About

The Mayo Clinic High School Student Summer Volunteer Program places students ages 15–18 inside Mayo Clinic's Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona campuses for nine weeks each summer, serving in a structured volunteer capacity alongside the clinic's professional staff. Volunteers are assigned one four-hour shift per week during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, with additional shifts occasionally available. Over the course of the program, students assist with patient preparation, wayfinding, clerical support, and daily operations — work that puts them inside one of the most respected medical institutions in the world, even if it doesn't involve clinical shadowing or research.

The program is honest about what it is and what it isn't. Volunteers support staff and patients in a service capacity; they do not shadow physicians, participate in procedures, or observe clinical work directly. What the program does offer is sustained exposure to a major academic medical center's environment — the pace, the culture, the patient-facing dimensions of healthcare — over a meaningful time horizon, and access to educational presentations built into the program experience. Students must commit to the full nine-week program and attend a mandatory in-person interview and orientation. Eligibility requires students to be between 15 and 18 as of May 1, and not yet enrolled in college. An occupational health visit, covered by Mayo Clinic, is required before the program begins.

For Arizona students who are genuinely curious about healthcare as a career and want to spend a summer inside a world-class medical environment rather than a classroom approximation of one, the Mayo Clinic volunteer program is one of the more distinctive regional opportunities available — provided expectations are calibrated to what the role actually involves.