Internships let high schoolers test-drive a field, build professional skills, and earn references long before college. Even a few weeks of real work experience helps clarify your interests and strengthens an application narrative. Ninth grade is for exploration. Try several activities, join a club or two, and start building habits — depth can come later once you have found what genuinely interests you.

Opportunities range from NIH and NASA programs to local startups, hospitals, law offices, and research labs; many are summer-based, and a growing number are remote.

Hands-on experience signals maturity and direction, and an internship often becomes the seed of an essay, a recommendation letter, or a long-term mentor relationship.

How to get started with internships

1. Get concrete about the field and the kind of work you want — 'help a bio lab run assays' beats 'an internship somewhere.'
2. Map your network first: teachers, family friends, alumni, and local businesses are the most reachable entry points.
3. Apply early to structured summer programs (NIH, NASA, university labs) as your backbone while you email locally.
4. Send a short, tailored pitch: who you are, one specific reason you want their work, and exactly how you'd help.
5. Say yes to small, unglamorous tasks — reliability early turns a two-week trial into a real reference and mentor.

Featured programs

Browse 10+ curated programs for high school students:

• NIH Summer Internship Program in Biomedical Research — National Institutes of Health: Paid 8-week research internship at NIH. Work with leading scientists.
• CodeDay Labs Internship Program — CodeDay: Build real open-source software in this free virtual internship for high schoolers. Gain hands-on coding experience, boost college apps, and learn fro
• TurnUp Pre-College Program — TurnUp: Pre-college program at TurnUp for high school students focusing on youth activism remote internship.
• Ladder Internships — Ladder Internships: Virtual internship program connecting high school students with startup and organizational work experiences.
• Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Internship — The Ronald Reagan Foundation: Internship at the Reagan Presidential Library focused on leadership, communication, and civic engagement.
• Youthcast Media Group Journalism Boot Camps and Workshops — Youthcast Media Group: Virtual journalism boot camps and reporting workshops where high schoolers nationwide cover health and safety issues with veteran-journalist mentors;
• Youth Journalism International — Youth Journalism International: Free global online newsroom (since 1994) where students 19 and under report real stories with coaching from experienced editors, publish international
• AIMI Summer Research Internship — Stanford Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine & Imaging: Two-week fully virtual Stanford AIMI internship where high schoolers do mentored, small-team AI-in-healthcare research with lectures from Stanford exp
• Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Internships — Smithsonian Institution: Smithsonian internships in folklife research, the Folklife Festival, Folkways Recordings, archives, and education - explicitly open to high school stu
• MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network — The Poynter Institute: Poynter MediaWise's virtual newsroom where US middle and high schoolers debunk viral misinformation, publishing fact-checks and 'Is This Legit?' media

Frequently asked questions