13 Computer Science Programs for High School Students in Florida
If you’re a high schooler interested in exploring computer science, you understand the importance of both comprehensive theoretical knowledge and hands-on practical experience. Getting a headstart on these aspects early can help with your college admissions and future academics!
Computer science programs are a great way to gain real-world experience in the field. These programs are usually hands-on and theory-focused and can include various extracurricular components to provide a holistic summer pre-college experience. However, picking a program can be difficult. There are many factors like whether it aligns with your goals, the associated costs, and access to additional resources to consider. To help you pick a program that fits your needs, we’ve curated a list of 13 computer science programs in Florida!
1. Lumiere Research Scholar Program — Computer Science track
Location: Remote — you can participate in this program from anywhere in the world!
Cost: Starting $2,990. Financial aid is offered.
Program Dates: 12-week to 1-year-long programs are offered throughout the year, including summer, fall, winter, and spring.
Application Deadline: Varying deadlines based on cohort.
Eligibility:
You must be currently enrolled in high school
Students must demonstrate a high level of academic achievement. (Note. students have an unweighted GPA of 3.3 out of 4)
No previous knowledge of your field of interest is required!
The Lumiere Research Scholar Program is a rigorous research program tailored for high school students. The program offers extensive 1-on-1 research opportunities for high school students across a broad range of subject areas that you can explore as a high schooler.
The program pairs high-school students with Ph.D. mentors to work 1-on-1 on an independent research project. At the end of the 12-week program, you’ll have developed an independent research paper! You can choose research topics from subjects such as psychology, physics, economics, data science, computer science, engineering, chemistry, international relations, and more. You can find more details about the application here.
2. Horizon Academic Research Program (HARP)
Location: Virtual
Cost: Varies! Check the FAQs page for more info.
Program Dates:
Summer seminar - June 24, 2024 - September 2, 2024
Fall seminar - October 23, 2024 - February 19, 2025
Lab dates are flexible, but you must apply 4 weeks in advance.
Application Date: May 21, 2024, for the summer cohort and September 25, 2024, for the fall cohort
Eligibility: High school students with good academic standing (>3.67/4.0 GPA) can apply. Most accepted students are 10th/11th graders! Only a couple of tracks require formal prerequisites, more details of which can be found here.
Horizon offers trimester-long research programs for high school students across subject areas such as data science, machine learning, political theory, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, psychology, and more! Horizon is one of the few research programs for high school students that offers you the choice to engage in either quantitative or qualitative research.
Once you select a particular subject track and the type of research you wish to carry out, Horizon pairs you with a professor/PhD scholar from a reputed university who acts as a mentor throughout your research journey. As a participant, you will be expected to develop a 20-page research paper that you can send to prestigious journals for publication as a high school student.
This program is a solid opportunity for you to pursue a research program in highly specialized fields under the guidance of a top scholar. The program also provides a letter of recommendation for each student and detailed project feedback that you can use to work on future projects.
3. Veritas AI
Location: Virtual
Cost:
$2,290 for the 10-week AI Scholars program
$5,400 for the 15-week AI Fellowship with Publication & Showcase
$6,900 for both
Need-based financial aid is available for AI Scholars. You can apply here.
Program dates: Varies depending on the cohort
Application deadline: Winter cohort deadline - December 1, 2024
Eligibility: Ambitious high school students located anywhere in the world. AI Fellowship applicants should either have completed the AI Scholars program or exhibit experience with AI concepts or Python.
Veritas AI, established and managed by Harvard graduate students, offers specialized programs for high school students who are interested in artificial intelligence and its applications. The AI Scholars program is a great fit if you're just starting with AI, robotics, machine learning, or data science. This 10-session boot camp introduces you to key AI and data science concepts while allowing you to work on practical projects that can involve robotics applications.
For students seeking a more in-depth and advanced experience, the AI Fellowship with Publication & Showcase is a strong option. In this program, you'll work one-on-one with expert mentors from leading universities on personalized research projects. If computer science is your area of interest, you'll have the flexibility to pursue high-level research in this field, developing solutions that integrate AI and computer science. The program also supports your work through access to a publication team that helps you get your research published in high school journals. The fellowship encourages interdisciplinary exploration, so whether you're interested in robotics, finance, medicine, or other fields, you can merge AI with your chosen area of study.
4. AIMI Summer Health AI Bootcamp by Stanford University
Location: Virtual
Cost: $850 participation fee + $40 application fee
Application Deadline: February 28, 2025
Dates: June 16-27, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Eligibility: High school students entering grades 9-12 in Fall 2025, over the age of 14 by the start of the program.
Stanford’s AIMI Summer Health AI Bootcamp is a virtual, two-week program for high school students centered on Machine Learning applications in healthcare. The curriculum offers online learning modules, group discussions, interactive activities with peers, social events, and Virtual Career Lunch and Learns featuring guest speakers from academia, industry, nonprofits, and government.
Participants explore core topics such as Machine Learning concepts and principles in healthcare, evaluation metrics, strategies, and challenges within the field, as well as foundation models and Generative AI applied in healthcare.
5. Columbia University Academic Year Weekend Program
Location: Virtual
Cost: $2,810 per session
Application Deadline: December 5, 2024
Dates: (Spring) January 18, 2025 – March 23, 2025
Eligibility: High school students in grades 9–12
Columbia University’s Academic Year Weekend program offers a virtual learning experience across 10 weekends tailored for high school students. Participants can enroll in up to four courses, each conducted in two-hour sessions on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. With more than 20 course options available, you have the flexibility to explore a wide range of subject areas. Classes are led by expert instructors in small groups, fostering individualized attention.
The program also includes virtual clubs, peer interactions, support from a Student Life Intern, and access to seminars, workshops, and lectures focused on college preparation. Technology-focused courses feature Data Science and Machine Learning 1 & 2, which cover practical applications of data science and machine learning, along with Python programming. Additional programming courses include Introduction to Python and Programming with Python. Upon completion, students receive a Columbia University Certification of Participation, enhancing their college applications.
Location: Virtual
Cost: $3,094 - $5,998, depending on the duration of the program.
Application Deadline: May 9, 2025
Dates: June 16, 2025 – July 25, 2025
Eligibility: Students completing grades 9 to 12, ages 14 to 18 by June 15, 2025
Brown University's Summer@Brown online program offers over 50 courses designed to deliver challenging and engaging educational experiences. Students can select from three study formats: fully asynchronous, mostly asynchronous, or blended learning. Throughout the program, you'll engage in independent research, tackle college-level material, and earn a Digital Certificate of Completion. If you enroll in a course that lasts three weeks or more, you'll also receive a Course Performance Report.
With more than ten subject tracks to choose from, you have a wide range of options. The Engineering and Technology track includes a course on AI, Data Science, and Machine Learning, which introduces you to analytics, business applications, and programming using AI and data science principles. This four-week blended course provides hands-on experience by allowing you to develop Machine Learning concepts through a real-world project. Other technology courses available are Introduction to Statistical Programming in R and Introduction to Computational Mathematics and Big Data Visualization.
7. Stanford Pre-College Summer Institute
Location: Virtual. There are some in-person options too!
Cost: $3,050
Application Deadline: March 29, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Dates: (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Session One: June 17, 2024 - June 28, 2025
Session Two: July 08, 2024 - July 19, 2025
Eligibility: Students in grades 10-11 at the time of application
Stanford’s Pre-College Summer Institute offers a dynamic online experience for high school students eager to explore challenging courses that provide in-depth and interactive engagement with advanced topics. With a focus on both skill enhancement and knowledge growth, the program cultivates an atmosphere that promotes innovation and collaborative learning.
The Computer Science track in this program has over 10 courses to choose from. Each of these courses explore different subject areas and aspects of Computer Science. Some of the available areas of study include Game Design, Artificial Intelligence, Introduction to C++, and Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
8. Futures: Machine Learning Algorithms by UC San Diego Extended Studies
Location: Virtual
Cost: $350 per course
Application Deadline: Dates for 2025 TBD.
Dates: Dates for 2025 TBD
Eligibility: High school students.
UC San Diego Extended Studies provides a fully online Machine Learning program tailored for high school students. The curriculum consists of three sequential courses, starting with Python and Mathematics for Machine Learning, progressing to Machine Learning Algorithms, and concluding with Deep Neural Networks.
The initial course equips students with essential mathematics and programming skills for implementing and analyzing both foundational and advanced Machine Learning algorithms. The second course dives into widely used Machine Learning algorithms for supervised and unsupervised learning models. In the final course, focused on Deep Neural Networks, students explore Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and are tasked with building a Deep Neural Network (DNN) framework from scratch, applying it to tasks like classification and recommendation systems.
Location: Virtual
Cost: $4,000 (Financial aid is available)
Application Deadline: March 20, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Dates: July 8 - 26, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Eligibility: Current 9th-grade students
Stanford’s AI4ALL is a 3-week online program that immerses students in AI through a combination of lectures, hands-on research projects, and mentoring activities. Participants get to engage with industry professionals and learn about cutting-edge ideas about how AI can be used to address challenges in various fields.
By working in the Stanford AI Lab, you get practical, hands-on experience with relevant research projects. While the program is open to all grade 9 students, some of the preferred characteristics in applicants include excellence in academics, a passion for STEM, outreach or volunteer experience, and demonstrated problem-solving and math skills.
10. Kode With Klossy
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: Interested students can join the program waitlist.
Dates:
June 3 - June 14
June 17 - June 28
July 8 - July 19
July 22 - August 2
August 5 - August 16
Eligibility: Women and gender-expansive students, aged 13-18
Kode with Klossy is a 2-week free virtual coding-intensive camp for students of traditionally underrepresented genders in the STEM fields. This camp introduces students to the fundamentals of coding. The program curriculum covers topics like Web Development, wherein you learn how to build websites using three programming languages: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The Machine Learning course teaches you the foundations of artificial intelligence and machine learning with topics including algorithms, data sets, and natural language processing to train a chatbot using Python. Other subject areas covered during the camp include Data Science and Mobile Apps.
Location: Virtual
Stipend: Students receive a stipend for their work. No amount has been specified.
Application Deadline: April 2, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Dates: January 23, 2025 - November 17, 2025 (Tentative, based on 2024 program dates)
Eligibility: Graduated high school seniors who are 18 years old or above
Google’s Summer of Code is a virtual program that offers graduated high school students the opportunity to be part of open-source projects and gain real-world, hands-on experience by working on a coding project for over 12 weeks with a source organization under the guidance of dedicated mentors.
The program aims to encourage participants to participate in open source software development, assist open source projects bring in new developers into their communities, give participants exposure to real-world open source software development scenarios, and Create more open source code for everyone.
12. Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) Online Programs
Location: Virtual
Cost:
LIVE courses: $550 - $1,365
Individually Paced courses: $984 - $1,499
Session-Based courses: $716 - $2,127
Clubs: $191
Application Deadline: January 5, 2025 (For Spring 2025)
Dates: Dates and duration vary depending on the type of course chosen
Eligibility: High school students
John Hopkins CTY’s Online Programs are designed to challenge academically advanced students and teach them concepts beyond the traditional classroom curriculum. This program is offered in three formats: session-based, individually paced, and live classes. Multiple courses are offered in different subject streams, such as Computer Science, Language Arts, Mathematics, and History.
In the Computer Science track, the curriculum spans a range of topics, including Scratch programming, advanced Java concepts, AP Computer Science, computer languages, and programming skills in various projects, including animation, game design, web design, and more.
13. Girls Who Code
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: Rolling applications
Dates: There is a 2-week Summer Immersion program and a 6-week self-paced program
Eligibility: Current 9th-12th graders
Girls Who Code is a free-of-cost, virtual program that aims to equip high school students with Computer Science skills essential to make an impact in tech careers. This program is available in 2 formats; a 2-week Summer Immersion Program where you learn game design in live virtual classrooms and a 6-week Self-paced Program to explore some of the most significant topics in tech independently.
The program teaches participants how to code through hands-on, real-world projects in game design, cybersecurity, data science, web development, and artificial intelligence. You also get to build a professional network and learn more about tech careers by connecting with engineers and entrepreneurs and participating in skill-building workshops.
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