Defense tech giant Palantir is coming for college-bound teens.
The company just launched its Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for recent high school grads not currently enrolled in college. Applicants need Ivy-League level test scores to apply — a 1460+ on the SAT or a 33+ on the ACT, 99th, and 98th percentile scores, respectively. Admission to the program, the job posting says, is awarded “based solely on merit and academic excellence.”
It’s a not-so-subtle jab at elite university admissions. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has expressed extreme doubt about the value of higher education: “Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” he said on CNBC’s Squawk Box in February. The internship was created, Palantir says in the posting, “in response to the shortcomings of university admissions.”
The program finds itself amid a mounting political and cultural storm. While the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions in June 2023, Trump’s White House has kept the pressure on higher education. In March, the administration cut $400 million from Columbia over antisemitism concerns. Just last week, Trump threatened to yank as much as $9 billion in federal funding from Harvard unless it eliminated DEI, among other initiatives.
Tech audiences are paying attention to merit-based admissions conversations. Just last month, an 18-year-old startup founder with a business bringing in $30 million in annual recurring revenue went viral on X after revealing that he was rejected by 15 of the 18 elite colleges he applied to despite a 4.0 GPA and near-perfect standardized test scores.
“Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence,” the Palantir posting says. “As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos.”
Palantir’s move is among the clearest yet to ditch the lecture halls altogether. Peter Thiel, a Palantir cofounder and prolific venture capital investor, also has a fellowship that “gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom,” the program’s website says.
At the end of Palantir’s program, successful interns will be offered interviews for full-time roles at the company. “Skip the debt,” the posting reads. “Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree.”
Perhaps the so-called “Palantir Degree” injects employees with an entrepreneurial spirit. Troves of ex-Palantirians have gone on to found companies of their own.
The Meritocracy Fellowship places interns on full-time teams working on core Palantir products. It pays an estimated $5,400 monthly, equivalent to just under $65,000 annually. It’s based in New York, where roles like Deployment Strategists, which require programming experience, can make $110,000 to $170,000 a year, according to Palantir’s career website.
A required question on Palantir’s current Deployment Strategist application: “Which university are you currently attending, or did you last attend?”
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