Can any high school student apply to a Yale lab internship?

Not on the pages we found. The Pathways internships describe public high school students from the New Haven area, and the Discovery to Cure internship needs a school representative to request an application and nominate a student.

Is Yale Young Global Scholars a research program?

Yale's page describes it as an academic enrichment program with two-week sessions and does not mention research. Read the current session descriptions on Yale's page before you decide.

Do I need a program to do research?

No. You can start with a question, public data or published papers, and feedback from a teacher or mentor. Our guide on how to do research in high school shows the steps.

Yale Summer Research Programs for High School Students

This page is part of our guide on how to do research in high school. Many lists of Yale options come from companies that sell their own programs. This one uses only Yale’s pages, dates each claim, and separates the labs Yale runs for local students from options open to applicants elsewhere.

Does Yale run a summer research program for high school students?

Yes, but the Yale lab internships described on yale.edu are mostly built for New Haven-area students or for students nominated by a school. Yale Pathways Research Internships (YPRI) connect qualified public high school students from the New Haven area with Yale science labs for a seven-week summer internship.^[6] The Discovery to Cure internship in the School of Medicine runs six and a half weeks for juniors who are at least 16, and a school representative must request the application.^[4] Open applications exist for a day program in biostatistics and for a two-week academic program, but neither page describes a lab placement.^[3]^[7]

Program	Who it is for, per Yale	Format	Cost, per Yale
Yale Pathways Research Internships	Qualified public high school students from the New Haven area^[6]	Seven-week summer lab internship^[6]	Not stated on the page^[6]
Discovery to Cure internship	Juniors at least 16 years old, nominated by a school^[4]	Six and a half weeks in a biomedical lab^[4]	Not stated on the page^[4]
Yale Neuroscience Summer Scholars	High school students from New Haven Public Schools^[5]	Eight-week session with a supervised research project^[5]	Not stated on the page^[5]
Pathways to Science Summer Scholars	Pathways Scholars entering grades 10 to 12^[2]	Two-week workshops on campus^[2]	Free, per the page^[2]
Young Scholars in Biostatistics	Rising 11th and 12th graders^[3]	Day program, teams use health data^[3]	Not stated on the page^[3]
Yale Young Global Scholars	High school students from around the world^[7]	Two-week residential sessions^[7]	Not stated on the page^[7]

Who can apply to the Yale Pathways programs?

Pathways is limited by where you go to school and by nomination. Yale says Pathways Scholars are students entering grades 6 to 12 in New Haven, West Haven, and Orange/Amity public schools who are nominated by a teacher, counselor, or administrator, and that events are at no cost.^[1] The Summer Scholars Program is a free two-week intensive on Yale’s campus for Scholars entering grades 10 to 12, with workshops of 16 students or fewer, and rising seniors can apply for a residential option.^[2]

The Summer Scholars page lists tentative 2027 dates: applications go to eligible Scholars in January, applications and teacher recommendations are due in February, workshops run July 5 to 9 and July 12 to 16, and the closing ceremony is July 16.^[2] Yale’s Neuroscience Summer Scholars page describes an eight-week session for New Haven Public Schools students with lab training and a supervised research project, and it gives no dates or application steps.^[5] If you do not attend one of the named school systems, these programs are not open to you on the pages we read.

Is there a Yale research option open to students from anywhere?

The clearest open option on Yale’s pages is the Young Scholars Summer Program in Biostatistics and Clinical Research, run by the Yale Center for Analytical Sciences. It is for rising 11th and 12th graders with strong math skills, and rising seniors get preference.^[3] Students work in teams and use real health science data to answer study questions, then give a final presentation.^[3] It is a day program, not a residential one, and families outside Connecticut must confirm a local address and adult supervision for the program.^[3]

The page says the program concluded for summer 2026 and asks readers to check back for 2027 application information, so it gives no dates or deadline for next summer.^[3] Yale Young Global Scholars is also open to students worldwide, with two-week residential sessions listed for summer 2027 and an application that typically closes in the first week of January.^[7] Its page does not mention research, so treat it as an academic program, not a lab placement.^[7]

How does the Discovery to Cure internship work?

Discovery to Cure is a six and a half week biomedical lab internship from June to August, and a school must nominate you. Yale says no more than 20 students are accepted each year, applicants must be juniors at least 16 years old, and each school may nominate two students.^[4] Students cannot nominate themselves. A school representative emails the program coordinator to request an application.^[4] The page lists a 2026 application deadline of February 13, which has passed, and it does not state pay or a stipend.^[4] If you are interested for next year, ask your school counselor or science teacher whether the school takes part and when it needs your name.

How can you tell a Yale-run program from one that uses the name?

Check who runs it, on a page you can verify. A Yale-run program sits on a yale.edu address and names the Yale office, school or center in charge, as the pages above do. Programs that rent space or borrow the name may look similar but be run by a company. This checklist works for any program:

Open the program’s own page. Does the address end in yale.edu, and does it name the Yale unit in charge?
Find eligibility on that page. Many Yale lab internships name a school system or need a nomination, and a third-party list may leave that out.
Find the cost and any stipend on that page. If the page does not state them, ask the contact listed.
Read what you will do. A lab internship, a workshop series and a set of lectures are different things.
Ask who mentors you, and what is refunded if you withdraw. Get the answers in writing.

Our hub on how to tell if a research program is legit covers red flags and questions to ask before you pay.

What can you do if you cannot attend a Yale program?

You can start research without a program. A project needs a question, a source of data or text, and feedback from someone who knows the field. Read how to find a research mentor, how to volunteer in a lab, and our comparison of humanities and social science programs, which puts free and paid options on the same criteria.

What should you do next?

Open the Yale pages above for the year you plan to apply and write down eligibility, deadline and cost for each program you qualify for. Then decide whether a Yale option, a local lab or a project you run on your own fits your goal. If you want an outside view of how your overall profile reads, the free review on ivy-league.io is built for that.

What do we not know?

Eligibility, dates and costs on Yale’s pages change each year, and several pages state no dates, costs or stipends. Yale’s pages describe the 2027 Summer Scholars dates as tentative. Yale also described the Pathways internships in news items from 2023, which gave July 1 to August 16 session dates and a five-day workshop format, so we do not know whether those details are unchanged.^[8]^[9] This is not a complete list of Yale-affiliated options, and other departments may run their own. We do not know how any program affects an admission decision, and no source we know of shows that it does.