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A High School Student’s Guide To CS Programs/Internships

Areeta Wong
Code Like A Girl
Published in
9 min readAug 17, 2017

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Updated on April 1, 2019.

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INTRODUCTION

Heyo! This is a “guide” for primarily for those (some stuff are strictly directed at girls) in tech hoping to find opportunities during your high school career. All of this information is from my own research and is in no way the most calculated and correct way to have a successful career in tech. Also, APPLY TO ALL OF THIS (it’ll be worth it to get the experience of writing (and prepare for college apps — yikes) and if you get in, have a memorable life experience and if you don’t, you’ll find something better.)

Disclaimer: This is not the complete list and I’ll be updating this! Reach out to me through Facebook or email if you have more resources, tips, or just information. Take some time out of your day to look through this. You might change find something that will give you an experience of a lifetime.

Also, there are opportunities everywhere. You just need to find it. This list is just some things that I happened to find.

INTERNSHIPS 101

I’ve placed two “paths” for an internship for those who are interested in interning at a college campus or a company (steps for both are about the same.) As most tech companies are like, they don’t have a lot of set programs dedicated to high school students which is why it’s essential for you to personally reach out to companies/colleges. Additionally, keep in mind that most high school level internships are paid through knowledge. Best of luck!

First, make an excel spreadsheet and divide it to look something like:

College Campus:

  1. Find a college to intern at (should be relatively near for you to commute)
  2. Check if you are eligible to intern (some have an age requirement)
  3. Go to the college’s’ main website and search up faculty/labs doing research that interest you
  4. Make sure it’s a topic that you at least know a little about
  5. Actually be interested in the lab
  6. Make a list (10ish) of faculty/labs and the emails of the professor in charge
  7. Make sure the professor’s’ interests are aligned with yours
  8. Create an email template
  9. Should be concise ( 1 to 2 paragraphs)
  10. Introduce yourself (name, age, grade, school)
  11. Explain your passions, extracurriculars, interests, job/volunteer experience, work ethics, etc.
  12. Why you’re interested in interning at their lab
  13. Explain what you hope to gain out of the lab
  14. Describe the commitment you wish to place onto lab (hours/week)
  15. Make sure you’re polite
  16. Should have good grammar
  17. Put your resume
  18. Follow up if no response after a week.
  19. Professors are busy and have a lot of emails to go through.

Company:

  1. Research and make a list on all of the companies that you’re interested in
  2. Interest can be through their team, product, or even location
  3. Find the emails of recruiters/engineers
  4. Create an email template
  5. Introduce yourself (name, age, grade, school)
  6. Explain your passions, extracurriculars, interests, job/volunteer experience, work ethics, etc.
  7. Why you’re interested in interning at their company
  8. Explain what you hope to gain out of the company
  9. Describe the commitment you wish to place onto the company(hours/week)
  10. Make sure you’re polite
  11. Should have good grammar
  12. Put your resume
  13. Repeat about 100 times

Resources:

Tips (courtesy of Lizzie Siegle):

  1. Use your connections + network! Although it may not get you the job, it can definitely get your foot in + get an interview!
  2. Don’t be afraid to ask for more (help, resources, time, meeting with people, etc. ) Ask for an office visit. Ask for coffee. Ask for advice. Ask for a week-long externship (outlining what you can do, what you want to do, what they’d have to do ie you’d shadow, contribute ideas, but mainly shadow.) On office visits, ask questions about culture, backgrounds, people. A thing that I’ve learned is that adults want to help you. They want you to thrive in whatever subject you’re interested in, so take advantage and learn everything they can provide you with.
  3. Follow up if you don’t hear anything back.
  4. Cold email. Ask everyone you know. Find someone on twitter. Find their email on their twitter or personal site or LinkedIn.
  5. Network. Point out someone’s tee shirt or laptop sticker. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people!
  6. Utilize your own network. If your parents work at a company, ask to tour, talk to their coworkers, or even intern.
  7. Say yes to almost everything.
  8. Build whatever projects you enjoy and learn whenever you can.
  9. LOOK AT THE GWC #HIREME INTERNSHIPS
  10. Add a resume to every email — about your cover letter and resume, these are relevant articles: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-on-the-cover-letter and https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1799-if-i-have-two-candidates-in-front-of-me. Just make sure your cover letter isn’t a copy/paste thing that sounds like it came out of a cookie-cutter for each company ;)
  11. Do what you think is best and be smart about it. Experience is number 1. — Samuel Escapa
  12. Start out with start-ups.
  13. If you’re writing to a professor, make sure to read a paper/publication by them.
  14. Be persistent.

Real Talk

  • “If you’re looking to get into a tech company — my best advice is to just build all the things! Pad your GitHub with meaningful and different projects and code samples. Teach yourself new technology stacks and programming languages to use in your projects, bonus points for knowing how they work and how to write “good code” in each. Consider doing related research at school for additional projects if you don’t have any ideas. Practice your algorithms and data structures. Lastly, be sure to prepare a good resume and apply everywhere!” — Joel Gomez, UCR, LinkedIn Intern

SUMMER 101

Some of these are strictly for girls only. Shout out to Michael Yoo for some of these.

Make sure to check out: https://peerlift.org/ to find out more about internships, summer programs, awards, scholarships, etc. that you could apply to in high school!

Freshman Year:

Sophomore Year:

Junior Year:

Senior Year:

Stanford Things

All Years:

These links also have great opportunities:

Scholarships for CS:

Remember that even if you don’t attend any of these, there are still online courses or local community college courses that you can enroll in. Udacity is a great place to start!

RESUME

For all of these programs, you will probably need a resume. Check out this medium article for help:

Some College-related Internships/Opportunities:

EVENTS

More Hackathon Related Things:

Resources:

Things to participate in:

Things to look at:

Facebook groups to be in:

Scholarships:

For all of seniors out there, I recommend applying for college fly-in visits. They basically fly you out for free and let you experience their college.

CONCLUSION

I hope all of you found that at least semi-helpful. If not, here something that you might like: link . Remember to PM me if you have suggestions, comments, or issues (yikes). Huge thanks to everyone who’s sent me some of these.

Computer Science
High School
Internships
Codelikeagirl
Kids And Tech

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Areeta Wong
Code Like A Girl
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