How to get a high school internship?

Figure out why you want an internship first. If it's for money, then you just want a job. If it's to learn... we are now in a situation in the world where you don't need to do an internship to learn. Different companies do things in very different ways, so it's quite likely what you learn from a day to day process won't be especially helpful anyway.

Give yourself a project. Make it something very simple that people can see. A web app to do X. A mobile app to do Y. A chat bot to do Z. Whatever. Going through the entire process to get something live that people can use is a great experience.

I emailed the CTO of a startup directly when I was in high school.

I was very respectful and humble in my request. Told him what I could offer and expressed that I wasn't in it "for a summer job". I really wanted to learn and just needed someone to give me a chance. In exchange I would write whatever code they needed.

If you're leading the programming group of a FIRST robotics team then you're more prepared for real-world development than a fourth semester CS student. Do anything you have to do to get an interview and be confident.

I had programming internships for two summers in high school (after 11th grade and after graduating, before college). The first one was with a company my dad was laid off from but somehow they were still ok with taking me when I asked them. The second I emailed in response to a job post on CraigsList for a full time programmer.

This was in Lancaster, PA, a county of 500,000 centered around a city of 60k. So that is to say it was a very small metro area.

So in general, look local and respond to job ads hiring full time programmers. Local companies are always desperate for smart and ambitious folks, regardless of their level of education. If you're in a metro area of a city with at least 50k you'll likely be able to eventually find a company willing to bring you as an intern.

Good luck and don't get discouraged if people say no! Internships and full time jobs in tech are a numbers game.

If you don’t need the money right now, getting into IOI /topcoder prelearning all material for CS engineering (buy/download and read the books that you will need to learn anyways) may speed up your university and improve your grades, and will make it easier to work while you are in the university.

Also ask some students there about the hardest subject in the first semester, as it may be the hardest semester for getting rid of students (for us it was calculus, but it was easy for me, as I amazing math classes in high school and went to math competitions before).

I wouldn’t do example projects, as it’s much harder to make an impact there than by getting good grades or working for a known company.

I don't have anything specific for you, but I will tell you something I didn't understand when I was 18. the "requirements" on a job listing are not the real requirements. plenty of people will get those internships without fulfilling half of the "requirements".

when you see an interesting job, try to find the recruiter (or sometimes better, but harder to find, the actual hiring manager) and send them a brief message explaining why you're interested in the job and why you think you would do well. if nothing else, this will help you identify stuff to learn over the next few months.

Hi, I got an internship during summer 2021 as a 10th grader, and created a blog post about it at https://blog.vishnus.me/posts/getting-summer-2021-internship.... Hope this helps.

These internships requesting 4th semesters of college-how does your experience rank to them?

Maybe identify what you miss other than the semesters requirement and grind towards adding them. The semester thing may simply mean they want someone who has made it through the first two years of college. It may be a thing to avoid students likely to drop out of college or something like that. Your robotics experience may go some ways ameliorating that worry.

Otherwise, I’d say spend some time figuring out what’s coming in your college courses. If you have areas of weakness now is the time to go back and strengthen that knowledge without homework and quiz stressors.

Edit-also, lookup the syllabus for your coming courses. If you can ID which textbooks you’ll need and get them you can start reading them now. These are usually posted on professor pages or department pages.

Look close to home first. I bet there are some small businesses near where you are now that need help - webdev, sysadmin, day-to-day IT kind of stuff. Is there a local chamber of commerce? Try that! Write them an email and tell them a bit about yourself. I'm sure they know someone who could use your help. I bet a small company near you would happily pay you an hourly rate to do sysadmin stuff for them.

I wanted to reach out to you, but there doesn't seem to be any contact info on your blog.

Do you have an email or twitter?

Just find a local company you think might be interesting and send an email asking

We get email from students/schools now and then, and we have them when not too busy

So i did internships starting in middle school, through college, and got a job from them after graduating. So i think i have a great ability to answer this.

My first internship was after middle school. It was unpaid and it was at a research lab that my fathers friend worked at. It was in MechE work. Did that for a summer.

Then, i told someone who ran the lab i wanted to go into medical sciences, and he called up some one at a sister lab who did physiology research. I did that paid for a summer. The next summer i went back, and helped them with data science work where i realized i wanted to do CS stuff. They hired me for a third summer to work on data acquisition applications and related stuff. I continued that until college.

During my free time, i was writing my own smart home hub, and i had it on my resume. Showed that to a company at career fair, they hired me on the spot (or almost).

TLDR: You really need a network to get it without any skill or validation. Projects can help you show initiative and basic skill.