4 VC Fellowship + Investment Partner Opportunities for College Students
Break into venture capital while you’re still in school. From Dorm Room Fund to a16z, here are the fellowships and internships that can give you a front-row seat to startups and investing.
Hi everyone! Harsha here - If you’re new to this newsletter, other than being a founder and VC scout myself, I serve as the President of the Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club (WUEC) and the Executive Director of NGEN, the Inter-Ivy entrepreneurship network that represents over 20,000 student founders working on cutting-edge start-ups across Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Every week, I write about funding opportunities, startup resources or my thoughts on the venture and start-up ecosystem.
As mentioned, I’ve been fortunate to be both VC scout and founder - a dual perspective, I didn’t know I could have when I first started my entrepreneurial journey. Scouting for VCs continues to be a great asset that has helped me understand what VCs look for in startups, a perspective that vastly differs from how founders look at their own companies.
For all those looking at how they can gain such a perspective, or if you’re looking to break into VC as a career, student investment partner opportunities and fellowships are a great way to get started. Here are four opportunities worth knowing about if tapping into the world of VC is on your bucket list:
1. Dorm Room Fund’s Investment Partner Program
Dorm Room Fund is one of the most well-known student-run venture fund. For over a decade, they’ve been backing student and recent alumni founders across the U.S. and Canada. As an Investment Partner, you’ll spend 10–15 hours a week sourcing startups, sitting in diligence calls, and backing some of the strongest student-led companies out there.
They are looking for investment partners with energy, curiosity, and follow-through. If you’re the type of person who gets genuinely excited about founders and ideas, this is one of the few roles where you can actually make investments as a student.
Deadlines are coming up fast (September 11 for most regions, September 25 for SF/West Coast). Applicants go through coffee chats and a “Super Day” before offers.
2. a16z’s American Dynamism Engineering Fellowship
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is one of the most well-known venture firms in the world, and their American Dynamism team is focused on sectors like defense, space, robotics, and industrials, also known as companies “building critical infrastructure for the future”.
The Engineering Fellowship is a 12-month, full-time program designed for technically strong candidates (usually STEM grads with 2–5 years of experience) who want to see the VC world from the inside. Fellows help the investment team evaluate emerging technologies, do technical diligence, and even work directly with portfolio companies on real engineering challenges.
This fellowship operates as a full-time position with $15K/month salary, full benefits, and a year embedded inside one of the most selective VC firms. At the end, fellows often move into portfolio companies, launch their own startups, or (in some cases) stay on the investment team.
3. Inflect Capital’s Venture Fellowship
Inflect is a healthcare-focused fund backed by Vituity, a massive nationwide physician group. If you’re an MBA or MD student interested in venture, this is a chance to be right in the middle of health tech investing.
It’s a 10-week, paid fellowship where you’ll help with deal sourcing, diligence, portfolio support, and market research. You’ll also get to plug into their network of 8,000+ clinicians across the U.S., which makes this particularly valuable for anyone thinking about the intersection of medicine, entrepreneurship, and investing.
Applications are rolling, with interviews starting mid-September.
4. Alix Ventures’s Venture Residency
Alix Ventures is a life sciences fund with one of the most selective student programs out there: their Venture Residency. They accept just two fellows per year (out of 4,000+ applicants), and every single past resident has gone on to either VC or startup roles post-program.
The Residency is a year-long, part-time program (~15 hrs/week) where you’ll do everything from evaluating investment opportunities to publishing thought leadership and interviewing biotech founders. The program is remote, comes with a $5K stipend, and includes direct mentorship from partners.
If you’re biotech-minded, this one’s especially interesting: alumni have gone on to firms like a16z, Dimension, and Foresite, or to found companies like Osmind and Zafrens.
BONUS #5: Expop (Gen Z Startup Incubator) Internship Opportunity
Expop (the Gen Z startup accelerator I co-founded) runs a 6-month incubator helping high school students turn ideas into real ventures. Alongside that, we bring on interns, usually college students, to help us run our incubator and build and scale the platform.
Interns join one of three tracks: Tech (building product and launching features), Partnerships & GTM (audience growth, partnerships, outreach), or Platform Engagement (founder support, writing articles, making videos, designing workshops). It’s ~15 hours/week, remote, and fast-paced. You’ll work directly with our core team, engage with top executives from leading companies like Google, Slack, LinkedIn, and get a front-row seat to what it takes to scale ventures.
It’s a great fit if you want to be hands-on in building something from scratch, support early-stage ventures, while also impacting a global community of young founders. You can reach out to me personally at harsha@ascendancepro.com with any questions.
Final Thoughts
Most students only hear about VC fellowships when it’s too late to apply. If you’re serious about startups, investing, or even just curious about how venture works, these programs give you early access and real experience that compounds over time. Even if you don’t end up in VC long-term, the network and skill set you’ll build here will carry forward into whatever you do next.
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