Ask HN: [Advice] Internship Before College

So I'm 18 and leaving college in the UK in a few months (similar to US high school). Usually students go onto university now, or work, or take a gap year and travel. I applied to some universities, but there's only one university in the UK I really want to go to (that I didn't get an offer at). I don't feel the UK has a good range of universities, like the US does, that could offer me what I want from a university. I'm thinking about reapplying (transfers not allowed) as I don't think elsewhere in the UK is worth it to me, though I have other offers. I probably should've applied abroad so I had more options in case my one choice failed. I don't know what to do in a gap year, though. I don't really want to travel alone etc. as I doubt it'd be a worthwhile experience for me. I think I'd be appropriately qualified to do, and enjoy, an internship or similar in software engineering, but I think it's unlikely places would consider me w/o a degree. I've done programming for quite a few years. I've freelanced on some relatively large projects, some medical software that's in use currently at a clinic, bunch of work for websites and backend stuff, sell some pre-made digital software, plugins for games, freelance system administration, and have some projects on GitHub that I've either made or contributed to, and other stuff over the years. Though I haven't done as much of this in the past ~10 months so a bit rustier, I think I'd have enough experience and ability to do something meaningful in an internship or job. Would I be able to get some kind of software engineering thing for a few months to a year? If so, any companies/places that might offer? I'm in the UK, but I'd rather be in the US or elsewhere in Europe for the year. If it's just simply not going to be possible, any other advice, or something else I can do for the year? It'll be from July 2019 till September 2020, any period or duration in between is fine.