I’m a senior in high school who will be graduating this year and going to my state flagship. Though I caught wind of it too late for it to affect my college admissions, I live in an area with a number of high school internship opportunities at NIST, NASA, and various colleges. Most of these programs are 40 hrs/wk for 2-3 months and are unpaid. Without much to do this summer, I’ll hopefully be able to participate in one of them in my final summer.
If possible, I’d like to get started with real internships or research the summer post-freshman year in college. Does anyone have an experience with a program/internship like this or have any thoughts on how it helped or didn’t help? I understand that most high school accomplishments go out the window once in college, but is this type of experience an exception that would give me a leg up on other freshman going into that first summer?
Thanks for your post. Congrats to you for thinking ahead. You are really fortunate to be an area where you have some wonderful internship opportunities.
My daughter will graduate high school in early June and she is looking at several unpaid internships in our local area for the summer before she goes off to college (out of state). She is looking to do an internship that pertains to her intended major, she has sent inquiries to groups involved in public health, an environmental action group, or possibly interning for our senator seeking re-election in November. She wouldn’t receive college credit for the work since she’s not yet enrolled in her college (I checked with her college’s info page on internship, but maybe yours would offer credit? be sure to inquire about it), but I can see where the work would be invaluable to you in many ways, not the least for experience, confidence and personal growth, and hopefully it would give you an interesting topic to discuss on your experience and allow you to offer your perspective in the classroom next fall. At the very least, it would help eliminate what you don’t want to do next summer.
My daughter has a paid job in the summer, so hopefully she can balance the two (internship and job). This will be challenging, but probably good practice for time-management before going off to college.
And yes, then in the summer after freshman year, I think you would be well-poised to offer skills that hopefully would translate to a paid internship. That’s my daughter’s goal, anyway. Please keep us posted on how this works out for you.