You’re only a sophomore in high school, but you have big goals. This describes most of the students we work with. However, simply having big goals doesn’t mean that they will work out. In order to get into a top college, you need to begin pursuing your goals early in your high school experience. An internship can be a crucial piece of the puzzle, offering the opportunity to deepen and refine your interests beyond the courses and programs offered at your school.
Internships are also differentiating factors. There may be many students are your school interested in the same colleges as you, but going above and beyond in pursuit of your interests through and internship is a way of standing out when it comes time to apply. Having someone on your team to help identifying and develop these ways of standing out is critical if you’re aiming for hard-to-get-into schools.
Of course, standing out on college applications isn’t the only point of an internship, though. What we love most about internships is that they are helpful for your academic growth and your personal development. You’ll get something to put on your resume and write about in your supplements, yes, but you will also gain a deeper understanding of what you like doing and why. Through working with hundreds of sophomores, we’ve found that refining areas of interest and deepening into passions is a crucial piece of any successful college strategy. And this is exactly what an internship can provide!
Outside of the United States, and increasingly within the US as well, some companies sell ‘internship’ experiences to high school students. These are most often short and expensive. While an experience like this may address the personal development purpose of an internship, these experiences are not impactful for your academic profile nor college applications.
In this post, we’re focused on internships that are immersive, hands-on experiences of ideally two or more weeks. Most internships available to sophomores will be unpaid, but sometimes lunches and/or stipends are provided. Below are the four steps you need to take to secure an internship as a sophomore that will have a true impact.
We help ambitious students chart outstanding futures. Learn More.
Through helping hundreds of sophomores secure meaningful internships, we’ve pinpointed four key steps that are crucial to finding your perfect fit. These steps are specifically calibrated for sophomore students, so if you are a freshman, junior, or senior we recommend that you to refer to those individual posts.
Step 1: Refine Areas of Interest
If you are a sophomore, you probably have an idea of what subjects come easy for you, or present exciting challenges, and what subjects you aren’t as big of a fan of. That is entirely normal. While we don’t recommend ignoring your weaker spots, it does make sense to focus your internship search on the areas that you are either a ‘natural’ at, or where you relish rising to the challenge.
First, try dreaming up a job that is centered on or spotlights these strong areas. What field would it be in? What kind of work would you be doing? What sort of team would you be part of? Chances are that this type of job does exist.
You may not get exactly there as a sophomore looking for an internship, but you need to be pointed in a direction if you want any hopes of landing there — and that’s exactly what this is. You are tuning into what you want by clarifying what you love, or, if you aren’t sure what you love, are simply deeply curious about.
In the end of this step, you want to have three or four key things that you are looking for in an internship, like a specific field (mechanical engineering, ecological research, historical studies, or politics, for example) and a type of work environment (entrepreneur, small company, or large company, for example).
Step 2: Look Around You
Once you have refined your areas of interest, you have a sense of what you need to look for — but where should you be looking?
Start with what businesses or industries that are in your area. We’ve had students travel across the country, or even internationally, for internships in the past, but this isn’t necessary and such enormous effort isn’t even helpful if the internship isn’t an ideal fit. It’s all about finding something that fits you, not about pursuing the most ‘impressive sounding’ opportunity. Working hands-on with a coding team at a small software company is much more impactful than, say, mopping floors at Google.
Map out what is around you by literally looking around. You should also ask your parents, local relatives, and friends about what they’ve heard about, and keep an open mind. If your dream is starting a business, interning with a family-run lumber company might be a perfect fit even if wood isn’t your ideal area of operation. Similarly, if you are interested in marketing, you could intern nearly anywhere and learn an immense amount, even if the product or service you are helping to spread the word about isn’t something you are thrilled about.
If you choose to intern in politics, though, it’s important to know that this rule doesn’t apply. While application readers should not bring their own biases to your application, the reality is that many can’t help it. If you want a position with a political campaign or initiative, remember that the mission of that group will say something to eventual college application readers about who you are. This holds true for non-profits and charities, too.
Step 3: Brush Up Your Resume
Next, you need to put yourself in the position to obtain your ideal internship based on those areas of interest. This means brushing up your most important tool in the internship hunt: your resume. We have lots of guidance on how to write a resume for your college application, but this is a little different. Whereas your college app resume is for application readers, this is for potential employers (even if an internship isn’t a ‘real’ job).
Your resume should start with a cover letter that is 200-400 words long. In the cover letter, you will describe what you are looking for in a resume. More importantly, though, you need to customize the cover letter for each company or individual you choose to reach out to (see steps 3 and 4). Customizing the cover letter is crucial, so don’t skip this step!
Next comes the actual resume. Your resume must be no more than one page. Seriously. And it doesn’t need to include everything you have ever done. In fact, it shouldn’t. A perfect resume isn’t about having done everything, but showing the potential employer (or internship provider) what is actually relevant to them. So, you need to tailor your resume to the type of internship you want — but remember to look at your experiences from a few different angles. For example, if you want to highlight leadership, that may mean including a role you’ve held in something completely unrelated, otherwise, to your potential internship. If it is the best way of noting your leadership abilities, though, it is relevant to this.
Ideally, you have had a summer job before, worked informally babysitting or mowing lawns or carrying groceries, or, at minimum, been engaged in long-term or on-going community engagement experiences, like volunteering. These types of experiences should be highlighted on a resume, but tailored to fit the type of internship you’re looking for.
step four: Small is Okay, But Find Room for Growth
You are only a sophomore, and it’s probably true that your resume doesn’t have much on it yet. That’s okay, but see this internship as a building block. It’ll be another thing on your resume when you go for your next opportunity, so aim for a position that offers room for growth — either at the same company, or through the acquisition of useful skills that you could apply somewhere else in the future.
Internships are a fabulous way of differentiating your application, amplifying your passions, and clarifying your interests. As a sophomore, you have the opportunity to push yourself outside of the classroom in ways that will pay off big time when you go to apply to college. Finding an internship is an important step towards a strong application!
Every year, we work with sophomores to chart strategies that take them to their dream schools. Contact us to get yours.