We often hammer home to our students the importance of developing an academic area of expertise throughout high school. How we find students set themselves apart in a highly competitive landscape is to develop a super-specific niche that’s reflected in the elective classes you take, the extracurriculars in which you participate, your summer plans.
We also recommend our students increase their odds by applying to a specific program or major at their top choice school that is a natural extension of their academic niche. In this post, we talk about how to get an impressive internship if you’re pursuing a medical area of expertise.
THINK SMALL
Internships don’t need to be for a major corporation or a nationally-recognized institution in order to be impressive. In fact, colleges understand that if you are a high school intern somewhere extremely prestigious and well-resourced, you were likely collating and getting coffee. The goal should be to land an internship that’s in line with your academic area of expertise in which you’ll end the internship with specific accomplishment (and learning experiences) you can include on your resume or talk about in a college interview. Small companies, nonprofits and underfunded organizations are great places to look because an ambitious and energized high school student can actually make an impact. By being a position to contribute and learn at an organization, you may also connect with industry professionals who can write supplemental letters of recommendation or refer you to internships and jobs down the line.
POSSIBLE AVENUES
Identify medical professors and researchers from colleges in your area, including community colleges. Study their bodies of work. Reach out (with several months’ lead-time), citing some of their research and why you found it interesting. Ask if they’d be open to having someone help them with their research for a summer or a semester.
Reach out to the head of your local hospital, public health clinic, and/or doctor’s office. Express interest in pursuing a career in medicine and ask if they’d be open to an intern.
Another option is to reach out to medical journals and see if their editors need research help. This is also something that would likely work as a remote internship, so you have the opportunity to message medical journals across the country, increasing your potential rate of success.
Local nonprofits are another great possibility to explore. Even local chapters of big national organizations that relate to your field of interest within medicine. There are countless medical nonprofits doing great work curing cancer, helping people with disabilities, working to make healthcare more affordable, you name it.
Regional companies within medicine are another great possibility. Think about medical labs, medical supply companies and tech companies focused on medicine.
The best approach is to make a list of your top places for an internship (just like you would for college) and target multiple places. Make sure you do your research for each and every place to which you’re going to reach out. In your reach out, you should talk about why you like that organization (include specifics) and then talk about how you’re qualified to support them.
Need help landing an impressive resume? Call us. We’re great at helping students develop extracurriculars that stand out.