If you are in high school and interested in data science, it can be hard to figure out what steps you should take to build foundational skills and continue upping your game. Taking part in a data science program can be a great start. A lot of these programs also double as residential experiences, giving you a quick taste of college life. 

These summer programs can be a great way for you to build foundational skills, leaving you primed for continued self-discovery for the rest of the year. It also signals to colleges that not only do you have the skill set and experience to succeed in this field, but that you have a unique passion for this field. Many students indicate that they are interested in studying data science on their college application.

You should note that participating in a university data science program does not guarantee you admission to that university. Additionally, a lot of these programs are highly sought after and receive many applications, making it competitive. To help you make a more informed decisions, we have indicated the selectivity of each of the programs based on the following criteria:

1. the acceptance rate of the program and the number of students participating each year.

2. the eligibility criteria and how rigid it is. That is, whether there is a GPA requirement, or previous experience and coding background is necessary.

3. the application process and requirements - whether the program has an interview process, requires school transcripts, standardized test scores, recommendation letters, and more.

Note: If you want to focus more on building foundational skills in python, coding at large or are looking to participate in hackthons and other competitions, check out our recommendations!

10 Data Science Summer Programs for High School Students

1. Wharton Global Youth’s Data Science Academy

Wharton’s Data Science Academy is a summer program that gives high school students the opportunity to learn under Wharton professors to design their own data science projects. Students will explore data science techniques such as data visualization, wrangling, and machine learning methodologies. These concepts are all applied to your final project, which is presented to peers at the end of the program. Here’s what you'll learn as part of the program

- Acquiring, preparing, exploring, understanding, and visualizing data

- Foundations of probabilities and statistics

- Model-based modeling

- Machine learning

This is a well-structured course and covers the foundational contours of what you would need to keep evolving into a data scientist! We also love that participants get hands-on practice that align with their own interests. While this program doesn’t come cheap, compared to other programs that are similarly priced and on this list, it’s likely better bang for your buck - especially if you are targeting UPenn! This is also a selective program that admits only 75 students, so it certainly stands out compared to the other pre-college programs we have on this list.

Cost: $9,099

Location: University of Pennsylvania

Application deadline: January 25 (Priority); April 5 (Final), based on previous years

Program dates: July 16 to August 5, based on previous years

Selectivity: Moderate

Eligibility: Students in Grades 10-11 with a minimum 3.3 unweighted GPA and a background in math and coding.

2. Harvard Pre-College Program: Data Science

Harvard University offers a Data Science program for high school students, providing an introduction to data analysis and data-driven decision-making. The course is split into two parts; in the first week, students learn to use python to find and clean data sets from the web. They will learn how to explore data through visualization and then get started on a two-day guided mini project. In the second week, students will take a deeper look at visualizations, creating complex models using Javascript. At the end of the program, students will receive a written evaluation from their instructor, as well as a Harvard transcript with their grade. This is an incredible way to supplement your college education.

Cost: $5,300

Location: Harvard University, Massachusetts

Application deadline (2024): February 22

Program dates (2024): June 23 to July 5 for Session 1; July 7 to July 19 for Session 2; July 21st to August 2nd for Session 3

Selectivity: Not selective

Eligibility: Rising juniors and seniors

3. Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies: Data Science

Stanford University offers a data science summer program focused on data analysis, visualization, and machine learning, within their Pre-Collegiate Studies program. Using Stanford’s world-class resources, students will get the opportunity to learn under renowned instructors and dive into advanced content not typically found in the high-school curriculum. Students may rank up to three courses in their application and choose one if admitted, with data science being one of the courses offered. The data science course introduces students to computer algorithms and models, using real datasets to answer real-world questions. Students will develop a strong technical skill set, with R programming exercises and more. More information on the application process can be found here. 

Some related courses you could consider along with this or after this are Product Design, Fundamentals of Augmented Reality (AR) and Game Design for Good.

Attending this program will not add much prestige value to your profile, as it is a fairly welcoming program. However, you should think of it as a way to build concrete foundational skills. 

Cost: $3,050

Location: Stanford University

Application deadline: March 15, based on previous years

Program dates: June 19 to June 30 (Session 1); July 10 to July 21 (Session 2), based on previous years

Selectivity: Not Selective - provided the prerequisites mentioned below are fulfilled.

Eligibility: Students in Grades 8-11, should have completed AP Statistics or a computer science course

4. The University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute Summer Lab

This program is a 10-week, paid research opportunity that focuses on applied, interdisciplinary data science research. This opportunity is open to high school and undergraduate students. 

High school and undergraduate students are paired with a data science mentor (usually a professor) to help develop their research skills and data science methodologies. They will gain exposure to topics in various domains, including: computer science, data science, social science, climate and energy policy, public policy, and more. Students will learn from their mentor, honing their skills in research methodologies, data science practices, and collaboration exercises. The program ends with a presentation of final videos, videos that outline each student’s research findings throughout the summer.

Alumni and project details can be found here! Some example projects include “Using Social Robots to Reduce Reading Anxiety,” “Self-Driving Telescopes,” “Shape-Changing Assistive Goalkeeper Gloves for Training Hand Positions,” and more.

Cost: Free, with a $6,000 stipend given 

Location: University of Chicago

Application deadline (2024): Late Fall

Program dates (2024): June 12 to August 18

Selectivity: Selective 

Eligibility: High School students & undergraduates

5.  Veritas AI

Veritas AI (our program!) is an AI and data science program founded and run by Harvard and Oxford graduate students. Students can learn the fundamentals of data science and AI in small groups by working on real-world, hands-on projects. The topics covered include how to structure and analyze large data sets, neural networks, image classification, deep learning, and coding using python. 

You can also work 1-1 with mentors from top universities to build unique and individualized projects in a field of your interest at the intersection of data science and AI. In the past, students have worked on fascinating projects that intersect with finance, medicine, environmental science, gaming, education, and more. You can find a list of past projects here!

Cost: $1,790 for the AI Scholars program (10-week boot camp); $4,900 for the AI Fellowship (12-15 weeks, 1:1 mentorship)

Location: Virtual

Application deadline: Rolling admissions 

Program dates: December 18 (Winter Cohort)

Selectivity: Moderately selective 

Eligibility: High School Students 

6. Horizon Academic Research Program

Location: Virtual 

Application Date: May 21, 2024 for the summer cohort, and September 25, 2024 for the fall cohort 

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.

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! It is one of the very few research programs for high school students that offers a choice between quantitative and qualitative research! 

7. Syracuse University’s Data Visualization and Analysis Course

This program is focused on taking raw data and converting it into visuals using programming languages such as Excel, Tableau, and more.  

Students will learn how to clean, capture, and explore data, perform basic statistics to generate insights, gain experience in Microsoft Excel, Tableau, and more. Students will also gain valuable practice in presenting the data to stakeholders in a professional manner. This is a great foundational course for those new to the data science field.

If you have a good foundation in statistics, we’d recommend you do learn data visualization, but on your own. This is a fairly expensive course, and you’ll find plenty of great, foundational courses for free. You could potentially save your money for a course that builds on these foundations, once you’ve learnt them.

Cost: Residential: $2,020; Commuter: $1,543

Location: Syracuse University, New York

Application deadline: May 1, based on previous years

Program dates: July 16 to July 21, based on previous years

Selectivity: Not Selective 

Eligibility: Rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors

8. Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program

While not solely focused on data science, this program introduces high school girls to computer science and coding skills, which are essential foundations for data science. The self-paced program recently offered a new track in data science, giving students independent coursework to earn beginner-level and intermediate level certificates in data science. Female students will gain the skills they need to prepare for technical careers and get exposure to industry jobs, meet leaders in the field, and find a community in the supportive all-female environment. The immersion program emphasizes live, hands-on, project based learning, with participants working on real-world projects with a tangible impact. 

Cost: Free

Location: Online 

Application deadline: TBD

Program dates: July 3 to August 11, based on previous years

Selectivity: Not selective

Eligibility: Students in Grades 9-11 who identify as Female

9. Carnegie Mellon Pre-College Programs: Data Science

CMU offers a wide variety of summer programs, including those related to data science. Last year, two such programs were called “Reasoning with Data” and “Methods for Statistics and Data Science.” The former focuses on thinking about the relationship between the application and the data set and extracting useful statistical information as opposed to taking a more formula-driven approach. The latter covers topics like simple and multiple regression, analysis of variance methods, and logistic regression. You can check out more details on the courses here!

Aimed at talented high school students, the program offers college-level classes taught by accomplished Carnegie Mellon University faculty. This 6-week program is aimed to give you a taste of college life as well as a better understanding of data science principles. Carnegie Mellon hopes to help you invest in yourself and your future, providing networking opportunities and educational seminars with CMU alumni. Keep in mind, the price of this program is certainly on the higher side, with the prestige on the lower side. 

Cost: $12,454 for the 6-week Residential option; $6,282 for the 6-week Commuter option 

Location: Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania

Application deadline: February 1, based on previous years

Program dates: July 1 to August 11, based on previous years

Selectivity: Not selective 

Eligibility: Rising juniors and seniors 

9. UC Berkeley Pre-College Program: Data Analytics

UC Berkeley offers a summer program with courses that introduces high school students to data analytics, data visualization, and data-driven decision making. We recommend the Foundations of Data Science course to give students a solid base for further exploration. This course focuses on inferential thinking, computational thinking, and real-world relevance. Students will learn key concepts in computer programming and statistical inference to apply to real-world datasets and understand real-world problems through hands-on practice.

The program also focuses on giving students a taste of college life. The residential track offers students the opportunity to live on campus and earn college credit while experiencing university life to the fullest. Having data science course credits in high school can be a huge boost to your college application!

10. Quinnipiac University’s Data Science Summer Camp

Quinnipiac conducts a 2-week program to introduce students to the field of data science. Students are given the opportunity to take courses in foundational science theory from Quinnipiac faculty, learning the fundamentals of big data. 

The aim of this program is to give students an understanding of data science theory and methodology, the skills to analyze data sets, and exposure to career options within the data science field. At the end of the program, students are given the chance to apply what they’ve learned by working on a hands-on data science project.

Note: The program provides you with a laptop for use during the program.

Cost: $3,360 (Residential); $2,400 (Commuter)

Location: Quinnipiac University, Connecticut

Application deadline: May, based on previous years

Program dates: July 10 o July 21 based on previous years

Selectivity: Not Selective

Eligibility: High School Students

If you’re looking to build unique projects in the field of AI/ML, consider applying to Veritas AI! 

Veritas AI was founded by Harvard graduate students, and through the programs, you get a chance to learn the fundamentals of AI and computer science while collaborating on real-world projects. You can also work 1-1 with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and more to create unique, personalized projects. In the past year, we had over 1000 students learn data science and AI with us. You can apply here!

Image Source: Harvard University