Over the past decade, internships have been drifting younger and younger. Once upon a time, students just needed an internship before graduating college to secure their place in the workforce. Then internships became a prudent goal every summer of college for resume building. Now, most students who go on to a top 20 university have done at least some kind of internship during their high school years.
Most of the time, students find these internships through personal connections. Dad plays golf with a startup CEO, or Mom’s friend happens to be a small business owner in need of social media help. These connections often favor the same legacies who already have an edge in applying to competitive schools. This unfair advantage is compounded by the fact that colleges tend to favor students with previous professional experience, as this is inversely correlated with the rate of graduate indebtedness, a key factor in US News college rankings.
Meanwhile, the children of immigrants, first-generation college students, and students from rural areas are left relying on cold outreach to find one of these coveted opportunities. However, cold outreach is often fruitless when faced with strict policies from most companies where they will not hire talent under 18.
This unfortunate dynamic is now changing thanks to an initiative started by entrepreneurs at The University of Chicago called StandOut Connect, which matches gifted high school students with internships in their area of interest. The organization was founded by Estelle Reardon in 2020.
Estelle grew up as the child of immigrants in a small town in Maine with very limited Rolodex for finding professional opportunities. Through three years of cold outreach and rejection from competitive programs, she was able to find three internships in high school, through NASA, and at legal and medical companies. These opportunities helped her realize that she was not actually interested in law or science as she previously believed.
As a result, she devoted her time in college to studying economics and business, pursuing her MBA at Chicago Booth during her undergraduate as a Dougan Scholar while working for two venture capital firms. Thanks to her time investing in technology companies, Estelle soon found herself connected to hundreds of CEOs across the US. With the help of other venture capital friends from Chicago Booth, she started matching these CEOs with high school students looking for internships.
Together, the team matched over 500 New York and Chicago high school students with successful remote internships. Their work soon caught the attention of the University, prompting UChicago’s Polsky Center for Innovation to give them over $30,000 in funding to continue their work in 2022. The team used these funds to create StandOut Search, the largest existing database for high school students to find internships, and to expand StandOut Connect, the program that matches high school students with internships, to students globally.
Today, the program receives over 1000 applications per month from students all over the world. The lucky few who are selected go through a month of professional training learning traditional skills, such as how to build a resume and network, in addition to essential modern skills, including how to implement AI tools into their daily tasks. Students also learn software and automation for just about every professional use case, from email sending to analytics, preparing them for a future job market driven by unprecedented technological change.
Once students are thoroughly prepared, they interview with companies relating to their interest area until they are hired into a paid internship position. The program partners with age-appropriate companies across industries, from law and social justice to neuroscience, genetics, and clean energy, making it a fit for students of any interest area. Unlike most experiential learning programs that match students with a simulated internship experience, it is paramount to StandOut Connect’s mission that students receive real professional responsibility.
Students are able to learn if they prefer meetings to deep work or creative projects to analytical assignments, gaining a better understanding of their interests and goals. They leave their internships having built lasting relationships with older professionals they are instructed to keep in touch with for help finding their next opportunity.
One participant in last summer’s cohort, Lisa, wants to be a lawyer. She was hired as an intern for a Harvard-founded company that uses AI to help startups write contracts. When asked to comment, “Lisa said I feel like my internship prepared me to be a lawyer at a time when that job description is changing a lot. Creating a blog to help others understand how AI will impact the legal field taught me a ton about law, artificial intelligence, and human behavior. Though I lack experience, I am confident that being able to teach older professionals about the technology overtaking their field will give me an edge in the future.”
Another previous participant, Brihu, dreams of a career in neuroscience. He was hired by a UChicago-founded company that is developing a platform that uses machine learning algorithms to analyze brain data and provide personalized insights and recommendations for improving mental health. Brihu said, “My internship has been challenging for sure, but it has helped me really understand how what I learned about the brain in AP bio can be practically applied with technology to actually change the way people feel. I am now more positive that I want to study computational neuroscience at Hopkins in the fall.” Brihu decided to continue with his internship into the school year and is still working there part-time now.
When asked to comment, Estelle said that she is happy with the progress StandOut Connect has made over the last four years, but the team still has a long way to go when it comes to making these opportunities accessible to all students. “When I first started StandOut Connect, I never dreamed we would receive such a large volume of student interest. If my high school self applied to this program, I honestly wonder if I would have been accepted. Looking forward, my biggest priority is bringing on more volunteers and partner companies so that we don’t have to turn so many brilliant students away. I also want to rapidly expand our scholarship program to support more low-income students and provide more opportunities for international students.”
