Summer Research Internships for High School Students | Amerigo Education
Two most pressing questions for international high school students in 2020 are how to go back to school safely after the pandemic and how to apply for US higher education without SAT/ACT examinations.
The good news is apart from the standardized examination, US universities and colleges also look at a student’s summer research internship, academic performance, recommendation letters, and various extracurricular activities. If you want to stand out to your dream university, a record of attractive extracurricular activities is necessary.
As the 2020 application deadline is soon approaching, today we will discuss about high school internships that can elevate an international student’s application for top 50 US university admission.
What is a high school internship?
Many students often confuse internship programs with Job Shadowing or Career Day, which is often organized by American high schools. A genuine internship program often gives the student a formal job title, such as marketing intern or student intern.
The internship usually lasts from 1 to 3 months, ensuring that the student intern is able to get the first-hand industry experience from a certain position or a company. A high school internship not only helps students gain valuable experience and skills required beyond high school, but also is the most important extracurricular activity you can put into your record for top university application.
On the university application platform, internship experience is listed separately. The applicants can describe in more details about their responsibilities and the time they spent working on the job.
What kind of internship opportunities are available for high school students?
There are 3 main kinds of internship programs American high school students.
Unpaid Internship
This kind of internship is generally provided by various non-profit organizations in the United States during a summer holiday or an academic semester, requiring students to participate and assist various community activities in their spare time. For international students, this kind of internship is relatively easy to apply for because of its low requirement for hard skills.
Private Sector Internship
Many companies in the United States will open internship positions to high school students, mainly high school seniors. There will be a small amount of stipend for the position, allowing students to earn some income while accumulating valuable experience. This kind of internship is harder for international students to apply for as it involves tax payment. International students have no way to obtain Social Security Number or Tax Identification Number, as a result, employers cannot hire international students who are still in high school.
Student Research Internship
Only dozens or even fewer senior high school students can be recruited every year for research projects, and the selected students are definitely the top performing, straight A students of each high school. Taking Clark Scholars program at Texas Tech University as an example, the project provides students with the opportunity to participate in scientific research with university professors, a sum of tax-free allowance, accommodation and three meals.
The top scientific and research internships are usually fiercely competitive. There are also some regional research opportunities, which are only open for native American students in certain states, which makes the application more difficult because most of international students are not qualified to apply.
How to distinguish good and bad internship opportunities?
From a college admission officer’s perspective, the high school internships are only valuable if they are correlated with the students’ academic interests and if they’re from an established organization.
“Do not waste your summer holiday on the internship program that you are not interested in or working for some commercial internship program, where you have to pay fees to work for the internship. ”
These programs provide very low participation and experience for students. They are more like an extended Job Shadowing Day or a summer course with career exploration.
Focusing on high schools with high quality internship programs
Among over 3000 high school in the United States, only a small number of them offer internships to senior students. Red Bank Catholic High School of Amerigo New Jersey is definitely one of them.
The school is located in Red Bank, across the shore from Manhattan, New York City. Walking from the school to the wharf, you can get to Wall Street in 40 minutes by ferry. With such a convenient location, together with 150 years of school history, the school has been known for its robust, personalized internship program for 12th-graders.
Internship Time
The internship program of Red Bank Catholic High School lasts up to 6 weeks. Students participating in the program need to work for a full day once a week. The internship period is in the middle of a semester, thus school teachers will help student interns to reschedule their courses and homework submission, ensuring that each student participating in the internship will not be behind school work.
Internship Position
Based on each student’s academic interests, the school has set up a series of popular internship fields, including law, business, health care, fashion, architecture, engineering, education and so on.
Internship Location
Students mainly complete the internship in Red Bank and New York City depending on which field they choose to work on.
Internship Story 1: Fashion Assistant
Madison is fond of fashion industry. In addition to taking fashion marketing and fashion buyer courses at school, Madison had the opportunity to intern in the marketing department of Tory Burch in Manhattan, New York, in grade 12. Madison’s mentor was the brand’s marketing analyst, who is a Red Bank Catholic alumni. Joining the marketing team, Madison was highly motivated and learned extremely practical experience of fashion marketing within 6 weeks. Moreover, she had the opportunity to be exposed to other brands and teams within the industry, including Chanel Winter Pop Up store.
Internship Story 2: Investment intern
One of Red Bank Catholic’s alumni Class of 1990, Domenic, often came back to school to share his stories about the financial investment industry. As the founder of Newport Capital Group, his stories inspired many students interested in finance, including Ryan, a senior at the school. During the internship program, Ryan not only learned about the operation at the Capital Group, but also joined the project team to analyze investment opportunities in environmental, social and governmental projects.
Internship Story 3: Intern Cardiologist
Caroline’ s dream is to be a doctor. Through the internship program organized by Red Bank Catholic High School, she successfully received an internship in cardiology at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. As an intern doctor, Caroline had to be on duty from 7 a.m. every day. In the mornings, she participated in cardiologists’ seminars, where doctors communicated with night shift nurses about the patients' condition. There were often heart operations in the afternoon. Caroline were able to observe every detail of the operation under the guidance of professional doctors. In addition, she would participate in a series of postoperative procedures and clocked out at 5:30 p.m. This well-organized internship experience has been vital for Caroline’ s university application. She was successfully admitted to the pre-medicine major at University of Notre Dame (#15) for matriculation.
In addition to these internship programs, Red Bank Catholic High School also offers internship opportunities of Hugo Boss and JP Morgan. For students who want to practice but not yet find a job they are interested in, internship instructors will help them to develop new internship opportunities within the alumni network of Red Bank Catholic High School.
How to apply to the internship program?
With the support of the school’s alumni network, the internship programs of Red Bank Catholic High School neither require students to complete complex applications nor pay an expensive fee. Students just need to submit an application form indicating the field of interest and school schedule, along with their resume and a brief description of the goals they want to achieve through the internship. They can ask for help from the teachers through these application steps, so even students with average English can successfully complete the application and earn the internship opportunities.
Red Bank Catholic High School has about 50 seniors participating in the internship program every year. With high-quality and diversified internship opportunities available, the program no doubt helps internationals student to consolidate their extracurricular activities and elevate their university application materials, which makes them more competitive candidates for top university admission.
Contact us to receive a resume template for your future internship application! If you are interested in the internship programs of Red Bank Catholic High School, please contact our Amerigo Global Manager.
