What Skills Do Companies Seek in High School Interns?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the skills that companies seek in high school interns, particularly in the context of applying for summer internships. Participants explore various skills, especially programming, and the relevance of specific projects and languages in enhancing internship applications.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Homework-related

Main Points Raised

  • One participant inquires about the skills companies look for in interns and expresses a desire to improve their basic calculus knowledge.
  • Another participant suggests that programming skills, particularly in languages like Fortran or C++, are crucial for securing internships, especially in the U.S.
  • A different participant questions whether programming is indeed the most important skill to focus on, indicating uncertainty about their own programming abilities.
  • One contributor emphasizes the need to become highly proficient in at least one programming language rather than having a superficial understanding of multiple languages.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that programming skills are important for internships, but there is disagreement on the extent to which these skills are the most critical factor. Some express uncertainty about the specific requirements in different regions, particularly between Europe and the U.S.

Contextual Notes

Participants acknowledge that the internship landscape may differ significantly between Europe and the U.S., and there are unresolved questions about the specific skills and qualifications that would enhance an application in different contexts.

Who May Find This Useful

High school students interested in pursuing internships in technical fields, particularly those with a focus on programming and STEM-related projects.

Tom83B
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Hi,
I'd like to apply for an internship for the following summer.

What skills are the companies looking for? Is there anything useful I should get better at? I know some basic calculus and I'm deffinetly going to keep on improving (or at least I'll try), but is there anything else, that would allow me to do at least a little challenging work?

This school year I'm going to participate in one high-school competition and I'm probably going to do a numerical simulation of the solar system and detemine the time of the solar eclipse, how much does Jupiter move with the Sun and so on.
Would it be helpful if I sent them the project? Is there some specific language that would interest the employers (I'm planning on doing it in C++, but if it really helped I could try doing it in Fortran or st...)

When should I apply and what are the chances?
I probably have to add that I'm from Czech Republic, so it's probably a little different from US. But I think I'll be able to apply e.g. to a company in Germany - Because of the EU stuff (and my German should be hopefully pretty good by then, since now I'm in Germany for 6 months). Btw. would languages help my chances to get technical-oriented summer-job?

Thanks for your answers.
 
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Can't comment on companies in Europe and how often or if they even will hire a high school intern, and for America (depending on the field of course) it might be more likely for you to get work at a university providing you have an important skill: programming. If you are a systems/linux/fortran/objective-c guru and you know a bit about the topics of research, I can't see that many people turning you down. You may want to try and go talk to some professors in their offices as sending emails is kind of stupid honestly and usually doesn't work anyway. It seems like you somewhat take a leap of faith by showing your face to them and telling them that you can do this, which I spose shows that you really want to do it so you took an effort to talk to them and it's a bit more personal as well too.

Anyway, tl;dr be a monster programmer and you have a good chance anywhere.
 
Well, I'm not monster programmer or C/Fortran/whateverlanguage guru. But you think that the most important think is to work on my programming skills?
 
Dude you need to become a guru at at least 1 language, not just a bit of this and a bit of that.. The summer is a long ways away so you have a lot of time to get skilled.
 

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