
Ask HN: [Advice] Internship Before College - fickle_theory
So I&#x27;m 18 and leaving college in the UK in a few months (similar to US high school). Usually students go onto university now, or work, or take a gap year and travel.<p>I applied to some universities, but there&#x27;s only one university in the UK I really want to go to (that I didn&#x27;t get an offer at). I don&#x27;t feel the UK has a good range of universities, like the US does, that could offer me what I want from a university. I&#x27;m thinking about reapplying (transfers not allowed) as I don&#x27;t think elsewhere in the UK is worth it to me, though I have other offers. I probably should&#x27;ve applied abroad so I had more options in case my one choice failed.<p>I don&#x27;t know what to do in a gap year, though. I don&#x27;t really want to travel alone etc. as I doubt it&#x27;d be a worthwhile experience for me. I <i>think</i> I&#x27;d be appropriately qualified to do, and enjoy, an internship or similar in software engineering, but I think it&#x27;s unlikely places would consider me w&#x2F;o a degree.<p>I&#x27;ve done programming for quite a few years. I&#x27;ve freelanced on some relatively large projects, some medical software that&#x27;s in use currently at a clinic, bunch of work for websites and backend stuff, sell some pre-made digital software, plugins for games, freelance system administration, and have some projects on GitHub that I&#x27;ve either made or contributed to, and other stuff over the years. Though I haven&#x27;t done as much of this in the past ~10 months so a bit rustier, I think I&#x27;d have enough experience and ability to do something meaningful in an internship or job.<p>Would I be able to get some kind of software engineering thing for a few months to a year? If so, any companies&#x2F;places that might offer? I&#x27;m in the UK, but I&#x27;d rather be in the US or elsewhere in Europe for the year. If it&#x27;s just simply not going to be possible, any other advice, or something else I can do for the year? It&#x27;ll be from July 2019 till September 2020, any period or duration in between is fine.
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fickle_theory
Also:

I don't really feel like working on solo stuff / remote for that year, I kinda
want to work in a team even if not necessarily actively working with people on
a specific project, at least collaborating more or surrounded by other
programmers. And I want to work on something meaningful, ideally, if I'm going
to be spending a year of my life on this. So either a good experience or a
good project to work on, ideally.

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elamje
Hey man, you sound like a prime candidate for Lambda School. Check it out. It
was a Y Combinator company that seems pretty solid. Free up front (you pay if
it gets you a job), and allows you to work on a lot of group projects so I've
been told.

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fickle_theory
I know of it. I still plan to go to a suitable university after the year, so
I'm not sure it'd be suitable as it's also pretty expensive.

