If you want to understand how the world actually works, why inequality persists, how institutions shape people’s lives, and what drives social change, the discipline you’d be most interested in is sociology. And one of the best ways to pursue a complex, nuanced field like sociology is to build foundational knowledge through pre-college programs. These programs are time-bound experiences that offer a holistic combination of learning, mentorship, and hands-on work. The best programs have a highly competitive application process, partly because they offer concrete outcomes: a research paper, a civic project, a professional presentation, or, in many cases, a stipend or certificate. Unlike internships, pre-college programs focus on your development as a learner and thinker rather than as a contributor to workplace output.
What do paid sociology programs for high school students include?
Depending on the program, you might design a survey, conduct qualitative interviews, analyze census or demographic data, or review ethnographic fieldwork. You will engage with frameworks like stratification theory, intersectionality, and social constructionism, and learn how researchers apply them to specific questions about poverty, health disparities, institutional racism, or cultural transmission. In quantitative tracks, tools like SPSS, R, or basic data visualization come up regularly. In qualitative tracks, you will work with content analysis, oral history, and ethnographic observation.
Research-intensive programs pair you with a faculty mentor who walks you through every stage from question to a written paper, policy brief, poster, or action project. Others place you in community organizations, government agencies, or archives to gather material directly. As a consequence of this broad approach, good sociology programs also dedicate time to academic writing, public speaking, research ethics, and peer feedback, all skills that transfer across any field where evidence-based argument matters. Some include site visits to cultural institutions, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, or legislative offices, connecting abstract frameworks to the communities and systems they describe.
The list of 15 programs below covers core sociology topics or closely adjacent social science fields including political sociology, cultural anthropology, gender studies, health disparities, civic institutions, and social justice. If location or travel is a restricting factor for you, we also have this list of online sociology programs you could consider!
1. Columbia University Freedom & Citizenship Program
Location: Columbia University, New York, NY
Stipend: None, but the program is fully funded, and extensive college application support is also provided
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely selective, only 45 students selected per cohort
Dates: June 29 – July 24 for the summer seminar, twice a month from September 3 – May 3 during the academic year
Application deadline: March 30
Eligibility: Rising high school seniors who live or attend school in New York City, with priority given to first-generation college-bound students and those from low-income families
Freedom & Citizenship is an eleven-month program combining a four-week residential summer seminar in political philosophy with a year-long civic leadership project. The summer seminar is modeled on Columbia’s Contemporary Civilization curriculum. You will read primary texts on political power, citizenship, and social institutions, write analytical responses daily, and participate in intensive seminars led by Columbia faculty. Undergraduate teaching assistants run afternoon and evening writing tutorials, and the pace mirrors what you would encounter in an undergraduate lecture course. In the academic year that follows, you will join a small group researching a contemporary social issue, connect with community organizations, and design a civic action project together. Past groups have lobbied school principals on suspension policy reform, built healthy relationship curricula for middle schoolers, and developed resources for undocumented college applicants.
2. University of Chicago Data Science Institute Summer Lab
Location: University of Chicago Hyde Park campus, Chicago, IL
Stipend: $5,600 for the 8-week program
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely selective
Dates: June 15 – August 7
Application deadline: January 12
Eligibility: High school students who reside and attend school in the Chicago area
The DSI Summer Lab places Chicago-area high school and undergraduate students with data science mentors working on active research projects across social science, public policy, health, climate, and computing. Students matched to social science or public policy labs apply quantitative methods like cleaning datasets, building statistical models, and interpreting demographic or behavioral patterns to questions about inequality, urban policy, institutional behavior, or community outcomes. This is the quantitative side of sociology in practice: using data to understand how social systems operate and who they serve. You will work a full-time schedule, contribute to a real research project, and present findings at a professional-style symposium at the end of the program. A weekly speaker series brings researchers from across the university and partner organizations to discuss how data science connects to real social problems.
3. NIH Summer Internship Program
Location: NIH campuses, including Bethesda, MD, and others across the U.S.
Stipend: Paid based on the NIH stipend table and education level
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely competitive
Dates: Minimum 8 weeks between May and September, dates varying by mentor
Application deadline: February 18
Eligibility: Graduating high school seniors who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents and have graduated before the internship begins. Students must be 17 on June 1 and turn 18 by September 30, and must live within 40 miles of an NIH campus
While this is an internship rather than a program, the NIH Summer Internship is one of the most prestigious opportunities in the country and places you directly in research groups across the biomedical, behavioral, and social sciences. If you’re interested in sociology, a placement with a behavioral or social science Principal Investigator provides entry into research on health disparities, community health behaviors, mental health outcomes across demographic groups, and structural conditions like income, race, neighborhood quality, institutional access, that shape population health. These are the central concerns of medical sociology, one of the field’s most active research areas. You will work full-time on a real project under PI supervision, attend professional development workshops, and present findings at the NIH Summer Poster Day.
4. Telluride Association Summer Seminar (TASS)
Location: Cornell University, NY, or University of Maryland, MD
Stipend: Fully funded. Additional need-based financial aid is also available to replace lost summer earnings
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely selective
Dates: June 21 – July 25
Application deadline: December 3
Eligibility: High school sophomores and juniors, ages 15–17 by the end of the program
TASS is a fully funded, five-week residential seminar in the humanities and social sciences offered in two tracks: Critical Black Studies (TASS-CBS), which examines history, politics, literature, art, and cultural contributions from people of African descent, and Anti-Oppressive Studies (TASS-AOS), which investigates how systems of power, white supremacy, patriarchy, and class hierarchy structure society. In both tracks, you will spend daily three-hour sessions in small, college-level discussion seminars led by two faculty members, reading at a pace comparable to an undergraduate course, and writing analytical essays with detailed instructor feedback. Outside of class, you will participate in democratic governance of the program itself, making collective decisions about community norms, budgets, and activity planning, which becomes a live-practice version of the concepts discussed in the seminar. Guest speakers, public speaking sessions, and community service projects fill the rest of the schedule. For students who need to work over the summer to support their families, TASS can provide financial assistance to replace those earnings, making the program genuinely accessible regardless of economic circumstances.
5. Research Science Institute (RSI)
Location: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Stipend: No stipend, but fully funded program
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely selective, only ~2.5% of applicants chosen
Dates: Six weeks in the summer
Application deadline: Mid December
Eligibility: Rising high school seniors aged 16+
RSI gathers 100 students each summer at MIT for six weeks of original research combined with intensive university-level coursework. The first week consists of lectures and seminars from faculty at leading institutions. The following five weeks are spent on individual research projects at labs across MIT, Harvard, and other Boston-area institutions, mentored by scientists and researchers. The program concludes with a formal research paper and conference-style presentation at the RSI Symposium. While RSI is strongest in STEM, you can pursue projects in social science, economics, and history, depending on mentor availability. If you’re interested in applying formal or computational methods to sociological questions such as income inequality, demographic change, historical patterns of institutional discrimination, or behavioral modeling, you can propose work in these areas through RSI’s broad interdisciplinary scope.
6. U.S. Senate Page Program
Location: U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Stipend: Prorated salary based on $35,360 annual rate
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly selective; each sponsoring senator nominates one student
Dates: Varies by session. Two sessions available in the summer, and one each in spring and fall.
Application deadline: Varies by sponsoring senator
Eligibility: Rising high school juniors or seniors who are U.S. citizens, aged 16–17 on the date of appointment, with a minimum 3.0 GPA. Must be sponsored by a U.S. Senator from your home state
The Senate Page Program places you in the daily operations of the U.S. Senate as a paid participant. You will deliver legislative correspondence and materials within the Capitol complex, prepare the chamber for Senate sessions, and carry bills and amendments between clerks, assistants, and staff. Early-morning classes cover American history, government, and civics, taught specifically for the page cohort. You will observe floor proceedings directly and gain access to the informal dynamics of power, coalition-building, and policy negotiation that classroom civics cannot replicate. If you’re interested in political sociology and the sociology of institutions, the program provides firsthand exposure to how one of the country’s most powerful legislative bodies actually operates, how social structures at the federal level shape policy, distribute resources, and respond to external pressure from constituencies, media, and advocacy organizations. Applications are made through your home state senators’ offices. Not every senator sponsors pages, so researching which of your state’s senators participate is the first step.
7. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Internship
Location: Washington, D.C.
Stipend: Paid
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Competitive
Dates: Summer internships begin late May or early June, lasting two to four months
Application deadline: March 1
Eligibility: Open to high school students, undergraduates, and postgraduates
The Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage places interns on projects connected to the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives, and cultural sustainability programs. Depending on your placement, you will work on research and documentation of living cultural traditions, ethnographic archive management, educational outreach, community engagement, or multimedia storytelling that communicates cultural heritage to public audiences. The center’s work sits directly at the intersection of cultural anthropology and sociology, examining how communities transmit identity and tradition across generations, how cultural practices respond to social change, and how institutions preserve and represent human diversity. You will collaborate with professional staff on real deliverables and gain access to one of the world’s largest ethnographic collections. The Folklife Storytellers Workshop also develops skills in producing multimedia content for students interested in how media shapes public understanding of social groups and cultural communities.
8. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Summer High School Internship
Location: National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
Stipend: Paid
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly selective
Dates: June 23 – August 14
Application deadline: March 20
Eligibility: Current high school students ages 15–18
The NMNH Summer High School Internship places students across departments, including Anthropology, Exhibits and Communications, and others. In the Anthropology track, you will work on projects related to the museum’s cultural collections, studying how material objects reflect the social structures, practices, and historical experiences of human communities; core work in the sociology of culture and material culture studies. In Exhibits and Communications, you will develop science communication skills by producing content that explains research to public audiences: exhibition labels, social media posts, and written essays. Across both tracks, you will learn how museums as institutions frame and communicate knowledge to diverse communities, which connects directly to the sociological study of knowledge production, cultural authority, and public education. Two to three days per week are spent on project work with a supervisor, while the remaining days focus on enrichment activities, including behind-the-scenes tours, field trips, workshops, and peer learning.
9. Sadie Nash Leadership Project Summer Institute
Location: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Newark, NJ
Stipend: $450
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Open enrolment but limited cohorts
Dates: July 6 – August 13
Application deadline: Rolling until May 1
Eligibility: Young women and gender-expansive youth in grades 9–12 living in New York City or Newark, NJ
The Sadie Nash Summer Institute is a six-week leadership program built around the sociology of gender, identity, and social justice. You will take workshops on identity and power, feminist theory, the politics of education, the anthropology of gender, art and activism, and how privilege and oppression function as social systems. Previous course offerings have included sessions on community organizing, the relationship between media and structural inequality, and the social conditions that produce gender-based discrimination. Each week includes field trips across New York City to campuses, museums, nonprofits, and community organizations, and structured conversations with leaders from public life and advocacy work. The program explicitly does not screen on grades or academic credentials, reflecting its position that leadership capacity is not the same as formal academic performance.
10. Duke STAR Program
Location: Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, NC
Stipend: $4,000
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly competitive
Dates: June 22 – July 24
Application deadline: January 2
Eligibility: High school seniors and rising seniors who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents
The Duke STAR (Summer Training in Academic Research) Program is a four-week training experience at the Duke Clinical Research Institute covering research design, data analysis, clinical trials methodology, and the social and behavioral dimensions of health research. While on the face of it, it’s a standard medical internship, the program puts particular emphasis on health disparities and the structural determinants of health outcomes, how race, income, neighborhood conditions, and institutional access shape physical and psychological well-being at the population level. This is a central concern in medical sociology, one of the discipline’s most active research areas, and the Duke program approaches it through the lens of both scientific rigor and social context. You will receive direct mentorship from researchers and practitioners, participate in formal instruction, and present your work at the end of the month.
11. ACLU National Advocacy Institute
Location: American University, Washington, D.C.
Stipend: While the program charges a $3,500 tuition fee, it provides both full and partial tuition assistance and travel stipends based on family income
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly selective
Dates: July 20 – 29
Application deadline: March 2 for early decision, April 13 for regular
Eligibility: High school students ages 15–18
The ACLU National Advocacy Institute is a 10-day residential program at American University focused on civil rights and civil liberties advocacy. You will work directly with ACLU lawyers, lobbyists, community organizers, and policy professionals through classroom sessions, small group discussions, issue electives, and site visits. Topics cover the sociology of civil rights and legal institutions, how law intersects with social structure, how racial and gender discrimination are encoded in policy, how coalitions build power, and what advocacy strategies have succeeded or failed in different historical and political contexts. On completing the program, you become eligible to apply for the ACLU Emerging Advocates Scholarship, which provides up to $40,000 over four undergraduate years.
12. Penn Social Change and Social Justice Academy
Location: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Stipend: While the program charges a $10,050 tuition, it is free for students attending the School District of Philadelphia public or charter high schools through the Penn Summer Scholarship, and other need-based scholarships are also available
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Competitive
Dates: July 11 – 25
Application deadline: Rolling
Eligibility: Current 9th–11th grade students with a minimum 3.5 GPA
Penn’s Social Justice Research Academy is the only social science-based program among Penn’s six summer academies. Over three weeks, you will attend daily lectures, engage in small-group discussions, and go on site visits to Philadelphia institutions like the National Constitution Center, Mother Bethel AME Church, the Mural Arts Program, and other nonprofit organizations, connecting academic frameworks to the communities and histories they describe. Guest speakers have included Penn faculty in sociology, law, African American studies, and political science, as well as practicing advocates in criminal justice reform, immigration, and racial equity. You will develop and present a capstone project applying a research question from the program to a topic of your choosing; past projects have examined affordable housing crises, redlining’s ongoing effects on city neighborhoods, and police reform in local communities.
13. Stanford Summer Humanities Institute
Location: Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Stipend: While tuition is $8,850, plenty of need-based financial aid is available
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Highly selective
Dates: Session I: June 21 – July 10 | Session II: July 12 – 31
Application deadline: February 2
Eligibility: Rising high school juniors and seniors
Stanford’s Summer Humanities Institute is a three-week residential program where you take a single course led by Stanford faculty, meeting Monday through Friday in seminar format alongside a small cohort of peers. The 2026 offerings include several courses with direct sociological relevance: “Racial Identity in the American Imagination” examines how racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history using historical, legal, and literary texts, “Revolutions” investigates the social forces and structural conditions that produce political upheaval, and “Colonial Extractions of African Cultural Treasures” explores questions of ownership, access, and the social politics of museum collections, the central terrain in the sociology of culture and postcolonial studies. “Happiness and the Good Life” draws on philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists to examine happiness through cross-cultural inquiry. All courses meet in a seminar format that emphasizes close reading, analytical argument, and peer discussion.
14. Chicago Summer Business Institute
Location: Financial district firms, government offices, and law firms in Chicago, IL
Stipend: Paid internship
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Competitive
Dates: Six weeks in the summer, typically following July 4
Application deadline: March 31
Eligibility: Chicago residents in 10th or 11th grade with a minimum 3.0 GPA and household income below $80,000/year
The Chicago Summer Business Institute places high school students in paid six-week internships at banks, law firms, city agencies, and financial services organizations across Chicago’s Loop. Alongside a 24-hour workweek at a placement site, you will attend weekly half-day classroom seminars covering financial markets, professional skills, goal-setting, and interview preparation, led by business executives and career mentors. The sociology of organizations and economic institutions is embedded throughout the work itself. You will see directly how large institutions function, how professional hierarchies operate, how decisions about resource allocation are made, and how structural factors like neighborhood, income, and social capital shape who gains access to professional networks and economic mobility.
15. United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP)
Location: Washington, D.C.
Stipend: $10,000 undergraduate college scholarship, and all Washington Week expenses are also fully covered by the Hearst Foundations
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Extremely competitive, only two delegates per state, 104 students nationally
Dates: March 7 – 14 for Washington week
Application deadline: Varies by state; most state deadlines fall between September and October of the preceding academic year
Eligibility: Current high school juniors or seniors serving in an elected or appointed leadership position representing a constituency for the full school year. Must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents nominated through state education agencies
The United States Senate Youth Program brings 104 students to Washington, D.C. each year for an intensive week-long immersion in federal governance, funded entirely by the Hearst Foundations and administered by state education departments. Delegates attend briefings with sitting senators, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, and other senior federal officials, and observe the legislative process in action. The program is designed around the sociology of political institutions and civic power, a demonstration of how laws are made and who shapes them, how the formal structures of democratic government interact with informal social and economic forces, and how different constituencies gain or lose influence in the policy process. If you’re interested in political sociology and want to understand how societal inequalities are produced and contested through institutional mechanisms, the access this program provides is unmatched at the high school level. The $10,000 scholarship is awarded to every delegate who completes Washington Week and is intended to support further study in government, history, and political science. Applications must be submitted through your state’s education department, and the process is competitive at the state level before students advance to the national program.
One more option – Horizon Academic Research Program
If you’re looking for a competitive mentored research program in subjects like data science, machine learning, political theory, biology, and chemistry, consider applying to Horizon’s Research Seminars and Labs! This is a selective virtual research program that lets you engage in advanced research and develop a research paper on a subject of your choosing. Horizon has worked with 1000+ high school students so far and offers 600+ research specializations for you to choose from. You can find the application link here!
Image source: Cornell University