Application to the Max Planck Summer Internship Program - MaxSIP

Please note: Due to organizational reasons, there will be no MaxSIP in summer 2023. We aim to resume the program for summer 2024. Information on application deadlines and participating labs can be found on the MaxSIP website in fall 2023.

Who can apply?

We invite excellent and enthusiastic students with top grades from all countries to apply. Training should be in biology, chemistry, computational biology, biophysics, neuroscience and related fields.
The program intends to promote students early on in their career. We welcome applications from bachelor (second year and onwards) and master students that have already gained some research experience during their studies.
Applicants need to be enrolled at university during the internship or have completed their degree in 2022. Please note that the program is highly competitive. Last year for example, we accepted 17 candidates out of more than 4000 applications.
Although we do not want to discourage you from applying, we would like to assist you, in finding out whether you do have a realistic chance to get past the first round of selection. Hence, we recommend, briefly doing the self-assessment below.

Self-assessment test:

To help you to better assess your chances, please go through the questions below. To stand a realistic chance to get past the first round of selection, you should be able to answer all 7 questions with “Yes”.
If this is not the case, it will be rather likely, that your application will not be competitive and will be rejected in the first round of selection. In that particular case, it might be smarter, to apply at a later time point, when you perhaps better fulfill the criteria.

1.   Are you at least a second year Bachelor student or higher OR are you currently enrolled in a Master program?
2.   Do you have already some first research experience in a laboratory setting (such a lab-rotations or summer internships)?
3.   Are you in the top 10 %ile of your class or do you have a GPA equivalent of at least 3.7 out of 4 (USA), distinction level (UK) or 1.6 (Germany)? For other countries equivalent scores would apply.
4.   Will you be able to identify a referee (university professor or independent group leader), who knows you well and who will support you by submitting a meaningful and enthusiastic letter of recommendation?
5.   Do you study at an internationally recognized university with excellent reputation?  (A good indicator would be if your university is among the top 500 universities, World University Rankings 2022).
6.   Was your academic training in English OR do you have an English certificate such as TOEFL or IELTS score report (minimal level TOEFL: 80; IELTS: 6.5)?
7.   Are you currently enrolled in a university for Bachelor or Master (or equivalent) studies and/or will you be enrolled during summer 2022?

For questions please contact maxsip@neuro.mpg.de .

Your MaxSIP coordination team