NJ 18-year-old is creator of website to help your pre-college kids

If your kid needs an internship or volunteer opportunity in order to get a leg up on the college competition, 18-year-old Mehar Johal has created the online hub for all of your answers.

The South Brunswick High School 2021 graduate is the founder of HS Navigator, which he created a couple years back after realizing how difficult it was to find a pre-college opportunity for himself.

"Those summer opportunities — a lot of the colleges have it on a paywall, or they have a lot of nested links and it's really convoluted to try to find one," Johal told New Jersey 101.5.

With the help of a few other high school students in New Jersey and beyond, the website has turned into an easily searchable platform where students and counselors can input specific wants related to opportunities, such as price and type.

"It's a general area for them to find opportunities to better themselves or get some sort of a reward for the work that they do," Johal said.

Johal knew he was on to something when peers kept coming to him, asking for help with finding an internship or other opportunity while still in high school.

Today, the website features thousands of opportunities, including scholarships and summer programs, available across all 50 states.

"You want to find something personalized, instead of just scrolling through a large list of opportunities," Johal said.

Johal, who was valedictorian of his class and is headed to Georgia Tech in the fall, said he can rely on his website team to keep the site maintained and updated when he's away at school.

Johal currently has a full-time intern position at Bloomberg.

For 2021, the HS Navigator team created its own internship for middle and high school students that's currently underway. Over 150 students from across the country enrolled to learn more about fields such as business and computer science through live weekly webinars.

"Our goal through the webinars, and by bringing in alumni and actual industry professionals, is to help students figure out their passions and what they want to pursue in the future," Johal said.

Contact reporter Dino Flammia at dino.flammia@townsquaremedia.com.