good reputation. But even small companies can attract highly skilled interns by emulating successful programs already in place at other companies. Such programs provide interns with more than experience and a paycheck. They offer mentoring programs, the opportunity to participate on teams working on live projects, access to upper-level executives and outside activities. And in return, these companies get highly skilled new recruits upon graduation -- recruits who are eager to come back to a company that offers cutting-edge technology, a creative working environment and supportive coworkers.

Here's how to get the most out of an internship program.

Invest appropriate resources into the program. Allow room in the budget for an internship program. Whatever a company invests in housing, salaries, after-hours pizza, special programs and group trips will make the program and

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