HS Research Assistant/Intern at Universities?

Career Opportunities & Internships
1

(I am a hs rising sophomore)

Okay so from what I’ve gathered the basic way of getting a position as a research intern is by either connections or emailing them directly.

What I want to know is how important it would be to be an assistant at a top university. For example I live in Michigan, so big 2 uni’s that come to mind are MSU and University of Michigan. The problem about both is that they are pretty far from where I live (around 1.5 hrs for MSU and 2ish for UofM).

Some good options for me are:

  1. Do a research assistant thing at Umich or Wayne during a summer -- since I can stay at Detroit for one of my summers but I'm not sure if a summer would be good enough to put on my app
  2. Do a research thing at a local, non-popular university. I could do something yearly here but I need to know how much significance that shows about my passion compared to doing it at a big university.
2

For high school research assistant positions, the type of job you would be doing is something that could be done at a nearby college. Imagine driving two hours each way for a job making sure the rats have water and clean cages. The goal is for the student to demonstrate an interest in research and learn about what it is like to participate in a research project. Whether the professor of university is well known isn’t that important