NASA Internship Application Tips from a High School NASA Intern
01/05/2021
Last summer, after my junior year of high school, I interned at Ames Research Center in their Aviation Systems Division. Today, I am excited to share my advice for applying to be a NASA intern, especially as a high school student. Continue reading below and check out my video to hear about my internship experience and examples of what I put in my internship application.
Even though you may not have any employment that seems relevant to the internship, I think it is essential to list all the employment you have had and use the descriptions to your advantage. While describing your primary responsibilities, ensure you emphasize the skills you learned or utilized at your job that could be transferable to your internship. These skills could include collaboration, leadership, organization, initiative, and creativity. By having transferable skills and unique experiences, those reviewing your application will value your past employment experiences and see how you could contribute to their team by bringing your background and experience to the table.
3. Other Experience
Other experience is an opportunity to highlight how you have tried to explore the field yourself, or in a non-employment or academic manner. These experiences could be clubs relating to your area of interest, online courses you have taken, or research you have done. By investing your free time into areas relating to your internship, you can show NASA that you are genuinely passionate about the subject matter. Furthermore, other experience is an opportunity to convey other skills you have, just like employment. This could range from athletics to performing arts, but tying them into key skills or talents could help make you a more rounded person and ensure you bring a unique perspective to the table and increase the team’s diversity. Additionally, mentioning activities that you have consistently done for years can highlight dedication and determination. Overall, use the other experience section to emphasize your interest in the internships you are applying to and the perspective and traits you bring to the table.
4. Documents (Transcript and Resume)
For the transcripts, especially if you are in high school, I recommend attaching a transcript for any community college classes. This is a great way to show your initiative, interest, and capability. For the resume, make sure you keep it short and sweet. I recommend up to one page highlighting key experiences, education, and award/certificates. Although most of the information was in the rest of my application, I ensured there were new parts such as awards and certificates to not seem like a useless attachment.
5. Skills
For the skills section, I recommend thinking about the skills you have learned throughout all your experiences and not just academics; these include soft-skills such as leadership, collaboration, and being detail-oriented. For the computer skills, this could range from knowing how to do basic statistical tests in excel to how to code in Python. Emphasize any key computer skills you have picked up. Finally, you can mention things you learned from labs or at home for the technical section, such as soldering or micro pipetting. Even though these are more straightforward skills when taught at the high school level, they can highlight a foundation that one can build upon during their internship.
6. Why do you want a NASA internship?
For this question, please be genuine and emphasize that you want to contribute to NASA and highlight how the internship will help you learn and grow either in your field, professionally, or even as a person. Please do not get caught up in the idea of a NASA internship, and make sure that you illustrate what you like about NASA from their work environment, areas of study, resources, and so on. Doing so will probably require some research, but will ultimately help you come across as someone who cares and truly wants a NASA internship.
Ultimately, throughout your application, I recommend emphasizing all the different aspects of you, how they will provide transferable skills for your internship, your unique perspective, a genuine interest, and how you will grow from the internship. Best of luck!
