My school has an internship program for juniors in which we can get hired by a company like EA, Cubic, or Symantec, or the school system’s IT department, etc. There’s a job fair in April and companies initiate secondary interviews and hire interns for summer. It involves working a minimum of 150 hours, and most interning opportunities are paid. I’m confident that I would be able to find a position, and I believe it would be beneficial to take advantage of the unique opportunities that my school provides.
I could also spend my summer volunteering at a community thrift store and food pantry. I have 41 hours there currently, and plan on getting a minimum of 100 hours in total in order to qualify for the Bright Futures scholarship. If I interned, I do not think I would be able to go beyond that minimum. If I didn’t intern, I could put emphasis on volunteering and get a couple hundred hours, working 6.5 hours a day, five or six days a week during summer.
From the admission perspective, what should I put emphasis on this summer - interning, or community service? On a side note, I currently have an internship for the current semester through a different program, and I’m working a minimum of 136 hours in total, paid $9/hour at a dental laboratory. The internship I would be taking would be pertaining to technology, which I am studying in school but do not plan on majoring in for college. I’m looking into applying to top colleges with my prospective majors (molecular biology, molecular biophysics, biochemistry, biomedical science, etc.), so I’m trying to decide what my best option is. Would it look better to have completed two full internships and 100 hours of community service, or have 250 hours and one internship?