Finance Internships for High School Students: The Real List

Banking, trading, and accounting firms do hire high schoolers. Not many, not easily, but the real paid programs exist. The lists online make it look easier than it is by counting $10,000 summer courses and college-only programs like Girls Who Invest alongside the actual paid work.

This list only covers finance-specific programs that hire high school students. For the broader business internship landscape (BoA Student Leaders, NYC Ladders, Microsoft Discovery), our business internships guide covers those in depth, including the four-test filter for real internships versus fake ones.

One note on timing. Application season is on right now. Goldman Sachs Possibilities opens February 1. Goldman Virtual Insight opens March 16. KPMG Empower deadlines land in February.

JPMorgan Smart Start decisions roll through spring. Every program below has a hard deadline in the next 10 weeks. Do not wait.

Paid Finance Programs That Hire High School Students

Five programs in the US pay high school students real money for real finance work. Five. Everyone else is running a summer course, an exposure program, or a college-only pipeline.

Notice only KPMG operates in multiple cities. Every other paid HS finance program is regional. Geography gates this list harder than credentials do.

KPMG Empower High School Experience

This is the find most high school finance lists miss. KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms, runs a paid three-week program for high school juniors and seniors at $22 to $25 an hour.

That beats Kaiser Permanente's KP Launch rate per hour, and it exposes you to real Big Four audit, tax, and advisory work.

Empower places students across KPMG offices in multiple US cities. The programs run in July, typically for three weeks, and pay high school students about the same hourly rate KPMG pays its first-year college interns.

Eligibility: high school juniors and seniors, US citizens or work-authorized, typically students from underrepresented backgrounds in accounting and finance. KPMG uses Empower as a pipeline into its Master's in Accounting recruiting two years later.

Deadline: applications typically open late fall and close February. Announcements go out early spring for summer placement.

Honest take: if you are serious about accounting, tax, or corporate finance (not Wall Street trading), Empower is the best-kept secret on this list. $22 to $25 an hour for three weeks of real Big Four work beats three weeks of Wharton Finance coursework for resume value. And you get paid instead of paying.

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston TIP

The Boston Fed runs the Today's Interns, Tomorrow's Professionals program for Boston Public Schools sophomores who have completed sophomore year.

Paid work inside a central bank. Real finance and economics exposure. The partnership runs with the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC), which manages intake.

Eligibility: Boston Public Schools students who have completed sophomore year, income-eligible (the program targets underrepresented students in finance), and available for the full summer placement.

Deadline: spring. PIC typically posts applications in March or April. Check the Boston Fed TIP page and the Boston Private Industry Council site for the current year's window.

Honest take: tiny cohort, narrow gate. If you qualify (Boston Public Schools, income-eligible), apply. The Federal Reserve on your resume as a high schooler is distinctive enough to mention 15 years later.

Other Federal Reserve locations (NY, SF, Chicago, Dallas) do not currently run comparable high school programs. NY Fed's junior summer analyst program is for college students only.

JPMorgan Thomas G. Labrecque Smart Start Program

This one is unique on the list. Smart Start is not a single summer internship. It is a four-year pipeline.

Graduating high school seniors who get accepted commit to part-time work at JPMorgan during college plus full-time summer internships each year until graduation. The firm covers training, mentorship, and a real career path into JPMorgan's analyst programs.

Eligibility: graduating high school seniors heading to college in fall, typically NY metro area, often targeted at students from historically underrepresented backgrounds in financial services. Strong academic profile required.

Deadline: rolling through senior year. JPMorgan recruits through high school college counselors and community partners. Acceptance decisions go out in late spring.

Honest take: if Wall Street is the goal, this is the single most valuable program a high school senior can land. You skip the usual scramble of applying to internships during college.

By senior year of college, you have three summers at JPMorgan and a strong path to a full-time job offer there. No other HS program matches this pipeline.

The catch: extremely limited slots, NY metro bias, and it usually requires being at a college JPMorgan recruits from heavily, which is its own filter.

Chicago Summer Business Institute (Finance Track)

CSBI's placement model is finance-focused. Since 1991 the program has placed Chicago-area high school juniors and seniors into six-week paid internships at banks, asset managers, and financial services firms across Chicagoland.

Northern Trust, Mesirow Financial, BMO Harris, and similar firms rotate as host partners each cohort.

For Chicago finance-bound students, CSBI is more targeted than BoA Student Leaders, which places at community nonprofits instead. At CSBI you rotate through real financial services work: account services, junior analyst support, client reporting.

Deadline: applications typically open January or February and close early March. If you are reading this in January, the window is open or opening this month. Full CSBI application process details are in our business internships guide.

NYC Ladders for Leaders (Finance Placements)

Ladders for Leaders is the highest-volume paid internship program for NYC high schoolers, and roughly 20 percent of the 1,000+ annual placements go to finance and banking firms.

JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Deutsche Bank, and major NYC banks each take a cohort of Ladders students every summer. If you want Wall Street exposure at 16 or 17, this is the most accessible path.

Placement type depends on your application essay and interview. Indicating a finance interest on your application and discussing it during pre-employment training increases the odds of a finance placement.

Deadline: January 16 for the current cycle. If you missed it, the next window opens late November. Full Ladders eligibility and application details in our business internships guide above.

Wall Street Early Insight Programs (Real, Free, Accessible)

These are not internships. They do not pay. They are exposure programs designed to seed the undergrad recruiting pipeline. But they are real, free, and they put a Wall Street name on your resume, which opens doors when undergrad recruiting starts your sophomore year of college.

Goldman Sachs High School Possibilities Program

Goldman Sachs selects a small group of exceptional HS juniors for a week-long immersion program. Workshops on investment banking, sales and trading, asset management. Translation: investment banking helps companies raise money, sales and trading is buying and selling stocks for clients, and asset management is investing other people's money. Networking with Goldman analysts and VPs. No pay. Real access.

Eligibility: rising HS seniors with strong academic profiles, typically from underrepresented backgrounds in finance.

Deadline: applications open February 1. Competitive selection through the Goldman Sachs Possibilities Series page.

Honest take: if you get in, you basically have a head start on Goldman's college internship recruiting two years later. That matters more than a paycheck. You do not get paid, but you get into the pipeline.

Goldman Sachs Virtual Insight Series

Broader access version. Virtual, self-paced content plus live sessions. Open to HS students who do not clear the Possibilities selection bar.

Deadline: applications open March 16.

Honest take: lower stakes, lower return. Free and resume-mentionable. Worth a weekend to sign up for if you are finance-curious.

JPMorgan Early Insights

Week-long exposure programs across JPMorgan's divisions: investment banking, asset management, risk management. Workshops plus networking plus mentorship. Some editions are HS-specific, others target college freshmen.

Check JPMorgan's student opportunities page for the current HS-specific sessions. Applications open throughout the year.

Morgan Stanley Programs

Morgan Stanley runs the High School Introduction to Entrepreneurship Program and the Women's Leadership Workshop.

Both are free, both short-format. Entrepreneurship and leadership angles, not pure finance, but useful for HS students balancing business and finance interests.

The Pay-to-Play Finance Courses

Five big-name finance summer programs show up on every HS finance list. None of them are internships. Every one of them charges tuition. Here is the honest cost and category for each.

• Wharton Global Youth Programs Finance Tracks. Tuition runs $5,000 to $9,000 depending on session length. Partial aid to $4,000. Summer coursework taught by Wharton faculty. Selective but pay-based.

• Columbia University Pre-College Finance. "Introduction to Finance and Investment Management." Around $4,000 to $5,000 for the week-long program plus housing. Summer course, not internship.

• Fordham University Wall Street in the Classroom. One-week online program, around $1,500. Lectures plus NYC executive guest speakers. Coursework format.

• Yale Finance and Investing Program. Two-week Yale summer program, around $6,000 to $7,000. Classroom plus a Wall Street firm visit. Summer course.

• Noble Desktop Financial Modeling Bootcamp. Three-day bootcamp, around $1,000 to $1,500. Excel plus financial modeling skills. Class, not internship.

These can be valuable. If your family has the budget and the goal is coursework plus a college admissions signal, they make sense. If the goal is paid work experience, none of them count. Do not list them on your resume under "internships." List them under "summer programs" honestly.

Finance Competitions That Beat Most Summer Courses

High school finance competitions are underrated on resume-building value. They are free, competitive, and they give you a real portfolio to point to. A strong competition finish often outperforms a $6,000 Yale summer program in college admissions.

DECA Stock Market Game

Part of the broader DECA high school career and technical education system. Teams build and manage investment portfolios over two challenge rounds (October to January).

Top finishers advance to the International Career Development Conference (ICDC). The current ICDC runs April 26-29 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Teams defend their investment decisions in a 15-minute oral presentation at ICDC. Over $20,000 in scholarship money is available across placements. Real portfolio work, real presentation reps, real pressure. Entry runs through the official DECA Stock Market Game page.

Eligibility: DECA members at member high schools. Most US high schools with a business or marketing program host a DECA chapter.

Honest take: if your high school has DECA and you care about finance, this is a smarter use of your time than a $5,000 summer finance camp. You develop real investment reasoning, present to judges, and compete for scholarship money that covers actual college costs.

Wharton High School Investment Competition

Not to be confused with the paid Wharton Global Youth Programs. This is the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition. Free, open to grades 9 through 12, team-based portfolio management using a stock market simulator. Global reach.

Run by Wharton's Global Youth Program team. Teams of four to seven students plus a mentor. Compete virtually over several months.

Honest take: free, competitive, international. Team finalists present to Wharton faculty. Better resume line than the paid Wharton summer course for most applicants, because it shows you can execute under competitive pressure.

Real Finance Experience Without a Program

If no program above fits your geography, age cutoff, or competition level, build real finance experience directly.

• Bank teller at 16 or 18. Some banks hire at 16 (mostly credit unions), most require 18. Pay ranges $15 to $28 an hour depending on location. Real cash handling, customer service, and you learn the rules banks have to follow. More meaningful for a finance resume than a three-day Excel bootcamp. A paycheck at 18 also lets you start building credit, which our student credit card guide covers.

• Cold email a local financial advisor. Independent RIAs (registered investment advisors) often say yes to a thoughtful HS student asking for 10 hours a week of shadowing. Specificity matters: "I am a high school junior interested in wealth management. I would like to shadow a client review, sit in on two portfolio rebalancing sessions, and help with basic research for 6 weeks this summer." Send to 15 advisors. Two or three will say yes.

• Tax season accountant office (January to April). Small CPA firms face a workload cliff during tax season. They hire high school students for filing, client intake, and data entry at $12 to $18 an hour. You see real tax returns, real client conversations, real deadlines.

• Start or lead an investment club at your school. Builds presentation skills, recruits a peer group of finance-interested friends, creates a resume line you control. Investopedia's Stock Simulator is free and can host the club's practice portfolio.

Any one of these beats a summer course on your college application, because it shows initiative and accountability.

Wall Street Reality Check

Two numbers every finance-ambitious high schooler should know. Goldman Sachs accepts 0.8 to 0.9 percent of undergrad summer analyst applicants.

JPMorgan accepts roughly the same rate. At 17 or 18, you are not close to that competition yet. You are preparing to be competitive in it.

The realistic Wall Street pathway: build strong math skills in high school (AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics matter), aim for a target undergrad business program (Wharton, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, UVA, Harvard, MIT Sloan, or a public target like UNC, Texas, Illinois), apply for Early Insight programs freshman year, target summer analyst programs (the paid college internships banks run) sophomore and junior years, then turn your junior summer offer into a full-time job after graduation.

What you are doing now is laying the foundation. Strong GPA, finance fluency, one serious program or competition, and a clear narrative for why finance.

That is the right bar for high school. Trading on Wall Street at 17 is not the bar. It is a fantasy the lists online sell you.

Start with One

Pick one paid program on this list that matches your geography and profile. Apply to it. Add one competition (DECA or Wharton) you can enter this academic year. Add one self-study loop: build a paper portfolio, track it for 12 months, write quarterly reviews.

That is the full stack for a high school finance student. One program for real-world exposure. One competition for presentation and research reps. One self-study loop for discipline and market fluency.

Skip the $6,000 summer courses unless your family has the budget and your main goal is a college admissions signal.

Skip Girls Who Invest and FDIC (the federal bank insurance agency) internships; both are college-only. Build three real things over two years. That is how finance careers start at 17.