If your child needs an internship or volunteer opportunity to get a head start on college competition, 18-year-old Mehar Johal has created the online hub for all of your answers.

The 2021 South Brunswick High School graduate is the founder of HS Navigator, which he started a few years ago after realizing how difficult it was to find a pre-college opportunity for himself.

“These summer opportunities – a lot of colleges have them on a pay wall, or they have a lot of nested links and it’s really complicated trying to find one,” Johal said at New Jersey 101.5.

With the help of a few other high school students in New Jersey and beyond, the website has become an easily searchable platform where students and advisors can enter specific wishes related to opportunities, such as price and type.

“It’s a general area for them to find opportunities to improve themselves or to get some kind of reward for the work they do,” Johal said.

Johal knew he was on to something when his peers kept asking him for help finding an internship or other opportunity while he was still in high school.

Today, the website has thousands of opportunities, including scholarships and summer programs, available in all 50 states.

“You want to find something personalized, instead of just scrolling through a long list of opportunities,” Johal said.

Johal, who was a major in his class and heading to Georgia Tech in the fall, said he can count on his website team to keep the site up to date and up to date when he is in school.

Johal is currently a full-time intern at Bloomberg.

For 2021, the HS Navigator team has created its own internship for middle and high school students which is currently underway. Over 150 students from across the country have registered to learn more about areas such as business and IT through weekly live webinars.

“Our goal through webinars, and bringing together alumni and industry professionals, is to help students understand their passions and what they want to pursue in the future,” said Johal.

Contact reporter Dino Flammia at [email protected]