10 Free Tech Pre-College Programs for High School Students
Pre-college programs are among the best ways for high school students to get a taste of campus life. You will get to work with some accomplished faculty members and researchers at the top of their respective fields and attend the program with highly motivated students, which will aid your personal development as well.
There are a lot of pre-college programs available to choose from for high school students, and some of the biggest universities have also begun offering programs across various fields, including STEM disciplines. Some of the residential programs have high costs associated with them, which can be a deterrent for most of the applicants.
With that in mind, we’ve curated a list of 10 exceptional programs that come at no cost (and might have provisions for stipends as well!). These programs vary from highly selective to open to all.
Carnegie Mellon University CS Scholars (CSS) is a fully funded and merit-based four-week program that provides high school students with the opportunity to learn the basics of computer science. Selected students will learn the core elements of programming and problem-solving in Python and apply the knowledge by taking part in a group project.
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are encouraged to apply for the program, which requires them to answer three essay prompts during the application process. Students will take part in group research projects under the guidance of either the CMU faculty, staff, or graduate students. On the final day of the program, they are to provide presentations to summarize their learnings.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded
Location: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Application deadline: March 1, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: June 22 to July 20, 2024
Eligibility: Should be a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or registered with DACA. Applicants need to be a sophomore in high school while applying and 16 years old by the start date.
2. Texas Tech University’s Anson L. Clark Scholars Program
The Anson L. Clark Scholar Program is a seven-week summer research program for talented high school juniors and seniors, with an annual intake of just 12. This is a fully-funded program, though the cost to and from the campus to the student’s home city is not included. There are eight different research areas that the students can apply to during the program. One of the research areas is a core computer science program, while students interested in a tech program can also apply to the electrical and computer engineering division.
Short essays will also need to be written, prompts for which can be found during the application process. At least a PSAT score is required if SAT or ACT scores are not available by the deadline. With just an intake of 12 students every year, it is a highly selective program. The average SAT score for the 12 participants during the 2019 program was in the 99th percentile.
Here are 10 reasons why you should apply to the Anson L. Clark Scholars Program!
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded, students receive a $750 stipend upon completion of a successful research project report
Location: Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Application deadline: February 15, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: June 16 to August 1, 2024
Eligibility: Should be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The applicant needs to be a high school junior while applying and at least 17 years old by the start date.
3. JAX Summer Student Program, Bar Harbor Campus
The Jackson Laboratory Summer Student Program is a highly competitive, fully-funded 10-week summer program for students interested in conducting genetics and genomics research. High school seniors and undergraduate students can participate in the program. It is a very selective and prestigious program, and of the 569 applicants, only 39 were selected in 2023, and only three of them were high school seniors.
Students participate in an ongoing research program under the tutelage of an experienced scientific mentor. One of the research areas for 2024 is Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Former students have defined and searched for gene deserts, compiled databases for oncogenes, and mined databases for various disease-related phenotypes. Students in this program use various databases and software applications to address specific biological issues in ongoing research projects. At the end of the summer, they present their findings to researchers.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded and students receive a $6,500 stipend during the program
Location: The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME
Application deadline: January 29, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: June 1 to August 10, 2024
Eligibility: Should be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The applicant needs to be a high school senior while applying and at least 18 years old by the start date.
4. Lincoln Laboratory Radar Introduction for Student Engineers (LLRISE)
The Lincoln Laboratory Radar Introduction for Student Engineers (LLRISE) program is a summer workshop that teaches students to build small radar systems. Students will gain in-depth and hands-on experience in building small radar systems. They will be tasked with building a Doppler and range radar by using problem-solving strategies under the guidance of accomplished scientists and engineers at the Lincoln Laboratory.
This is a free two-week workshop and will be conducted at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, and the MIT campus. This is one of the few summer workshops organized by the Lincoln Laboratory. There is also the LLCipher program, which is a non-residential one-week summer program in which students learn how to build a secure encryption scheme and digital signature.
Here is everything you need to know about MIT LLRISE!
Cost/Stipend: Free and students only need to pay for transportation to and from their base cities
Location: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA & MIT campus, Cambridge, MA
Application deadline: March 7, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: July 14 to July 27, 2024
Eligibility: Should be a U.S. citizen. The applicant needs to be a high school junior while applying.
5. CMU Program AI Scholars (AIS)
Carnegie Mellon University AI Scholars (AIS) is a fully funded and merit-based four-week program that provides high school students with the opportunity to learn the basics of artificial intelligence through college-level classes. They participate in project-based learning and attend lectures on various aspects of computing and artificial intelligence. Students will give a capstone group presentation during the AIS closing symposium on the final day of the program.
Students are expected to begin taking a virtual pre-program Python course to include synchronous and asynchronous components approximately a month before the program begins. A field trip to AI industry leaders allows students to be introduced to key people, topics, and career opportunities in the growing field of AI.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded
Location: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Application deadline: March 1, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: June 22 to July 20, 2024
Eligibility: Should be a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or registered with DACA. Applicants need to be a sophomore in high school while applying and 16 years old by the start date.
6. Applied Research Innovations in Science and Engineering (ARISE)
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Applied Research Innovations in Science and Engineering (ARISE) is a seven-week program that aims to provide high school students with research opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The program is divided into two phases, with five weeks of hands-on research experience under the guidance of graduate or postdoctoral students and two weeks of workshops.
There are eight different research areas that students can choose from, including computer science and engineering and aerospace engineering. NYU also conducts a three-week program known as Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS), which is open to 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th-grade students who live in New York City or neighboring cities, such as Jersey City, Newark, or Hempstead.
Check out this ultimate guide to NYU ARISE, if you’re interested in applying to the program!
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded and a $750 stipend upon successful completion of the program
Location: NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY
Application deadline: March 6, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: June 3 to August 9, 2024
Eligibility: Should be completing 10th or 11th grade in June 2024 and open to New York City residents only.
7. STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) Summer High School Intern Program
The SEES Summer Intern Program is a nationwide competitive STEM program for high school students. It is a great opportunity for high school students who are interested in pursuing STEM careers. The interns will work alongside NASA subject matter experts, analyzing and visualizing data. It is highly competitive, and in 2023, 205 were accepted into the program out of approximately 2000 applications.
Most of the project themes revolve around data classification across a wide range of ongoing projects that NASA has collected. Some of the selected students also get to work on building prototype rover wheels. Before the program starts, selected students undergo intensive virtual training and are expected to complete two learning modules, namely Earth and Space Distance Learning and Python Distance Learning.
NASA also provides the students with virtual or in-person summer projects in the tech domain, which can be found here.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded but travel cost to and from Austin to the base city is not provided (travel scholarships are available)
Location: University of Texas Campus at Austin, TX
Application deadline: February 24, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: July 1 to July 24, 2024
Eligibility: Should be completing 10th or 11th grade in June 2024 and open to U.S. Citizens at least 16 years old
8. The Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP)
The Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP) is an intensive program that helps high school students attend Department of Navy (DoN) laboratories where they take part in real Naval research for eight weeks during the summer. Selected students are expected to learn about naval research and technology while receiving personal mentoring from top scientists and engineers.
Depending on the student’s application and preference, they are placed in one of the 38 research labs across the nation. At the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast (FRCSE) at the Jacksonville Materials Engineering Laboratory, students can get to work in tech domains like Avionics Engineering. At the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, the selected students last year worked on projects like - Raspberry Pi Data Logger for Rocket, Improving Deception Methods on a Decoy Network, and Building a Cluster Computing Environment.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded and $4,000 stipend, which is given out in biweekly installments
Location: At one of the 38 Department of Navy (DoN) laboratories around the country
Application deadline: November 1, 2023 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: The program duration is eight weeks during the summer and selected students will be notified of the dates by their respective labs
Eligibility: High school students who are at least 16 years old and the program is open only to U.S. Citizens
Princeton AI4ALL is a residential program that is open to all low-income rising 11th-grade students living and attending high school in the U.S. or Puerto Rico. Students from underrepresented groups are introduced to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications in the real world.
Selected students are inspired to take up AI careers and explore the societal impacts of AI, using a combination of lectures by Princeton AI professors, hands-on research projects, field trips, and mentorship under AI graduate students.
Students work in groups, and one of the groups completed a project titled - Predicting a Country’s Sustainability Using Artificial Neural Networks and Public Datasets. Details about past AI4ALL projects can be found here.
Cost/Stipend: Fully funded
Location: Princeton University Campus, Princeton, NJ
Application deadline: March 15, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: July 14 to August 3, 2024
Eligibility: Students must be in 10th grade and enrolled in a high school in the USA or Puerto Rico at the time of application. Students must fall into the ‘Low-income’ category, as defined on the website.
10. UCSF AI4ALL
University of California, San Francisco AI4ALL (UCSF AI4ALL) is another free program that is open to high school students, with a preference given to students from underrepresented communities. Unlike the AI4ALL program at Princeton University, this one is a virtual program, and students are expected to dedicate time between 10 am and 5 pm.
Selected students will attend lectures by UCSF professors to expand their knowledge of AI and work on group research projects, which are led by graduate students, to apply the same. The 2024 research focus is novel research discovery and the application of AI to Biomedicine.
There are other AI4ALL programs as well, in partnership with other universities. Stanford AI4ALL is a paid program with the possibility of financial aid, while Columbia University AI4ALL is a commuter-based free program that gives preference to students from the New York metropolitan area.
Cost/Stipend: Free
Location: Virtual
Application deadline: March 28, 2024 (Closed for 2024)
Program Dates: July 8 to Friday, July 26
Eligibility: Open to all high school students belonging to racial/ethnic groups dramatically underrepresented in AI: Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Native American.
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!
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