I know that getting an internship at a high-profile IT company is difficult for high school students, but if I somehow managed to get a 2-month internship at a company like Uber or Microsoft - what would Yale think? Would Yale be impressed with a 16-year-old completing an internship at a global, highly valued tech company?
(please refrain from commenting things like ‘it’s impossible to get such an internship’ - just tell me how the Yale admissions committee would view such a summer activity!!)
IF it were a paid internship, and IF you got it without an inside connection using your own initiative, and IF it fit into your overall application and narrative … then yes, it would be viewed very positively.
But given your previous posts about getting your rich dad to use his connections to get you an internship, I’m inclined to agree with @ClassicRockerDad.
They will view the internship within the context of your overall application. For example, they will be asking what have you done leading up to the internship that a global tech company would be interested in taking you on as an intern. If the answer is not much, they might feel the internship was gotten through connections and be less impressed.
Next, they will be interested in what exactly you did during the internship. They will get this from what you write about it and possibly a recommendation letter from your immediate boss (which you should definitely ask to have sent). If you did coding at Google (there are HS kids who actually do this for them) for instance, this is will be a LOT more impressive than if you were just running around making copies and getting coffee which many HS internships actually entail. Of course, you and your boss might try to dress up the job description a bit and make it sound like you were working on some projects or whatever but usually AOs can see through this.
So to answer your question, IF you have a very strong application and IF you had a meaningful (read: real) internship at a global tech giant, you would be a competitive applicant. There are probably 6,000-8,000 truly competitive Yale applicants each year that you would be competing against. Making things even harder is that fact that many applicants outside of the 6-8k truly competitive applicant pool are chosen for a variety of reasons (hooks, institutional imperatives, etc) so the number of slots available to you is much less than you think.
Good luck securing the internship. I hope you succeed and have a productive summer.
I don’t think they will know nor will it matter how you got the internship unless your parent actually works there and that information is somewhere on the application. However my kid did two summers of internship at a highly-regarded tech company and had good stats and ECs and only got into one of his six reach schools. If you could make an interesting essay about it, that might make it appear more special.
You’ve asked several questions like this. Kids who really stand out in the very competitive Yale applicant pool are not asking if X or Y is impressive. They are already on track to do impressive things because they are impressive people. They do these things that are independent of how colleges one day will view them.
Sorry but you can’t simply put on these things like a change of clothes. Like ClassicRockerDad said, don’t do things – be something. Have some conviction on what you want to do. If it impresses colleges good. But be authentic. You’re going at this backwards.
^ The fact that the OP persists - despite 2+ months of numerous people on this board telling her that it doesn’t work that way - in trying to find an angle and manufacture “impressiveness” has me pretty convinced that she doesn’t get it, and most likely does not have what Yale and similar schools are looking for.
What would be impressive would be a letter of recommendation from the person you worked for at some other internship, describing your initiative in getting the internship despite a lack of connections, and raving about the initiative you continued to show on the job.
You will be one of 30,000 other applicants who have something fantastical on their resume. Authenticity, authenticity, authenticity is the key. And you can’t manufacture that because it wouldn’t be what? - authentic. Sorry to be snippy, and I don’t usually snipe at applicants, but please listen to the adults on this website, most of whom have either gone to Yale, have children there, or both.