12 Forensic Psychology Internships for High School Students
Forensic psychology is a field of psychology that has its applications in law and the judiciary. Forensic psychologists perform various duties, including clinical and psychological assessments, research studies, screening, competency evaluations, counseling victims, threat assessments, investigations, designing and implementing treatments, acting as court witnesses, and much more. Awareness of the law is essential for this field. Potential workplaces where forensic psychologists work include law offices, courts, correction facilities, prison systems, corporate offices, social work organizations, and others.
If you are a high school student interested in this field, consider doing an internship before you start university. An internship will determine if this field is right for you and which avenues you wish to explore while equipping you with knowledge, skills, strong networks, and a solid college application.
If you want some options, take a look at our curated list of forensic psychology internships for high school students. Note that this list includes both traditional internships and academic programs with a strong focus on practical experience. Some internships further provide adjacent or broader knowledge that you can use for more specific opportunities once you start college.
1. Federal Bureau of Prisons Student Opportunities
Location: Varies based on position
Eligibility: Students from high school to graduate levels can apply. Make sure to check the specific eligibility requirements for the position you are applying to.
Application Deadline: Varies based on position
Dates: A few weeks/months to 1 year
Stipend: Volunteer opportunities are unpaid, whereas Pathways internships are paid (amount varies based on position).
The Federal Bureau of Prisons offers two types of opportunities for high school students:
Student Volunteer Program: This unpaid training program allows students to obtain Federal work experience in their field of interest while developing their personal and professional skills.
Pathways Internship: This internship allows students to obtain Federal work experience through paid opportunities and longer internship terms. Opportunities are listed here, with 2 psychology trainee positions currently offered. Since you will be working within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, you will get exposure to tasks and issues directly involved in forensic psychology, such as victim counseling, psychological assessment, and more.
2. Mercer County Student Internship Program
Location: Mercer County, New Jersey
Eligibility: Mercer County high school and college students who are at least 15 years old
Application Deadline: Applications usually close in May.
Dates: June through Labor Day (early September)
Stipend: $15.14 for high school students
Mercer County’s Student Internship Program gives paid training opportunities to students and provides various professional development sessions. If selected, you will be placed in one of the county’s departments based on your preferences. Some positions relevant to forensic psychology include internships in the Correction Center, specifically the Program Services internship that involves counseling inmates through interviews, counseling on a personal level, referring inmates to psychiatrists or other agencies, and more.
As an intern, you will additionally participate in activities like skill enhancement workshops, technique demonstrations, career development sessions, and social events.
3. Westmoreland County Coroner’s Office Internships/Job Shadowing Opportunities
Location: Westmoreland County Coroner’s Office, Greensburg, Pennsylvania
Eligibility: High school and college students who are at least 18 years old and are receiving school credit
Application Deadline: June 15 (for fall) | October 1 (for spring) | March 15 (for summer)
Dates: August 15 - December 31 (fall) | January 1 - May 14 (spring) | May 15 - August 14 (summer)
Stipend: Not specified
An internship/job shadowing opportunity at the Westmoreland County Coroner’s Office can be a great starting point for high school students interested in forensic psychology. You will require an understanding of the coroner’s office, coroner laws, and key statistics on caseloads and investigations before the internship. Preference for this internship is given to students interested in fields like criminal justice/criminology, forensic science, law enforcement, and mortuary arts and sciences.
Once selected, you will perform general office and administrative tasks, scene investigations, and autopsy observation.
4. Internships at the Juvenile Court of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County
Location: Juvenile Court of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, Nashville, Tennessee
Eligibility: High school, undergraduate, and graduate students
Application Deadline: Multiple deadlines for summer, fall, and spring.
Dates: Spring, summer, or fall semesters
Stipend: This is an unpaid internship.
The Juvenile Court of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County provides high school students the chance to develop their career readiness and professional skills relevant to the fields of social work, forensic psychology, and criminal justice. You will learn about various elements of the court system that you can access through job shadowing, field trips, and court observation, each of which will give you a solid foundation of how the system works.
You will further complete several projects and lessons to develop skills in communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking.
5. Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office’s High School Volunteer Internship Program
Location: Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, Miami, Florida
Eligibility: High school students
Application Deadline: Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Dates: Minimum 3 months at any time of the year (16-20 hours per week)
Stipend: This is an unpaid internship.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is responsible for prosecuting child support cases, delinquency petitions, and criminal violations. The office runs an annual High School Volunteer Internship Program to provide students with insight into the criminal justice system—one whose knowledge and applicability are highly relevant to forensic psychology.
Interns will receive sufficient training and will simultaneously perform duties like assisting the public regarding criminal/civil matters, counseling victims, attending bond hearings, taking sworn testimony, contacting victims, interviewing subjects, handling criminal complaints, and more.
6. George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP)
Location: George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia / remote / hybrid
Eligibility: High school students who are at least 15 years old
Application Deadline: Exact location dates are not available yet.
Dates: June 18 - August 9 (8 weeks)
Stipend: This is an unpaid internship.
George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP) is a unique choice but invaluable if you are interested in pursuing research. Selected students will get to conduct research under one-on-one mentorship from faculty researchers and George Mason University and its collaborating institutions. You will work on hands-on projects using sophisticated and advanced technologies, develop science writing and communication skills, and improve creative skills. You may also be able to publish your research abstracts in an academic journal.
Some relevant areas for your research include psychology, neuroscience, and forensic science, among many others.
7. National Institutes of Health’s High School Summer Internship Program (HS-SIP)
Location: NIH campuses: Bethesda, Baltimore and Frederick, Maryland; Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; Hamilton, Montana; Framingham, Massachusetts; and Phoenix, Arizona
Eligibility: Juniors and seniors of high school who are at least 17 years old and live within 40 miles of their nearest NIH campus can apply. Confirm other eligibility requirements for your respective cohort program—HiSTEP and HiSTEP 2.0.
Application Deadline: Applications generally close in February.
Dates: July 2 - August 1 (8 weeks)
Stipend: $2,300-2,530 (if you are currently in high school) or $2,570-2,840 (if you have graduated high school). No housing is provided.
The HS-SIP is a chance to conduct research as part of a research group under a Principal Investigator at one of the NIH’s leading and state-of-the-art facilities. While this internship generally caters to students interested in medicine, it can also be an interesting option for those interested in forensic psychology, especially in the NIH institutes like the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
In this internship, you will primarily work on research projects in labs/facilities while attending professional development workshops, career advising, and the final Summer Poster Day.
This program has an acceptance rate of around 7%.
Location: Virtual
Eligibility: Rising 10th, 11th, and 12th-grade students and rising college first-years (or graduating high school seniors)
Application Deadline: Applications usually close in February.
Dates: 2 weeks in June
Stipend: Not specified
This 2-week internship will give you an overarching understanding of the variety of careers available in mental health. You will attend interactive sessions with several clinician-scientists, including licensed clinical social workers, forensic psychologists/psychiatrists, physician assistants, neuropsychologists, community psychiatrists, interventional psychiatrists, and more. Apart from forensic psychology itself, several of these other options are also highly relevant to forensic psychology careers.
Apart from talks and interactions, you will read articles and papers, conduct projects, receive mentorship, and network with peers.
9. Columbia University’s Pre-College Program
Location: Columbia University, New York, New York
Eligibility: All high school students
Application Deadline: Information on the dates is not available right now.
Dates: June 24 - July 12 (in-person) | July 01 - July 12 (online)
Cost: $6,100 (commuter) | $12,154 (residential) | $3,850 (online). Financial aid is not available.
Columbia University’s Pre-College Program allows you to sign up for one of its many course offerings, allowing you to obtain in-depth knowledge and practical skills in the field. One of its offerings includes True Crime: Introduction to Forensic Psychology, which takes you through the intersections between criminal justice and science. Through this course, you will understand and learn about research methods, behaviors involved in criminal investigations, psychological principles, and legal decision-making.
Further, you will go through news stories and case studies to become familiar with theories, vocabulary, and legal frameworks involved in the field.
This course accepts a maximum of 29 students.
10. Brown University’s Summer@Brown Pre-College Program
Location: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island / online
Eligibility: Students completing grades 9 to 12, ages 14 to 18
Application Deadline: Applications usually close in May.
Dates: June 17 - July 26 (6 weeks)
Cost: $5,998
Brown University’s Summer@Brown Pre-College Program hosts a range of courses and activities for high school students to participate in. One of these courses includes Inside The Mind of the Criminal: Through Psychology, Forensics, and Neuroscience, which explores criminal behaviors and motivations using the fields of psychology, forensics, and neuroscience. The course focuses on four types of crimes—crimes of passion, crimes committed due to insanity, crimes appearing senseless, and crimes arising out of impulse control disorders.
The course further dives into the crimes of notable criminals, biological risk factors, interventions, and the history of the FBI’s behavioral analysis program. You will also participate in research, hands-on activities, lectures, discussions, and developing and testing hypotheses.
11. Boston Leadership Institute’s Criminal Minds Summer Program
Location: Waltham, Massachusetts | Wellesley, Massachusetts
Eligibility: High school students
Application Deadline: Registrations usually close in May.
Dates: June 24 - June 28 | August 5 - August 9
Cost: $599 program fees + $699 residential fees (if applicable). Need-based scholarships are available to cover the program fees.
The Criminal Minds Summer Program by the Boston Leadership Institute is a weeklong program exploring the field of forensic psychology. It dives into topics like criminal behavior and motivation, mental illnesses, pathologies, the criminal justice system, relationships between criminals and their victims, crime scene details, and more. The course is taught by Jonathan Briseno, a Clinical Fellow at Yale School of Medicine and PhD candidate in Counseling Psychology.
The program includes practical project work, research, discussions, seminars and lectures, field trips, evening activities, social events, and more.
12. Clinical Neuroscience Immersion Experience (CNI-X) at Stanford University
Location: Stanford University, Stanford, California / Virtual
Eligibility: Current high school sophomores, juniors, or seniors
Application Deadline: Applications usually close in spring.
Dates: June 17 - June 28 (virtual) | July 8 - July 19 (in-person session 1) | July 22 - August 2(in-person session 2)
Cost: $1,495 (virtual) | $2,795 (in-person). Scholarships are available for qualified applicants, and students should indicate their need in their application.
Stanford’s Clinical Neuroscience Immersion Experience (CNI-X) provides students with an immersive educational and practical experience in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. The program includes seminars with Stanford faculty and researchers, career development workshops, and social activities. The highlight of this experience is the collaborative project wherein students will work in small teams to brainstorm and develop solutions to pressing issues in the fields. Groups will then present their projects at a final capstone event.
Forensic psychiatry is a topic that is usually featured in this program. You can also develop your project around forensic psychology.
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