Exactly.
I have said for a while now that the way to get into a very good university that is the right fit for you, whether highly ranked or not, is to do what is right for you, and do it well.
To me the opportunity to do research over the summer while still in high school sounds like a great opportunity. To me it sounds very interesting. I would not worry about whether it is paid or not unless the family needs to “pay” to afford it, and it sounds like this is not needed in this case. How famous the institute is probably again does not matter. Whether the research opportunity is really going to happen does matter, which makes the assured opportunity more attractive in my opinion.
By the way, we have one daughter who is interested in biomedical research, but she did not get an opportunity to start this until she was in university. Some was paid, but not paid all that well and we did not worry about the income. The opportunity was the point, and it has turned out to have been very valuable (some of it was cancer research, some was not).
There is also the issue of what the students wants to do. This might be the most important issue.
Congratulations!
Yes, this sounds right to me. There are lots of schools that are very good for a bachelor’s degree in something related to biology and medicine and research. Finding the right PhD program is much more of a “looking for exactly the right needle in a haystack” sort of problem, and research experience is very important. This can start when a student is an undergraduate student, but starting earlier seems like a plus to me.