Paid Internships for High School Students

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the availability of paid internships and research opportunities for high school students, exploring the challenges and possibilities within this context.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Debate/contested, Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses a desire for good paying internships or research opportunities for high school students.
  • Another participant notes the scarcity of such opportunities, emphasizing that college students typically have priority and highlighting serious liability and paperwork issues for minors in labs.
  • A participant shares a personal anecdote about a past internship experience and mentions a relative who had success with internships in the same field later on.
  • Several participants mention specific programs, such as those offered by MIT, NASA, and NIH, indicating that while these exist, they may not be available for immediate application.
  • One participant clarifies that while many summer programs exist for high school students, very few are paid positions.
  • A participant references peers who secured paid internships in engineering firms, attributing their success to programming experience, particularly with MATLAB.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that paid internships for high school students are rare, but there are differing views on the availability of unpaid opportunities and the role of programming skills in securing internships.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include the potential for varying definitions of "paid internships," the impact of local job markets, and the specific requirements of different internship programs.

Who May Find This Useful

High school students seeking internships, educators advising students on career opportunities, and parents exploring options for their children in STEM fields.

clarinets
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I am currently a junior in high school and am wondering if there are any good paying internships or research opportunities for high school students. Thanks!
 
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Very few. Very, very few. College students are all ahead of you in line, and the liability and paperwork issues for having someone under 18 in a lab are extremely serious.
 
I had a paid internship offered to me when I was a senior in HS. Unfortunately, my parents had only one car, and I couldn't make the time to walk 25 miles each way to the paper mill. Many years later, my youngest nephew got an internship at that same mill, and by the time he was in the process of graduating in ChemE, he had more job-offers than he could handle.
 
MIT has a summer internship program for high school students to get involved in research in Boston.

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/juniors_mit_and_other_summer_p

NASA also offers internships for high school students.

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/descriptions/Students-rd.html

So does the NIH.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/funding/training/redbook/hsnihbio.htm

It's probably too late to apply to any of them now, but maybe you can start thinking about next summer. Other than that, your chances aren't good unless you've got a strong contact at a college already. And if you did manage to get an offer over an undergrad somehow (professors are far more likely to take an undergrad, since they're paid to teach them and not you, and they have stronger math and science skills) they almost certainly wouldn't be paying you. It would be a volunteer position, and one you'd be extremely lucky to get.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Note that he said paid. Lots of places have summer programs for HS students. Very, very few of them are paid.
 
There were a couple of kids in my physics class last semester that did paid internships of their summer before college. I don't remember the companies but they were engineering firms. Both of them said that their programming experience played a big role, especially MATLAB.
 

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