Palantir is adding more people to choose from for its future hires. America’s largest defense technology software company is offering a months-long internship program to recent high school graduates. The company wants to position this internship program as an alternative to a traditional college education.The program is for 18-year-olds who have recently graduated from high school and the fellowship directly challenges the traditional college path. In a blog post, the company wrote: “The college industrial complex wants you on their timeline: four years of prerequisites, debt, and indoctrination. While they debate DEI vs. SATs, we’re focused on one thing: building.”
Why Palantir CEO Alex Karp is calling it an alternative to college degree
While many high school seniors applied to the first Meritocracy Fellowship group, some current fellows were criticised for joining the company instead of going to college. In a video on the company’s blog, one fellow told Palantir CEO Alex Karp: “Every single person, and this has been an experience for a lot of us, told me not to do this. It was, like, basically unanimous.”However, the company is open to those who doubt the program. In a video, Karp told three fellows: “The amount of pressure we’re putting on universities — you might underestimate. If we do this program for a couple years — let’s just say we scale to, like, 80, 90 people — that’s a real problem for the universities.”“Every single system is parasitic. Our job is to break that,” Karp added.For fellows, the opening weeks of the program may feel similar to an introductory humanities class. They will have to take part in required readings, debates led by Palantir employees who act somewhat like teaching assistants and guest lectures.Current fellows attended presentations from technologists and academics, including Bob McGrew, chief research officer at OpenAI, and Edward Wittenstein, who teaches courses on artificial intelligence and national security at Yale University.Meritocracy Fellows will be later assigned to customer-facing and software engineering teams, where they take on the regular responsibilities of full-time, salaried employees.The company recently announced the participants of the inaugral cohort of its New York City-based Meritocracy Fellowship. Margaret ‘Marge’ York, Palantir’s head of talent, stated that over 500 people applied to the first cohort, with 22 currently participating. She added that “more than a handful” of these interns are expected to receive full-time employment offers from Palantir by December. Meanwhile, the second cohort, which is scheduled to run from August to December 2026, will receive a stipend of $5,400 a month. When interviewing prospective fellows, York looked for “true diversity of thought,” adding “it’s not enough to just be smart.” She believes three qualities help shape a strong applicant: technical process, high agency, and maturity.“The ones that really differentiated themselves from the pack are doers. They’re builders, and they’re just deeply inclined to get hands on,” York said to Business InsiderThose interviewing for the program should expect technical assessments and questions about why other paths, such as a traditional college experience, may “not serve them at this point,” York noted.Most fellows accepted into the first cohort had solid coding skills, which York said were, in some cases, better than Palantir’s post-undergraduate hires.
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