High Schoolers Don’t Need Internships

How do we find an internship?

It is one of the first things parents and high schoolers ask me.

And honestly, I am usually sitting there thinking: Why?

Why do you want an internship so badly?

Somewhere along the way, families got sold a fantasy that high school internships are inherently impressive, strategic, and necessary for top college admissions. That if your sixteen-year-old is not currently “interning” at a law firm, startup, hospital, or investment office, they are somehow behind.

They are not.

Most high school internships are not that valuable.

A huge percentage of high school “internships” are really just shadowing dressed up as achievement.

A student sits in on meetings. Watches a professional do their job. Learns some vocabulary. Maybe gets a certificate at the end. Maybe takes a group photo in business casual. Everyone feels productive.

Top colleges are not that interested in whether you stood near something impressive.

They care whether you did something impressive, or at least difficult, intentional, and real. If a student is mostly “learning the ropes” or “assisting with administrative tasks,” they are not building their profile.

The title “intern” isn’t impressive

Admissions counselors are speed readers. They do not have time to meditate on the hidden prestige of every program name. They are scanning for what they can understand immediately: role, action, initiative, output, impact.

That means there is a massive difference between these two experiences:

A student who interned at a marketing firm, sat in on meetings, learned about social media branding, and got a completion certificate.

A student who built an app, wrote a research paper, drafted a policy brief, designed a curriculum, ran a pilot program, published a serious analysis, or completed a substantial final project with actual ownership.

One demonstrates a good kid.

The other showcases an exceptional one.

If you cannot quickly identify what the student made, changed, led, tested, built, published, or improved, the internship is probably not doing much.

Many high school internships are pay-to-play theater

Unlike college internships, most are not highly selective, not especially rigorous, and not that credible. They are open-enrollment programs, a favor from a distant uncle, or branded experiences marketed to anxious families who want something that sounds fancy-shmancy.

If a student got the role because their parent knew someone, paid tuition, or the “internship” accepted basically everyone who applied, it doesn’t really move the needle.

Top colleges are not dumb. They know the difference between something competitive and something curated for optics.

Do your own thing (really!)

Stop being hypnotized by titles. Time is your most precious resource, and too many families waste it chasing things that sound good instead of doing good.

A weak internship often costs time that could have been spent on something far more compelling.

Like what?

Independent projects, where the student drives the work and owns the result. (If that sounds daunting, that’s the whole point. But I help students design these all the time, and I’m happy to help you figure out an achievable yet meaningful passion project. Oh, and I would never give you the same one as another person, because individuality is my obsession.)

Let's Brainstorm A Meaningful Project

Actual jobs are wildly underrated and often much more impressive than prestige-adjacent unpaid internships. I will say this plainly: a real paid job at Panera can be a stronger activity than a fancy-sounding internship.

Why? Because paid work shows reliability, maturity, stamina, accountability, and actual responsibility. It means someone trusted you to be useful. It often requires more consistency, more humility, and more real-world competence than a polished summer program ever will.

If you want something more related to your discipline choice:

A student interested in public policy is usually better off researching a local issue, interviewing stakeholders, and producing a serious written analysis than attending some branded institute (even if it’s wearing an Ivy League name, sorry Brown Pre-College) that gives them “exposure” but nothing to show for it.

A student interested in CS is better off building a useful app that people actually use than “interning” somewhere and touching no code.

A student interested in medicine is often better off taking on a serious health-related study on their own than floating around a private practice in a shadowing badge.

These projects sound scary. That’s the point.

You get more credit for creating something without a built-in structure, without hand-holding, without a neat little title doing the work for you.

Real initiative looks like building the framework yourself, setting your own deadlines, and following through when nobody is forcing you to.

That is what future founders, researchers, artists, leaders, and thinkers do.

Okay, not every internship is useless.

A truly substantive one that is hard to get and where you do real work can absolutely be impressive.

But often, that is not what most families are talking about.

Most of the time, they are chasing the word "internship" as if the title itself has admissions power. It doesn’t. Sorry!

That’s why I so often push my students to build something of their own instead, something more thoughtful, more original, and usually far more shiny than a flimsy internship, often for less money and fewer hours. That can look like:

• making an art exhibit based on real organs
• instituting a rain barrel in every single house in your district
• being the first person in your high school to compete in National History Day
• interviewing dystopian authors about their process and what their books mean
• things so original I can’t rattle them off in an email

The work that matters is the work a college (and you) will remember.