You don't have to wait for university to land a real internship. NASA takes high school students. So do the NIH, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and RBC. Below is our list of programs in the United States and Canada, organized by country and sector, with who runs each one, how long it runs, and what you'd actually be doing there.
A heads-up before you start clicking: most of these are competitive, and nearly all of them want a resume and a short application. If you haven't put a resume together yet, our high school student's guide to internships walks through how to build one with no work experience.
Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) is a 3-week summer program for graduating high school seniors, with a focus on students from underrepresented groups. You learn coding and computer science fundamentals, work on projects, and get mentorship from Google engineers.
Microsoft Discovery Program is a 4-week paid summer internship at Microsoft for juniors and seniors. It's built around hands-on projects, with exposure to software engineering and tech careers and some career readiness training along the way.
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Meta Summer Academy is a 6-week paid summer externship where high school students work out of Meta's offices. Students see how a large social media company runs day to day, get some coding experience, and build up their soft skills.
Amazon Future Engineer pairs a college scholarship (up to $40,000) with a paid summer internship at Amazon. You apply during senior year, and the internship happens the summer after graduation.
Intel's high school internship program puts students, typically 16 and up, on teams with Intel mentors for the summer. Interns get hands-on experience in technology development through projects in robotics, engineering, or coding.
NASA internships are paid positions at NASA centers for high school students 16 and up who are interested in space, aeronautics, and engineering. Interns spend the summer working with NASA scientists and engineers, contributing to real missions in science, technology, and exploration.
Lockheed Martin's high school internship is a 9-week summer program at Lockheed Martin Space for STEM-oriented students. Interns work on real aerospace projects with company scientists and engineers at sites in places like Colorado, California, and Florida, getting a look at defense and space technology from the inside.
Boeing's high school internships run at select locations for juniors and seniors interested in aerospace. They're paid, last roughly 8-10 weeks in summer, and put students on aviation or manufacturing projects alongside Boeing professionals. The Boeing South Carolina site, for example, offers engineering internships to local high schoolers.
Northrop Grumman's High School Involvement Partnership (HIP) plays the long game: it's a multi-year program that pairs high school juniors with a Northrop Grumman employee mentor. Across junior and senior year, students get on-the-job STEM experience at Northrop facilities plus workshops that point toward careers in engineering and defense technology.
NIH High School Summer Internship Program places students 16 and up in NIH research labs in Bethesda, Maryland for the summer. Interns work on biomedical and health science projects under the guidance of practicing NIH scientists, which is about as close to real research as a high schooler can get.
NIST's Summer High School Intern Program (SHIP) is an 8-week unpaid internship at NIST research labs in Gaithersburg, Maryland or Boulder, Colorado. Rising juniors and seniors join active research teams in science or engineering, with hands-on lab experience and mentorship from NIST scientists.
Navy Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) is an 8-week paid summer apprenticeship that places students in Department of Navy laboratories, with a stipend around $4,000. Interns work on science or engineering research projects guided by Navy scientists and engineers, with the explicit goal of nudging them toward STEM careers.
Bank of America Student Leaders connects 300+ juniors and seniors across the US with paid 8-week summer internships at local nonprofits. Student Leaders also spend a week in Washington, D.C. at a leadership summit, so the program mixes community work with civic and workforce skills.
Morgan Stanley's high school internship is a selective paid program, 8-10 weeks, for juniors and seniors interested in finance. Interns work inside Morgan Stanley offices, in divisions like Wealth Management or Global Finance, with mentorship from the firm's professionals. It's part of Morgan Stanley's early talent pipeline, and applications are highly competitive.
JPMorgan Chase's young talent programs are career immersion programs for high school students curious about banking and business. They range from week-long career readiness workshops to summer internships in select offices, all built around skills training, mentorship, and hands-on project work.
GM Student Corps, run by General Motors, is a paid summer internship for high schoolers in Metro Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac, Michigan. Teams of students work with GM mentors and retirees on community service projects, like fixing up parks and community centers, earning a salary while picking up project management, teamwork, and leadership experience.
Smithsonian high school internships take students 16 and up at the Smithsonian's museums and research centers in Washington, D.C. Interns help with collections, exhibits, or labs, usually full time over the summer, anywhere across the institution's 19 museums. History, art, science, culture: pick your corner.
The Met's high school internship is for students in the New York City area. Interns work inside museum departments (curatorial, education, conservation, and others) to see what museum careers actually involve. Positions run in summer or during the school year, with mentorship and behind-the-scenes access to the Met.
Bloomberg Arts Internship places rising seniors in paid 8-week summer internships at arts and culture organizations: museums, theaters, arts nonprofits. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, it operates in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit, and adds professional development in public speaking and college prep on top of the work itself.
PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs offers journalism internships at local PBS stations. Interns help produce news segments, conduct interviews, and learn media production in a real newsroom, a direct bridge from high school journalism to the professional kind.
U.S. Senate Page Program appoints high school juniors as Pages in the U.S. Senate for a semester or a summer. Pages live in Washington, D.C., take classes at a dedicated Page School, and spend their days on Capitol Hill delivering correspondence and legislative materials while watching the legislative process up close. It's as selective as it sounds.
AmeriCorps NCCC's summer program is an 8-week service-learning internship for teens 14-17, based at AmeriCorps NCCC campuses in places like Sacramento, Denver, and New Orleans. Teams work on projects like building houses with Habitat for Humanity, environmental conservation, and helping at food banks. Heavy on teamwork, with real travel built in.
NSA High School Work Study is a paid program for juniors interested in STEM and federal service, mostly drawing from the Maryland area. Students spend their senior year working part time at the NSA in fields like computer science, engineering, or intelligence analysis, contributing to national security projects while still in high school.
FBI Teen Academy isn't a work internship, but many FBI field offices run it as a short immersive program for students, typically 16-18. Over a few days at a field office, you learn about federal law enforcement, forensic science, and FBI specialties through workshops and field experiences. Worth knowing about if public service is the goal.
RBC Summer Tech Labs is an 8-week paid technology internship for Grade 11-12 students, held July-August. Students work in teams at RBC on real tech challenges, building prototypes that solve business problems, with mentorship from RBC leaders, technical workshops, and the chance to deploy code in RBC's environment.
TD Securities Talent Lab is an 8-month blended program for high school students curious about capital markets. You attend after-school sessions during the academic year covering financial literacy, markets, and professional skills, then move into a 2-month paid summer internship on a TD trading floor, with mentoring from TD Securities professionals throughout.
Youth in Policing Initiative (YIPI) is a paid summer employment program for students 15-18, run by the Ontario government in partnership with police services across the province. Youth work with local departments like the Toronto Police Service on community outreach, office administration, and crime prevention projects, earning summer income while building job skills and a working relationship with law enforcement.
Parks Canada Youth Ambassador Program hires two young Canadians each year, usually recent high school graduates or early university age, to spend the summer travelling across Canada's national parks and historic sites. Ambassadors document and share the trip to get other young people outdoors and into Canada's heritage. Only a couple are chosen annually, so the odds are long, but it's a high-profile gig if you get it.
Gene Researcher for a Week does what the name promises: it places Canadian high school students in real genetics labs for a week, typically over spring break. Run by Let's Talk Science with the Canadian Gene Cure Foundation, it has participants shadowing researchers and running experiments in hospitals and research institutes across the country, a quick taste of careers in genomics and health research.
Shad Canada is a month-long July program where Grade 10-11 students live on a university campus, collaborating on STEAM projects and entrepreneurship challenges. It's an enrichment program rather than a work internship, but a well-known one, sponsored by companies and the Canadian government and packed with STEM workshops, academic research, and business mentorship.
Eligibility rules, ages, and dates shift year to year for most of these, so treat each link as a starting point and confirm the details on the program's own page before you plan a summer around it.
