Palantir Starts Internship for High-School Grads

Software company Palantir, which mostly specializes in intelligence-gathering and military applications, is launching a new internship program that hopes to recruit the brightest minds right out of high school.

The Big Picture: Higher education is at a crossroads, with student debt reaching historic highs and a job market that isn’t rewarding the hefty expenses. So, everyone, from employers to prospective students, is searching for alternatives. By pinpointing promising job candidates right out of high school, companies like Palantir could mold people into the exact employees they’re looking for.

Behind the Hires: Palantir’s Meritocracy Fellowship is looking for candidates who want to work rather than go to an Ivy League school.

• The fellowship is a four-month, paid internship for high school grads not enrolled in college. It pays $5,400 monthly and is based out of its New York office.
• But you’ll need Ivy League-level test scores to be considered — a 1460+ on the SAT or a 33+ on the ACT (99th and 98th percentile scores, respectively).
• At the end of the internship, fellows will receive the “Palantir Degree” and be given the opportunity to interview for full-time positions.

The Future: Palantir CEO Alex Karp has been on a college-trolling tour as of late, saying on CNBC’s Squawk Box that “everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect” (a potentially incendiary claim that’s not out of step with current White House policy). Karp claims that elite college admissions are compromised, so the internship is awarded “based solely on merit and academic excellence.”

Considering the number of Palantir employees who’ve become successful entrepreneurs in their own right, many high school grads may see the fellowship as a path worth betting on.