Biology Internships for High School Students (2027)

TL;DR

You’ll find 20 biology internships, each with its deadline, stipend, duration, location, and eligibility. We checked every one against the program’s own website. They’re grouped by where you’d actually be working: remote, university labs, hospitals and cancer centers, zoos, gardens and field sites, and the ones that run through the school year. Most close between January and April, so find your group and lock in those dates now. Locked out by your grade, your zip code, or a deadline that already passed? Apply to Horizon instead. You’ll work 1-on-1 with a professor or PhD mentor on a research paper. New cohorts start three times a year, so you’re not stuck waiting for next summer.

A biology internship is a job in someone else’s lab. What that looks like depends on where you go. At one you’d check swallow nest boxes and record what’s inside them. At another you’d pull DNA out of plant samples and run the sequences. At a cancer center you’d be on a graduate student’s project.

Most of them pay. Most don’t need you to have done research before, and a few spend the first two weeks training you. It’s a quick way to find out whether you like biology or just liked the idea of it, which is useful to know before you pick a major. If you’re not sure what you’d want to work on, 40 biology research topics is a good place to start.

The hard part is getting in, and not for the reason you’d expect. Of the 20 below, 11 only accept students from one city, county, or state. Four require US citizenship. One only happens if a Penn State professor agrees to sponsor you, and finding that person is on you. Here’s how to do that.

So the question worth asking isn’t which ones are best. It’s which ones you can apply to at all. Every entry below tells you the gate before the pitch. And if you’ve never done research before, these programs are built for beginners.

What’s the difference between a biology internship and a biology summer program?

The two get searched for interchangeably, and they aren’t the same thing. 

	Biology internship	Biology summer program
Whose project	You join something already running	Yours, or a curriculum set up for students
Who pays whom	They pay you. 13 of the 20 below do	You pay them, often a few thousand dollars
How long	6 to 10 weeks, usually full time	3 to 5  weeks is typical
Who gets in	Tight gates. 11 of the 20 below only take students from one city, county, or state	Mostly anyone who fits the grade range and can pay
Experience needed	Usually none. Some spend the first two weeks training you	None
What you do all day	Real tasks the lab needs done	Lab exercises designed to teach you something
What you leave with	A poster, and a supervisor who can write about you	A certificate, sometimes a group project
On an application	Verifiable. A working lab trusted you with real work	Shows interest, but it’s a weaker signal

So which one should you do?

Neither is better. They answer different questions. An internship is the stronger line on an application, but a program will teach you faster if you don’t know the field yet. If a program is what you’re after, the biology research programs list is the better page, and there’s a separate roundup of free summer science research programs too.

There’s a third thing neither reliably gives you, and it’s the one colleges and competitions care about: a paper with your name on it that you own. Most internships end in a poster you present once. Here’s what you can actually do with a research paper, and it’s more than a poster.

How to choose a biology internship

• Where you live. Eleven of the 20 only take students from one city, county, or state. Not in one of them? Go straight to remote.
  
• Your grade and age. Most want juniors, and almost all want you 16 by the start date. Under 16, your list is DNALC (13), Alley Pond (14), AMNH (10th grade), Camp Zon and USC.
  
• Citizenship. Stanford SHTEM, SPARK and NASA GeneLab are US citizens and permanent residents only. International students, online programs open globally are the realistic route.
  
• What you’d study. Wildlife: Project TRUE, Lincoln Park Zoo, Alaska Songbird, Hutton, SUNY Oneonta. Disease: Scripps REACH, USC, Magee-Womens, SIMI. Genetics: Camp Zon. Space biology: NASA GeneLab. Still deciding? 40 biology research topics.
  
• What you leave with. Almost all end in a poster. DNALC puts your sequences in a public database, AMNH gives you a free college credit, and none of them end in a paper that’s yours.

Do biology internships help with your college applications?

Eight weeks in a working lab is verifiable. Someone supervised you, there’s a named scientist attached to it, and a two-week course doesn’t read the same way. Paid counts for more still, because an institution decided your time was worth money. None of it guarantees anything on its own, though. The fuller picture on summer research and admissions is more complicated than the marketing.

Looking for something this page doesn’t cover? There are separate lists for biotech internships, bioinformatics research programs, genetics summer programs, molecular biology courses, and life science summer programs. If you’re in New York, 16 research programs in NYC and 15 research internships in NYC go wider than biology.

Remote biology internships

1. Horizon Academic Research Program

Location: Remote, worldwide
Cost: $6,950 per course. Need-based aid for households under $75,000
Selectivity: 26% acceptance from 6,539 applications. Seminar cohorts of 3 to 6 students
Dates: Fall and spring trimesters run 15 weeks, summer runs 10. Labs run 12 to 16 weeks. About 8 to 10 hours a week
Application Deadline: Rolling, with three cohorts a year
Eligibility: High school students with an unweighted GPA of 3.67 or above. The admitted-student average is 3.93

Horizon pairs each student with a professor or PhD mentor for a trimester of one-on-one research ending in a research paper of roughly 5,000 words. Life science courses are named for what they actually cover rather than for a subject area: Gene Editing and CRISPR, Protein Biophysics, Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Environmental Health and Engineering, and Bio-Industry. The Labs format provides 15 one-on-one mentor sessions plus 4 sessions with a writing coach. The Seminar format provides 20 sessions with a professor or teaching assistant, in a cohort of 3 to 6, plus the same writing support. Students retain full ownership of the finished paper and may submit it to journals or competitions.

Who is it right for? Students who’ve been ruled out by residency requirements, grade restrictions, or a passed deadline, and students who want a written output rather than a poster.

2. NASA GeneLab for High Schools (GL4HS)

Location: Remote, asynchronous
Cost: Free. Unpaid, and NASA states that stipends were discontinued beginning with the 2026 program
Selectivity: Capacity of 1,000 students, admitted on a rolling basis. No acceptance rate published
Dates: 12 weeks. The 2026 cycle ran June 1 to August 28, with optional weekly office hours
Application Deadline: March 15, or when 1,000 applications are received, whichever comes first. The 2026 window opened February 15. 2027 dates are not yet posted
Eligibility: Students entering grade 11 or 12, or entering college as freshmen. Minimum 3.0 unweighted GPA, at least one high school biology course, US citizens or permanent residents at US-based high schools

GL4HS is a self-paced course in space biology built around NASA’s Open Science Data Repository. Students work through omics and bioinformatics material and analyze real spaceflight datasets, the same ones NASA researchers use. An optional team capstone project runs alongside the coursework, and the top three teams present at the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research conference. Because admission is rolling until capacity, applying early matters considerably more than applying well.

Who is it right for? Students who want NASA on a resume, who can self-pace, and who won’t be discouraged that the program no longer pays.

3. Camp Zon, Zon Lab

Location: Virtual. Host labs are Harvard Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and Boston Children’s Hospital
Cost: Free to attend. Paid at $15.00 per hour for roughly 22 hours a week, per the Boston Children’s Hospital posting
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Two weeks. The 2026 cycle ran July 6 to 17, with afternoon sessions and one morning session
Application Deadline: April 24 for the 2026 cycle. 2027 dates are not yet posted
Eligibility: Must both live in Massachusetts and attend a Massachusetts high school. Must be 16 by June 1. No research experience required

Camp Zon is a paid two-week virtual research experience run out of Dr. Len Zon’s lab, focused on zebrafish research into anemia, blood development, and cancer biology. Students generate a hypothesis, design experiments, and analyze data, while observing live procedures including zebrafish embryo injections. The schedule includes biology and coding lectures, a journal club working through primary literature, and career mentoring from Dr. Zon and lab scientists. Students present their findings to lab members and guests at the end. Note that the program’s own site publishes almost none of these details: the dates, deadline, pay rate, age and residency requirements appear only on the Boston Children’s Hospital job posting.

Who is it right for? Massachusetts students who want paid lab exposure without a nine-week commitment. Two weeks and it pays, which is unusual. If you’re in the area, 15 lab opportunities in Boston and 15 best summer programs in Massachusetts are worth a look too.

4. SPARK Summer Mentorship Program

Location: Varies by project. Many listings are remote. The organization is based in the greater Seattle area
Cost: A fee applies, set per project. A sampled 2026 listing showed $250, which SPARK says funds scholarships for disadvantaged students. Unpaid
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Set per project. A sampled 2026 project ran June 30 to August 28, eight weeks at 30 to 35 hours a week
Application Deadline: Varies by project, posted on each project page. The sampled project closed May 2. Projects are announced in March, applications run in April, and decisions land by early June
Eligibility: Grades 9 to 12 in the current school year. US citizens or permanent residents currently residing in the US. H4 and F1 visa holders are not eligible. Individual projects may narrow this further

SPARK matches students to real projects posted by startups, established companies, and academic labs, with weekly mentor meetings and a deliverable set by the mentor. Biology-adjacent listings have included work on genomic sequences, medical imaging, and epidemiological modeling, though the mix changes year to year. Because everything is set at the project level, there is no single program-wide deadline, fee, or schedule, and the project pages are the only reliable source. One caution: the FAQ page on sparksmp.org currently contains unrelated placeholder text with dollar figures that have nothing to do with SPARK.

Who is it right for? Students who want industry rather than academia, and who are comfortable managing a rolling, project-by-project application process.

Biology internships in university labs

5. Stanford STaRS Internship Program

Location: Jill Helms Laboratory, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Stanford, CA
Cost: No cost to participate. Unpaid. Stanford’s FAQ answers “typically, no” on pay, and states plainly that it does not fund travel, housing, or meals. Daily rail or bus fare is covered in some extenuating cases
Selectivity: Approximately 20 students each summer. No acceptance rate published
Dates: 8 weeks. The 2026 cycle ran June 15 to August 7, Monday to Friday, with Wednesdays set aside for out-of-lab learning
Application Deadline: Not published on any official page. The 2026 application is closed and no 2027 opening date is posted
Eligibility: High school or community college students. Must be 16 on the day the internship starts, stated as no exceptions. US and its territories only, no international applicants. A letter of recommendation is mandatory and applications without one are not considered

STaRS places students in a single bench lab for eight weeks of full-time research in tissue regeneration and craniofacial biology. Training covers histology, imaging, and genotyping, with parallel workshops in immunohistochemistry and scientific communication. Wednesdays are reserved for learning outside the lab, including a tour of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Students present their findings to faculty, peers, and guests at the end of the program. Note that the Apply and FAQ pages still carry 2025 dates and contradict the main page in places, so confirm details directly before applying.

Who is it right for? Bay Area students who can commute daily, don’t need a stipend, and want depth in one lab rather than a survey.

6. Stanford SHTEM Summer Internships

Location: Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Stanford states the Summer 2027 program is expected to be in person. Housing is not provided
Cost: $95 non-refundable application fee. No tuition. Unpaid, though Stanford invites applicants to flag financial hardship in the application
Selectivity: Not published. Mentee groups of 2 to 5
Dates: 8 weeks at 20 to 30 hours a week. Exact 2027 dates are to be announced in fall 2026
Application Deadline: Applications are expected to open in December 2026, with decisions at the end of March or early April 2027
Eligibility: High school juniors or seniors in the 2026 to 2027 school year, and community college students. Must be 14 by June 20, 2027. US citizens and permanent residents only, stated as no exceptions

SHTEM runs out of the Stanford Compression Forum and places students in groups of 2 to 5 with a lab mentor on projects spanning information science, engineering, linguistics, psychology, biology, and neuroscience. The biology and neuroscience placements tend toward sensory systems and how the brain processes information, which makes this a strong fit for students drawn to the computational side of life science rather than the bench. The daily schedule is set with the mentor. The deliverable is a research project plus a final presentation. Several widely circulated listings describe SHTEM as remote and open to international students. Neither is currently true.

Who is it right for? Students at the intersection of biology and computing who can be at Stanford in person and can absorb an unpaid summer.

7. ARISE at NYU Tandon

Location: NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY
Cost: No cost. $2,000 stipend, paid on completion
Selectivity: Not published. The program cites over 80 NYU research labs
Dates: 10 weeks. The 2026 cycle ran June 1 to August 14, with orientation May 29. Roughly 150 hours of lab experience
Application Deadline: February 27 at 5pm for the 2026 cycle. 2027 dates are not yet posted
Eligibility: Rising juniors and seniors in the upcoming school year. Full-time NYC residents attending NYC schools only

ARISE opens with several weeks of training in lab skills, research methods, safety, and college-level writing, then places each student in an NYU faculty lab for an independent project supervised by both a faculty mentor and a graduate student mentor. Life science placements span molecular biology, biomedical engineering, and environmental science. Students present twice: at the ARISE Colloquium and at a poster symposium held at the American Museum of Natural History. At 150 hours across ten weeks, this is one of the longer commitments on the page and one of the better-structured entries into a university lab for a student with no prior experience.

Who is it right for? New York City students who want a full summer with real training built in before the lab placement starts.

8. SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station

Location: SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station, Cooperstown and Otsego Lake, Otsego County, NY
Cost: No fee. $3,500 stipend on successful completion. No housing provided for high school interns, and out-of-county students must arrange their own. A free daily shuttle runs from the main campus
Selectivity: 1 to 3 positions, with at least one awarded to a resident of Otsego County. No acceptance rate published
Dates: 8 weeks, scheduled flexibly within a late May to August window. The workday runs 8:00am to 4:00pm
Application Deadline: Not published. The station states that application materials will be available in January 2027
Eligibility: New York State residents, age 16 or older as of June 20, with a strong academic background in environmental or natural sciences

Interns join the field station’s ongoing work on the Otsego Lake watershed, splitting time between fieldwork and lab analysis. The work includes fisheries surveys, plant surveys, and water sampling on and around the lake, followed by sample processing and data analysis back in the central lab. With only one to three high school positions a year, this is the most numerically selective entry on the page, though the station publishes no acceptance rate. Note that the widely repeated figures of $3,000, nine weeks, and a March deadline belong to the undergraduate program, not this one.

Who is it right for? New York students who want genuine field ecology and a stipend that reflects a full summer of it.

Biology internships at hospitals, medical schools and cancer centers

9. Summer Institute on Medical Ignorance (SIMI), University of Arizona

Location: University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, Tucson, AZ
Cost: No tuition or fee published. Paid at minimum wage for 40 hours a week across the seven-week session. No hourly figure is published
Selectivity: Approximately 25 students accepted each year. No acceptance rate published
Dates: 7 weeks. The 2026 cycle ran June 1 to July 17, full-time Monday to Friday
Application Deadline: January 16 for the 2026 cycle, stated in the application PDF rather than on the web page
Eligibility: Current high school students, particularly juniors and seniors, from disadvantaged backgrounds, with a personal statement of disadvantaged status required. Cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better. US citizens or permanent visa holders, and a Social Security card is required

SIMI places students full-time in a University of Arizona medical lab or clinic on an assigned project, with past cohorts working in cardiovascular disease, genetics, cancer, neuroscience, and preventive medicine. The program is built around a specific teaching idea, that the productive place to work is the edge of what medicine doesn’t yet know, and it runs questioning workshops and seminars alongside the lab work. Students present their findings at the end of the session. Applicants should note that the surrounding website is dated in places and the current application PDF is the only reliable source for cycle details.

Who is it right for? Arizona students from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds who want full-time clinical research and can commit to 40 hours a week.

10. Magee-Womens Research Institute Summer Internship

Location: Magee-Womens Research Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Cost: No tuition or application fee. A $1,800 stipend, available only to students whose household qualifies for the National School Breakfast and Lunch Program for Pennsylvania. Otherwise unpaid
Selectivity: Not published. The institute reports 259 scholars since 1995 across 70 high schools
Dates: 6 weeks, 240 hours. The 2026 cycle ran June 15 to July 24
Application Deadline: The 2026 cycle is closed. Applications for summer 2027 open in late fall 2026, with no dates published yet
Eligibility: Current sophomores or juniors, over 16 by the program start date, with primary residence in one of 13 southwest Pennsylvania counties: Greene, Fayette, Somerset, Westmoreland, Allegheny, Washington, Beaver, Lawrence, Mercer, Butler, Armstrong, Indiana, and Cambria

Interns work an individual research project under a Magee investigator and their lab staff, across reproductive biology, maternal and infant health, fertility preservation, and health disparities. Recent projects have covered genetic analysis, tissue modeling, cancer, and antibacterial materials testing. The 240-hour requirement includes holidays, so the schedule is genuinely full-time. Students attend Lunch and Learn sessions through the program and present at an annual Presentation Day. The “under 8% acceptance rate” attached to this program on several listicles does not appear on any official page.

Who is it right for? Southwest Pennsylvania students interested in reproductive and maternal health, a field with far fewer high school entry points than cancer research.

11. Penn State College of Medicine Internships and Observation

Location: Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA
Cost: No fee published. Whether the placement is paid is not published at all. Students pay for their own required immunizations
Selectivity: Not published. This is not a cohort program
Dates: No fixed dates. Either a one to two day research shadowing visit, or an extended internship running weeks to months
Application Deadline: None. Rolling, with roughly one week for review
Eligibility: At least 16 years of age, living in the United States, and sponsored and supervised by a member of the College of Medicine faculty. Identifying that faculty member is the student’s responsibility

Penn State’s program is structurally different from everything else on this page. There is no cohort, no application season, and no selection committee in the usual sense. A student finds a faculty member willing to supervise them, and the College of Medicine then processes the placement, including insurance documentation, child-abuse-reporting training, and background clearances. The content of the internship is entirely determined by the sponsoring lab, which is why the site publishes no techniques, deliverable, or duration. The Penn State Research Database and departmental pages are the starting point for finding a supervisor.

Who is it right for? Persistent students near Hershey who are willing to do the outreach themselves. Seven ways to find a research lab is the relevant preparation, and honestly it applies well beyond Penn State.

12. Scripps Research REACH High School Summer Internship

Location: Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA. Students provide their own transportation
Cost: No application fee or tuition. $5,040 stipend for the seven-week internship. The three-day boot camp that precedes it is unpaid
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Boot camp June 16 to 18, then the internship June 22 to August 7 for the 2026 cycle. Seven weeks at roughly 40 hours a week, 9am to 5pm
Application Deadline: March 22 for the 2026 cycle, with virtual interviews in early April and decisions at the end of April. 2027 dates are not yet posted
Eligibility: San Diego County resident, at least 16 on or before the start date, one year each of high school chemistry and biology, minimum 3.0 GPA, and enrollment at one of nine partner schools: Barrio Logan College Institute, Crawford, Del Lago Academy, Escondido, Hoover, Lincoln, Madison, Morse, and Orange Glen. No prior participants, and applicants must be legally eligible to work in the US

REACH pairs each intern with a graduate student mentor for full-time bench research, opening with a three-day boot camp on experimental design and technique before the lab placement begins. Weekly professional development workshops and scientific seminars run alongside the research, and the program closes with a presentation at the campus-wide Summer Intern Symposium. At $5,040 this is the highest confirmed stipend on the page, and the nine-school partner list is the tightest eligibility gate. Note that Scripps also runs a separate Translational Institute internship open to high school through professional students, which publishes almost no figures and is frequently confused with this one.

Who is it right for? Students at the nine partner schools. If you’re at one of them, this is the strongest offer on this page by a distance.

13. USC Bridge Institute BUGS Jr.

Location: USC Dornsife, University Park campus, Los Angeles, CA. Commuter program, no housing
Cost: No tuition or application fee. $800 stipend on successful completion. Parking, if used, runs about $3.32 a day
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Roughly 7 weeks at a minimum of 30 hours a week. The 2026 cycle ran June 16 to the symposium on August 1
Application Deadline: April 24 for the 2026 cycle, now closed. 2027 dates are not yet posted
Eligibility: Current high school students or incoming freshmen. No GPA requirement. US citizens, permanent residents, or students already in the US in valid immigration status, with no visa sponsorship. Must be in the Los Angeles area. Animal research requires students to be 18 or older, and hospital observation 17 or older

BUGS Jr. places students in a USC lab with a faculty mentor and lab members, across biomedical materials, instrumentation, computational and animal disease models, and human health studies. Weekly journal clubs, technical panels, and career symposia run alongside the bench work, and the program closes with a poster at the summer symposium. The absence of a GPA requirement is worth noting, since it makes this one of the few competitive lab internships on the page that doesn’t screen on grades before it screens on interest.

Who is it right for? Los Angeles students, including rising freshmen, and particularly students whose transcript is stronger in interest than in GPA.

Biology internships at zoos, gardens and field sites

Outdoor work with animals, plants, and water. Three of the four pay, and all four are tied to a place.

14. Project TRUE, Wildlife Conservation Society and Bronx Zoo

Location: Bronx Zoo, Bronx, NY, in partnership with Fordham University and WCS
Cost: No fee. Summer interns receive a $750 stipend, or NYC hourly minimum wage through SYEP if eligible. Fall interns receive approximately $350
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Summer runs late June to August, three days a week in July and August. Fall runs September to December across 14 Saturdays
Application Deadline: Late February. No specific date is published, and the 2026 window has closed
Eligibility: High school sophomore or junior in good standing, resident of the Bronx, and eligible to work in the United States

Project TRUE puts students alongside Fordham and WCS scientists on original urban ecology research, with published project areas covering mammal species distribution, bird community composition, water quality, and invasive species management. Students learn field data collection and analysis methods and present their findings to both scientists and the general public. The fall track is unusual and useful: 14 Saturdays across a semester is a genuinely different commitment shape from a full-time summer, and it’s one of very few paid options that fits around school. One caution: the application PDF hosted on the zoo’s site is a Prospect Park Zoo form from 2014 and should be ignored.

Who is it right for? Bronx students, particularly sophomores, who want ecology fieldwork without giving up a summer.

15. Malott Family Research Apprenticeship, Lincoln Park Zoo

Location: Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL
Cost: No fee. Described as a paid program, but the amount is not published
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: 7 weeks, Monday to Friday, June 22 to August 7 for the most recent posted cycle, plus a mandatory orientation on Saturday June 6. The program does not run July 2 and 3
Application Deadline: Opens February 1 and closes March 9, with half-day group interviews in March and notifications by March 29
Eligibility: Resident of the city of Chicago, entering grades 11 to 12 or freshman year of college in the fall, 16 to 18 years old by June 7, and legally allowed to work in the United States

Apprentices are matched with a mentor from one of the zoo’s science centers and run a real animal-focused research project through the summer. The zoo’s own examples give a good sense of the range: studying the impact of roads and waterways on bat activity, and analyzing the relationship between litter size and first-year mortality. The deliverable is a research poster presented in a formal poster session. The group interview stage is worth preparing for, since it’s an unusual step at this level and it means the selection isn’t decided on the written application alone.

Who is it right for? Chicago students who want animal behavior and conservation research rather than bench work.

16. Alaska Songbird Institute High School Internship

Location: Creamer’s Field and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK
Cost: No fee. A $500 stipend for interns who volunteer a minimum of 85 hours in a season
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: The 2026 program ran April 16 to July 18, at 8 to 10 hours a week with no upper limit. Shifts run 2 to 3 hours, mornings at Creamer’s Field and afternoons at UAF. Availability is mandatory around June 12 to 30 and for the first two weeks of July
Application Deadline: March 29 for the 2026 cycle. Two letters of recommendation required
Eligibility: Alaska students aged 14 to 18. Out of state applicants cannot be accommodated, because the institute provides no housing or transportation. Fairbanks North Star Borough district students can earn 0.5 elective credit hours

Interns work the Swallow Ecology Project, monitoring up to 80 active Tree Swallow nests across the season. The work covers nest box checks, data recording and entry, and assisting with bird capture and banding, with advanced interns taking morphological measurements and banding birds themselves. The spring-through-summer window means this one starts while school is still in session, which is part of why the weekly commitment is modest. At 14, the age floor is among the lowest on this page.

Who is it right for? Alaska students, including freshmen, who want ornithology and hands-on wildlife handling rather than a lab.

17. Hutton Junior Fisheries Biology Program

Location: Placements nationwide, matched to a mentor at a fisheries agency, university, or lab near the student
Cost: Free. A $3,000 stipend across the eight-week internship, paid as four checks of $750. Note that this figure appears only on the program’s 2024-era FAQ
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: 8 weeks, June to August, at 32 to 40 hours a week
Application Deadline: 2027 cycle dates haven’t been posted
Eligibility: Current high school students who are at least 16 by the end of the application period. Open to residents of the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Canada

Run by the American Fisheries Society, Hutton is the only program on this page that solves the geography problem structurally: rather than bringing students to a site, it matches each student to a professional mentor near where they already live. Past placements have included freshwater mussel work at Virginia Tech, ecological restoration in Puerto Rico, and marine technology in Baltimore. Scholars also attend the Hutton Scholars Summit, a three-day event with speakers and student presentations. 

Who is it right for? Students anywhere in North America who want fieldwork and can’t relocate, provided the program posts a new cycle.

Biology internships that run through the school year

18. Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP), American Museum of Natural History

Location: American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
Cost: Free. A $2,500 stipend on completion of the research and program requirements, plus one CUNY Lehman College credit at no cost
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: One academic year, August to June. Four hours a week across two weekly sessions, plus a required August meeting
Application Deadline: Not published. Applications for the Class of 2028 are expected to open in winter 2027
Eligibility: Must live and attend school in New York City, be in 10th or 11th grade, and have passed classes for the last three or more semesters. Applicants must also either have completed or be taking an AMNH pipeline program (AIS, SNP, EAP, LANG, SAP, or HE³AT) or attend a partner school

SRMP gives students a full academic year of authentic research alongside a museum scientist, which is a fundamentally different experience from eight compressed summer weeks. Recent project titles give the flavor: the genetic basis of foraging in ogre-faced spiders, weighing stars, and what the Maya were eating 2,000 years ago. The skills students build include DNA work, analyzing space telescope data, and coding in Python and R. At four hours a week it fits around a full course load, and the free college credit is a real if under-advertised benefit. The frequently cited figure of 60 students does not appear on the official page.

Who is it right for? New York City sophomores and juniors already in the AMNH pipeline, or at a partner school, who want depth over a full year.

19. Urban Barcode Research Program, DNA Learning Center

Location: DNALC NYC in Downtown Brooklyn for lab training, then fieldwork at a mentor site. Symposium at The Theater at City Tech
Cost: Free. A $500 stipend for students who complete 55 hours and present at the Research Symposium
Selectivity: Approximately 36 students invited to continue after interviews. No acceptance rate published
Dates: Two weeks of lab training in late August and early September, then a minimum of 55 hours of research across the academic year on a schedule set with the mentor
Application Deadline: May 26 for the most recent posted cycle. The page has not been refreshed for the following year
Eligibility: New York City high school students who reside in New York City and are at least 13 years old. No grade range is published

UBRP is the entry on this page with the most durable output. Students write a research proposal, collect specimens in the field, then isolate DNA, run PCR amplification of barcoding regions, and analyze the sequences. Projects examine biodiversity and human impact across the city. The sequences go into public databases, which means the work outlives the poster: other scientists can find and use it. Training runs across two weeks rather than one, and the 55-hour minimum spreads across the school year rather than a summer. At 13, this has the lowest age floor of any internship here.

Who is it right for? New York City students, including freshmen, who want a wet-lab skill set and something citable rather than a presentation that ends when the room empties.

20. Alley Pond Environmental Center Field Biology Internship

Location: Alley Pond Environmental Center, Queens, NY, with fieldwork at Alley Pond Park and other Queens sites
Cost: $200 participation fee, charged after acceptance. Financial aid is available on request with no documentation required. Unpaid
Selectivity: Not published
Dates: Six sessions per cohort, 9:30am to 12:30pm. Fall runs Saturdays through September and October, spring runs Saturdays in the new year, and summer runs Tuesdays or Wednesdays
Application Deadline: August 1 for fall, January 2 for spring, May 1 for summer
Eligibility: At least 14 years old and currently in high school, able to participate in outdoor activities for at least two hours, and able to commit to 5 of 6 sessions. Students arrange their own transportation

Alley Pond is the smallest commitment on this page and the easiest to combine with something else. Across six morning sessions students run biodiversity surveys and bird observations, sample water and soil quality with macroinvertebrate identification, conduct coastal seining, and plant native flora. The cohort ends with a required final presentation. It’s the only entry here that runs three cohorts a year, which means if you miss one deadline the next is a few months out rather than a year. It’s also the only one that charges you rather than paying you, though the fee is waived on request.

Who is it right for? Queens and greater New York students who want field ecology in small doses, and younger students building toward a bigger program.

Frequently asked questions

Resources: more from Horizon

Writing and publishing your work

• What can you actually do with a high school research paper?
• Key components of a high school research paper
• How long does it take to write a research paper?
• How to format citations
• Publishing a research paper: gains, losses and growth

Getting in

• How to get into a top high school research program
• 7 ways to find a research lab
• Do summer research programs actually help with college admissions?
• 14 research programs for complete beginners

Paying for it

• 16 fully-funded STEM programs
• 11 free research mentorship programs
• 12 paid research mentorship programs
• 14 grants for high school students research
• 12 paid summer research programs

Other timings

• 15 summer research internships
• 15 fall research internships
• 15 winter internships
• 35 summer research programs
• 10 university research programs

Image source: The University of Arizona