If you have good programming skills and are looking for an interesting alternative to the usual summer internship, you might check out the Google Summer of Code program. It pays student developers $5000 stipends to write code for various open source projects over the summer. Over the past eight years, it has brought together over 6,000 students with over 300 open source projects to create millions of lines of code.
Students who are accepted into the program will put the skills they have learned to good use by working remotely on an actual software project over the summer. Students are paired with mentors to help address technical questions and concerns throughout the course of the project. With the knowledge and hands-on experience students gain during the summer they strengthen their future employment opportunities in fields related to their academic pursuits.
Students should submit applications via the Google Summer of Code 2013 site by May 3. Google says that that the best applications they receive are from students who took the time to interact with one of the participating mentoring organizations and discuss their ideas before submitting an application. About 1,200 students are expected to be funded this year.