Internship after Junior ?

[Anonymous]

My DC is now a Junior HS in NVA HS and he missed the Internship over the summer . Is it a good idea to it in SUMMER after the Junior HS?

For a STEM related Internship appreciate some resources to start the search for 2018 Internship

Thanks in Advance

[Anonymous]

We have internships where I work in Maryland. One of the most important things we look for is how close the student lives to our facility.

Obviously, we want top students but if two students are even close, the one that can walk to work will be accepted over the one commuting from an hour away every time.

Over the years, we have seen students with commutes miss 10% or so of the days they should be working. Whereas students who live close can come in 30 min early and or leave 30 min late if that works better with their mentor's schedule.

This means you want to look at government and companies near where you live, first. Obviously, you want to match your DC's interests but in HS, even at a place like TJ, student interests and/or skills are often not well developed.

For example, a student that completely loves coding is often a better candidate for a lab that needs something programmed rather than a company that does a lot of programming. No matter how skilled, the HS coder is going to take all summer before they learn to write code that fits in with the companies standard ways of coding. Whereas a lab that needs something programmed will likely be thrilled to have whatever the HS kid can throw together the first couple of weeks and then iterate through a couple better versions. Further, the project will "belong" to the student rather than looking like a small piece of something that was already happening.

Similarly, if a student is a competitive mathlete in HS, they most likely will match up better with a biology lab that needs something quantified rather than a physics/engineering lab that bases all their work on differential equations.

Just a few things to keep in mind during the process.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it makes much of difference. If he can find one, yeah sure. If he can't, I wouldn't worry too much.

[Anonymous]

The military seems to be a good source of STEM internships locally. See, e.g. http://www.usaeop.com