Senior Year Internship

[Anonymous]

MCPS offers a program where seniors can take five classes (instead of seven) and do an internship. DD is interested in this because she only has five classes she wants to take and would love the real life work experience. She and I have read that top colleges don't like this and see it as lazy (want to see seven classes or dual enrollment). Anyone have any info on this?

[Anonymous]

I think it would be dependents on the internship.

[Anonymous]

That sounds like a cool opportunity and I don’t have any info. Certainly the number one thing schools and especially top schools look at is transcript so you don’t want internships and extracurriculars to limit what is on there. So if an internship took away from any core academics, even if they weren’t a graduation requirement, you’d want to think about it. But if by senior year she’s looking at more elective type classes then I can’t imagine it would hurt her. My DD actually spent her entire senior year abroad where none of her in- person classes mattered and she met graduation requirements through several online classes, she got into a top reachy-reach school based on strength of transcript at the end of junior year and then ( I presume) what she had to say about a non-traditional senior year. So There are certainly ways to make apparent that a kid isn’t taking the lazy way out but it needs some thought.

[Anonymous]

It's going to take even more thought this year because even though things will be starting to trend back to normal in the fall of 2021, many places that would normally take HS interns aren't going to go from nothing to full speed this spring when the applications for fall interns would normally be done.

[Anonymous]

Would she still be taking the core 5? (social studies, English, math, science, foreign language)