Dual credit and work experience

Paid IT work experience refurbishing and deploying computers, about 20 placements a year. You must have finished high school to apply.

Delivered through Alberta school boards, allowing students to research network vulnerabilities and earn industry-recognized certifications in cybersecurity, networking, and IT fundamentals directly through their high school.

Paid internships that place high school students with Alberta employers in skilled trades, ICT, health, agriculture, forestry and energy. Students earn high school credits while working and can roll a placement into a Registered Apprenticeship. Free to students; start dates vary across the province.

Be a full-time student and a registered apprentice at the same time. Students split their week between school and an approved work site, earning one high school credit for every 25 hours on the job (up to 41 credits), while those hours also count toward journeyperson certification. Free application through Apprenticeship and Industry Training.

Earn high school credits and a post-secondary credential or workplace certification at the same time, across more than 20 options: skilled trades (welding, carpentry, pipe trades, automotive, heavy equipment), software and web development, IT, health care, aviation, business, culinary and construction. Offered at no direct tuition cost. Students enrol through their high school.

Enrol through your school counsellor rather than applying separately. Dual Credit lets Medicine Hat Public students take real post-secondary courses while in high school, earning 5 to 30-level high school credits plus 3 post-secondary credits per course.

Bootcamps and dual-credit courses focusing on the intersection of agriculture, drone telemetry, precision farming, and data science. Students use Olds College's smart farm and tech facilities.

Forty students are chosen from across Canada each year to work on the floor of the House of Commons while doing their first year of university in Ottawa. Pages carry documents and messages during sittings, work directly around Members of Parliament and see federal legislation as it happens, which is experience almost nothing else at that age can match. Recruitment runs on a long cycle: applications for the 2027 to 2028 cohort open in September 2026 and close in November 2026, selections finish in March 2027 and offers go out at the end of April 2027. You apply in your Grade 12 year, so the timing lines up with university applications.