Does my research internship help my chances?

Applying to College
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Hi guys. I have looked around to see how much internships help with college admissions. I’ve generally heard they don’t help much more than getting a job, but will help more when I’m searching for a job. Today was my first day at the internship and they insisted that the internship is different from most, especially for high school students. Usually, I know when people try and promote their own programs, but once they got into the explanations, I wasn’t so sure this was another case of BSing. That said, here’s a rundown of the program.

-The program called the Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program. Here’s a link to the website:(http://assip.cos.gmu.edu/about)
-It takes place at GMU and goes into August
-The hours are 9AM to 5PM Monday through Friday and it is unpaid
-800 students (high school rising seniors and undergraduate) from around the country applied and 80 were accepted
-Of the 80 accepted students, just over two-thirds are high school students. The rest are college students
-Just more about the college students: A majority of them reside in different states. Some live in Texas, others live in Illinois, Arizona, New England, etc.
-All students are working in lab research with various GMU professors and hospital locations in Northern Virginia including all GMU campuses and INOVA Fairfax Hospital and another location, but I can’t remember the name.
-All lab research is at least BSL-2, college students are mostly working with BSL-3, I believe.
-In the past few years, many students have had their research published and one was actually listed as the head author of their research. That student created a method that is currently used in local hospitals and medical facilities to find Lyme disease
-There is also a club that is optional (I am part of it, though) that focuses on developing a product and filing for a patent. Last year, this club succeeded in filing for a provisional patent and it is also pending.
-By the way, my specific field is BioChem

With all that said, how different is this program from other internships that other high schoolers might list in their college apps? Of course, my accomplishments will determine how well I can sell this on a college app, but just based on the experience, is it truly unique for students trying to get into top engineering and research schools? And if so, how can I emphasize my experiences in this program in my applications best? Sorry for the ridiculously long post.

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*help much for college apps, but will help more when searching for…

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Don’t think about it as an ‘internship’ so much as a research experience, which is quite a bit different from the non-science internships that your comment seems to reference. How valuable it is will depend on what you accomplish through it (not simply the fact that you’re doing an internship). Your goal for the end of the summer should be to obtain presentable data that you could contribute to a publication with or enter in a competition. If things don’t work out, that’s fine; you would still have research experience under your belt which has value in itself. But simply doing an internship doesn’t mean much if you don’t have anything to show for it. Good luck, sounds like a great opportunity.

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@dblazer Thanks so much, I think that clears things up for me. I’m very excited about this and I hope I will be able to get some great experience and results at the end of this. Thanks again.