Any overachiever remembers their high school years — joining every club and honor society, volunteering at nursing homes and homeless shelters, applying for internships and working in offices to stack up college résumés.

The competition to get into college is only getting tougher. With SAT preparation courses and AP classes, high school students are constantly looking for ways to stand out from their classmates and eventually receive a large acceptance envelope from the university of their dreams.

SCPS sophomores Ezra Mosseri and Sam Haddad have devised a way to help.

Having only recently completed the college application process themselves, Mosseri and Haddad co-founded a new startup company called Exceleratr — a website designed to connect high school students to the extracurricular opportunities that will make a difference in their lives and enhance their college applications.

“We couldn’t believe that there was no forum for high school students to find everything extracurricular, whether it [is] an internship, pre-college program or non-academic travel program,” Mosseri said.

Mosseri and Haddad are in the process of establishing the site, which is currently in its beta phase. When it is operational, students will be able to create accounts that give them access to a personal homepage where they can search for internships, as well as academic and non-academic programs. When searching the catalogue of potential extracurricular activities, students can specify preferences in location, field, compensation and cost. From there, students can look into a specific opportunity and then apply to it directly from the Exceleratr page.

As the duo develops their company and further creates its concept, they are still looking to involve two particular groups of people: companies or organizations that will list internships or non-academic programs on Exceleratr, and educators who will act as the connection between these companies and high school students.

High school students who have heard about the site, like Kaitlyn Bloom, a sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., are excited to see it put to use.

“Because I go to such a big high school, it’s sometimes hard to find out what extracurriculars are out there and which would best fit my interests,” Bloom said. “I’ve joined a bunch of clubs, but so has everyone else. This website could really give me an edge on other students my age because I could land a job working for a great
company and gaining incomparable experience.”

Until the website officially launches, students can receive updates through a mailing list and like the site’s Facebook page for up-to-date information.

When Exceleratr is up and running, Mosseri hopes to bring in as much traffic as possible.

“We want to revolutionize the internship space for high school students,” Mosseri said. “High school internships are demanding to become commonplace, and we’d like to help make that happen.”

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Nov. 12 print edition. Alyssa Noud is a staff writer. Email her at [email protected].