15 Creative Writing & Film Summer Internships for High School Students
- Stephen Turban
- 5 hours ago
- 11 min read
If you want to explore creative writing or film before college, summer internships are one of the most exciting and practical ways to do it. They put you in spaces where storytelling is the main focus, and where you are expected to produce work, not just talk about ideas. Depending on the internship, you might write and revise pieces, work on a screenplay, support a newsroom, assist on a film project, or help with editing and production.
Why should I participate in a creative writing and film summer internship in high school?
The biggest benefit is the experience you can actually point to. You learn how writing and film work when deadlines are real, and feedback is direct. You get used to revision, collaboration, and finishing projects to a standard that goes beyond school assignments.
Internships also help you build a portfolio early. Whether you end up applying for film school, journalism programs, creative writing majors, or media-related opportunities, having finished work makes a difference. It also gives you something clear to talk about in essays, interviews, and future applications.
With that, here are 15 creative writing and film summer internships for high school students to explore! If you want to learn about other prestigious and selective opportunities for high school students, check out our other blogs here and if you are interested in internships, check out this blog!
15 Creative Writing & Film Summer Internships for High School Students
Cost: Varies depending on program type. Full financial aid available.
Location: Remote! You can work from anywhere in the world.
Application Deadline: Deadlines vary depending on the cohort. Spring (January), Summer (May), Fall (September), and Winter (November).
Program Dates: Multiple cohorts throughout the year, including Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
Eligibility: Students who can work for 10-20 hours/week for 8-12 weeks. Open to high school students, undergraduates, and gap year students!
Ladder Internships is a selective start-up internship program for ambitious high school students! In the program, you work with a high-growth start-up on an internship. Start-ups that offer internships range across a variety of industries, from tech/deep tech and AI/ML to health tech, marketing, journalism, consulting, and more. Ladder’s start-ups are high-growth companies on average, raising over a million dollars. Interns work closely with their manager at the startup on real-world projects and present their work to the company. The virtual internship is usually 8 weeks long. Apply now!
Location: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Cost: Fully funded (covers tuition, housing, meals, and travel)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective; up to 40 students annually
Dates: Multi-week virtual + 10-day residential in late July/August
Application Deadline: Typically late February
Eligibility: High school juniors with a minimum unweighted GPA of 3.5, with a focus on students from underrepresented backgrounds in journalism
Princeton’s Summer Journalism Program is built like a real newsroom training pipeline, not a casual writing camp. You spend weeks learning reporting basics, interviewing, fact-checking, and how to structure a story that holds up under editing. The program mixes online sessions with time on Princeton’s campus, where you work through ethics, media law basics, and the daily discipline of rewriting. You learn from working journalists and program alumni, and you end up collaborating on a final publication that forces you to report, edit, and publish as a team.
Location: London, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo
Cost: Varies by track; financial aid available
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Varies
Dates: Two-week summer sessions
Application Deadline: Rolling (multiple summer cohorts)
Eligibility: High school students aged 15–18
This short-term immersion program is structured around career exploration in major global industry hubs, with each city track emphasizing its dominant sectors (for example, finance and policy in London, media and business in New York, tech and startups in San Francisco, and technology and manufacturing in Tokyo). Participants engage in project-based learning with established companies, attend interactive workshops, and visit offices, factories, and headquarters. The program also includes in-person weekly 1:1 career coaching sessions and sessions where you will receive personalized feedback on your resume and overall profile. You’ll also present your findings to industry experts at the end of the program. You can find more details about the application here!
Location: New York University, New York, NY (Online)
Cost: $8,008
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Selective
Dates: October 13–November 21 (Fall); summer session also offered
Application Deadline: September 9 (Fall); summer deadlines vary
Eligibility: High school students in grades 9–12 with a minimum 3.0 GPA
NYU’s online filmmakers course walks you through how short films get made from the first idea to the final export. You write, direct, shoot, edit, and also deal with the less glamorous parts like planning scenes, organizing footage, and working with other people’s timelines. The structure is a mix of recorded lessons and live sessions, so you get both flexibility and deadlines. You collaborate with peers on projects like a documentary and a music video, then finish with your own narrative short. By the end, you have a clearer sense of what film school-level work feels like, including the pace and feedback loop.
Location: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (in-person) or Online
Cost: $2,500 for the 2-week residential session; $10 application reading fee (fee waivers and financial aid available)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Varies
Dates: June 14–27 and July 12–25 (two-week residential sessions); separate 6-week online courses offered
Application Deadline: Typically spring; enrollment confirmation required by mid-May for residential sessions
Eligibility: High school students with a strong interest in creative writing; selection based primarily on writing samples
Iowa’s Young Writers’ Studio runs like a writing workshop where the main job is producing drafts, getting critique, and rewriting without taking it personally. You choose a genre and spend your time in small groups reading each other’s work closely, learning how to give feedback that is specific and useful. Instructors come from the University of Iowa’s writing ecosystem, so the teaching style leans craft-heavy and revision-focused. You also get craft sessions and readings that push you to try forms you have not written before. The online version keeps the same core idea, just built around deadlines, written critique, and steady output.
Location: California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA
Cost: CA residents – $5,174; Out-of-state & international – $10,475. Financial aid available for CA residents
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective; department cohorts typically ~60–70 students (exact acceptance rate not publicly released)
Dates: July 4 – August 1 (4 weeks)
Application Deadline: Typically late February (around February 28)
Eligibility: Students entering grades 9–12 in fall or graduating seniors (spring); out-of-state and international students limited to ~20 total spots across departments
CSSSA’s writing program is four weeks of writing every day, workshopping constantly, and learning how to survive feedback at speed. You move through fiction, poetry, memoir, and dramatic writing, then spend more time in a focus workshop where you build longer pieces and revise them seriously. Faculty workshops are the core, but guest writers and industry people come in for talks that feel closer to the real writing world than classroom theory. You can submit work to the program anthology and use office hours to get direct input on your projects. The pace is heavy, and it rewards people who can write, revise, and keep going even when the draft is not working.
Location: Yale University, New Haven, CT (on-campus) or Online
Cost: $3,085 (on-campus with housing); $2,660 (on-campus without housing); $1,380 (online)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Selective; cohort size not publicly disclosed
Dates: June 21 – June 26
Application Deadline: April 1 (rolling decisions after applications open in January)
Eligibility: On-campus: rising high school seniors aged 16–18; Online: rising juniors and seniors aged 16–18
Yale’s Young Writers’ Workshop is a fast, one-week writing routine where you show up with drafts and leave with better drafts. Most of your time goes into small workshop groups where your work gets read closely, discussed out loud, and pushed through revision. You also do focused craft sessions on things like voice, structure, and how to give a critique that is actually useful. One nice detail is the museum-based writing exercises, where you use visual art as a prompt instead of staring at a blank page. Whether you do it online or on campus, the rhythm is the same: write quickly, share, revise, repeat.
Location: Rotates annually across U.S. college campuses (residential, on-campus)
Cost: Fully funded (tuition, housing, meals, books, activities; travel assistance and income-replacement aid available)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: ~3–5% acceptance rate; ~60–80 students total across both seminars (split into small seminar cohorts)
Dates: June 21 – July 25
Application Deadline: December 3
Eligibility: High school sophomores and juniors (rising juniors/seniors), age 15–17; U.S. and international students eligible with specific birthdate criteria
TASS feels closer to a serious college seminar than a summer program, mostly because the reading load and discussion expectations are real. You pick one track, then spend weeks in long daily seminars where the work is reading, arguing, writing, and learning how to think in public without falling apart. The residential side is part of the point too, since you live in a student-run community that makes decisions together, plans activities, and works through conflict using a structured model. A lot of the growth comes from writing workshops and the constant loop of feedback, not from lectures.
Location: New York City, USA
Cost: $6,195 (day students) or $7,695 (residential) per two-week term; $500 discount for multiple terms; limited need-based scholarships and payment plans available
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Not publicly disclosed (multiple cohorts across four terms)
Dates: Term 1: June 7–19; Term 2: June 21–July 3; Term 3: July 5–17; Term 4: July 19–31,
Application Deadline: Rolling admissions
Eligibility: Rising grades 10–12 and graduating seniors; ages 15–18 by program start
The New York Times Summer Academy is built like a short journalism immersion where you spend two weeks trying out different forms of reporting and media work. You do reporting exercises, discuss how stories get framed, and learn the basic habits behind good journalism, like asking better questions and checking what you think you know. The topics can range from culture and sports to business and law, so you get a sense of how different beats work. New York City becomes part of the classroom, especially if you lean into the reporting side and treat the city like a source. The structure is term-based, so you can do one session without committing to a full summer.
Location: Bronxville, NY (on-campus day program) + Virtual option
Cost: Virtual session: $1,195; On-campus session: $1,950 (includes lunch and snacks). $250 deposit due at registration.
Cohort Size: Workshops are capped at 18 students per group
Dates: Virtual Session: July 6–10; On-Campus Session 1: July 20–24; On-Campus Session 2: August 3–7
Application Deadline: Rolling; registration required online (exact cutoff varies by session capacity)
Eligibility: Open to students entering grades 9–12 in Fall; must be at least 14 years old at the start of the program. Participants can earn 1 college credit.
Writers Week at Sarah Lawrence is a one-week workshop where you write every day and share work in a small group that stays consistent. The tone is more studio than classroom, with generative prompts, peer reading, and feedback that is focused on craft rather than grades. Workshops cover a wide mix of genres, so you can experiment instead of locking yourself into one style. Guest sessions and readings add variety, but the core is still the daily workshop cycle. It ends with a showcase, but the program is more about process and momentum than producing a perfect final piece.
Location: The Paley Center for Media, New York, NY
Cost: No cost; paid internship at $17/hour + travel reimbursement
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective; small cohort
Dates: July 6–August 6 (5 weeks, meeting 4 days/week, 6 hours/day)
Application Deadline: March 30
Eligibility: Rising 11th and 12th-grade students; must present valid NY State working papers and be legally authorized to work in the U.S.
The Hearst internship at the Paley Center is built around how media actually works when it is not just a class project. You rotate through media literacy training, career workshops, and behind-the-scenes visits to places like newsrooms, podcast studios, and TV production sets, so you see the whole pipeline from idea to audience. Mentorship sessions with working professionals are a core part of the week, and they talk through their career paths in a very direct way. The program ends with a podcast project you produce yourself, which means you do the research, interviews, scripting, recording, and editing, then turn it in on deadline and revise based on feedback.
Location: Los Angeles Times office, El Segundo, CA (hybrid)
Cost: No cost; paid internship at $16.90/hour
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective
Dates: June 16–August 1 (7 weeks, 24 hours/week: Mon-Wed in office, Thu remote)
Application Deadline: February 26
Eligibility: High school students; must reside in Los Angeles or Orange County and be able to commute to the El Segundo office; legally authorized to work in the U.S.
LA Times High School Insider is structured like a newsroom job where you are expected to pitch, report, write, and publish under real editorial rules. You spend the summer working on breaking news, longer features, and sometimes multimedia formats like video or podcasts, with editors reading your drafts and pushing you through rewrites. The routine teaches you the unglamorous parts too, like finding sources, following up, planning interviews, and working around deadlines that do not move. Because it is hybrid, you also get a feel for how professional newsrooms balance in-person reporting with remote writing and editing days.
Location: WETA Studios, Washington, D.C.
Cost: Fully funded (covers travel, lodging, meals, and all program costs)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective
Dates: June 19–27 (9 days, immersive full-time program)
Application Deadline: March 24 (teacher recommendation letters due March 31)
Eligibility: Current high school students available full-time for the entire program duration
PBS NewsHour’s Summer Academy is a short, intense stretch where you learn video journalism by producing real stories on a tight timeline. You work in teams, go out and interview sources, shoot and edit footage, and build a finished piece that gets reviewed the way newsroom work gets reviewed. Coaching is hands-on, so you are not just told what to do; you are shown what is not working and how to fix it. The pace is fast, and the schedule is strict, which is part of the point, because it forces you to work like you are on assignment.
Location: Fifth Sun Pictures, South Los Angeles, CA
Cost: No cost; paid internship (structured work-based learning)
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: 30 student interns annually (Film Production Cohort and other pathways)
Dates: Summer (8 weeks)
Application Deadline: Varies (typically spring; coordinated through LAUSD CTE-Linked Learning and partner schools)
Eligibility: High school students from LAUSD's CTE-Linked Learning network schools (45+ schools across Los Angeles)
Fifth Sun Pictures runs a summer internship where you work on real client deliverables, so you learn production by meeting expectations, not by guessing. In the Film Production Cohort, you get exposure to photography, video, lighting, editing, graphic design, and post-production, and you see how a working studio keeps projects organized from planning to revisions. You also end up learning the background systems that make production possible, like file management, equipment handling, and staying on top of deadlines when multiple people are touching the same project. The internship is connected to LAUSD’s career pathway network, so it is designed to translate into skills you can reuse in other media and work settings.
Location: Monmouth County, NJ (Teaching Assistant track in-person); other tracks flexible
Cost: Varies. $75 registration fee
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Small cohorts (Teaching Assistant track limited to 8 participants)
Dates: June–August (summer)
Application Deadline: Applications open in March
Eligibility: High school students in grades 9–12
Project Write Now is one of those internships where you are expected to produce work consistently, not just attend sessions. Depending on the track, you might be editing and publishing writing, running an interview project, or working as a teaching assistant who helps plan lessons and teach younger students how to write. The Teaching Assistant track is the most hands-on, because you are building lesson plans, delivering them, and learning how to manage a room while staying calm and patient. Even in the more flexible tracks, the program still runs on deadlines, communication, and follow-through, so you end the summer with real output instead of “participation.”
One other option—the Lumiere Research Scholar Program
If you’re interested in pursuing independent research, consider applying to one of the Lumiere Research Scholar Programs, selective online high school programs for students founded with researchers at Harvard and Oxford. Last year, we had over 4,000 students apply for 500 spots in the program! You can find the application form here, check out students’ reviews of the program here and here.
Also check out the Lumiere Research Inclusion Foundation, a non-profit research program for talented, low-income students. Last year, we had 150 students on full need-based financial aid!
Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.
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