Psychometric Externship

Education is ever-evolving. And so are we.

We seek passionate people from diverse backgrounds who are committed to helping improve the work of schools as a trusted partner in advancing learning. By joining the Cognia team, you will be immersed in a community of energetic and resourceful people dedicated to a common vision to impact and inspire education providers to advance and enable pathways of success for all learners.

At Cognia we have developed a holistic approach to education that empowers schools to create real outcomes and optimize learning for students of all backgrounds, servicing more than 36,000 institutions, 5 million teachers, and 25 million students in 85 countries.

When you join Cognia, you join a team of experts passionate about our mission and embracing our core values in everything we do.

Cognia is granting up to two (2) externships (i.e., remote internships) for students working toward PhDs in appropriate graduate study programs. The primary focus of the program centers around an appropriate research project that each student chooses in consultation with Cognia psychometricians and researchers.

The externships are targeted for students whose interests focus on psychometric or measurement issues such as equating, item calibration, statistical models, response time, dimensionality issues, and scaling. For example, recent years have included projects on evaluating raters of open-response items, aberrant response analyses, diagnosing student misconceptions on open-response items, modeling/research related to technology enhanced items or response time behavior, detecting unusual item response behavior in alternate assessments, detection of item parameter drift, and accuracy of routing in multistage tests.

An additional important component of the externship program is to help students gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the daily activities of Cognia psychometricians via a series of seminars that give a systematic deep dive into our psychometric practices.

• A program designed around accomplishing a research project or application, eligible for submission for presentation at a national conference.
• Regular Zoom meetings with mentors around goal setting, monitoring progress, and ensuring project completion.
• A series of seminars from both Cognia psychometricians and other related groups will provide an in-depth knowledge of how psychometrics is applied in a variety of ways in the educational testing industry. A significant proportion of these seminars will occur during a one-week in-person visit to Cognia offices in Portsmouth, NH.
• Externs will work on projects about 20 hours per week (some weeks more, some less).
• Externs will be provided with access to all needed psychometric resources by use of secure file-sharing sites or by use of a Cognia laptop.

The 2027 Cognia Externship is a primarily remote program, apart from the ‘Extern Festival Week’ during which externs will travel to Cognia’s offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to engage in seminars, presentations, and in-person networking with each other and Cognia personnel.

• Final date to receive applications:
  Monday, November 16th, 2026
• Interview window:
  November 30 – December 8, 2026
• Decision date:
  On or before December 18th, 2026
• Externship start date:
  Monday, January 25th, 2027.
• The duration is 14 weeks with an end date of April 30th, 2027
• Extern Festival Week:
  One week duration in March 2027 when externs travel to Cognia offices for in-person networking and seminars. Exact dates will be determined based on participants’ availability.

The full compensation package includes the following:

• A stipend in the amount of $7,000.
• Costs associated with the…