8 Tech Summer Programs for High School Students in Texas
If you are a high school student in Texas who is interested in tech, chances are that you are looking for summer programs in your area as a valuable addition to your application.
In this post, we have curated a list of 6 Tech summer programs in Texas that will enable you to gain hands-on experience and will make for an excellent learning opportunity.
Anson L.Clark Scholars Program
The Anson L. Clark Scholars Program at Texas Tech University is a 7-week comprehensive research program. It allows you to gain hands-on research experience under the mentorship of Texas Tech faculty. Apart from one-on-one research with faculty, you can participate in weekly seminars, discussions, and field visits!
One of the research areas available for students in tech is the computer science track! Scholars from the 2022 cohort, like Akaash Kolluri, have conducted research in predicting GPU energy consumption using machine learning algorithms. You can view past projects from other scholars here!
The Clark Scholars program is one of the most prestigious and selective programs, with an acceptance rate of less than 3% and only 12 students in each cohort. Therefore, having the title of an Anson L. Clark Scholar will be a valuable add-on to any college application. An additional benefit is the $750 tax-free stipend that is provided!
The Dean of Texas Tech has given advice on how to get into this very prestigious program which you can find here!
Cost: No Cost
Location: Texas Tech University
Application Deadline: February (tentatively, based on previous year’s dates)
Program Dates: 6 weeks, June-August (tentatively, based on previous year’s dates)
Eligibility:
Applicants must be at least 17 years of age by the program start date and should graduate in 2023 or 2024 (U.S. and International)
Veritas AI is founded and run by Harvard graduate students and is geared towards high school students who want to build their foundations in computer science and data science. In the program, students learn various concepts in data science and artificial intelligence like neural networks, image classification, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, coding using python, and more.
Veritas AI offers up to 100% financial aid for the 10-week AI Scholars program. Through the program students build real-world projects in groups of 3-5 students to showcase their interests and skills. You can also apply for the AI Fellowship where you work 1-1 with mentors from top universities to build unique machine learning projects for a period of 12-15 weeks.
Cost:
AI Scholars - $1790 (but you can apply for need-based financial aid)
AI Fellowship - $4900
Location: Remote - you can participate in this program from anywhere in the world!
Application Deadline: There are 4 cohorts (You can apply here!)
Winter 2023: December 3, 2023
Spring 2024: January 14, 2024
Summer 2024:
Early Admission: March 17, 2024
Regular Admission 1: April 14, 2024
Regular Admission 2: May 12, 2024
Program Dates:
Winter Cohort 2023: December 16, 2023
Spring Cohort 2024: February 5, 2024
Summer Cohort 2024: June 3, 2024
Eligibility:
You must be currently enrolled in high school or plan to enroll as a freshman in college in the fall of 2023. No previous knowledge is required!
Note. The financial aid is available for students from households earning less than $60,000 annually (for a typical household of 4) with minimum assets.
Lumiere Research Scholars Program - Tech Track
Founded by Harvard and Oxford PhDs, Lumiere is a selective research program for high school students, where students work one-on-one with a PhD mentor to develop an independent research paper. The program offers an array of disciplines and you can opt to focus on aerospace engineering. Due to its one-on-one nature, you can expect to learn the most recent developments in the field and expand your skill sets by working directly with experts.
An added bonus is the opportunity you get to interact with mentors from universities like Harvard, Stanford, CMU and more. This program is a particularly good option if you are interested in interdisciplinary research and want to create an individual research paper.
Cost:
Lumiere Individual Research Program - $2,800
Lumiere Premium Research and Publication Program - $4,800
Lumiere Research Fellowship - $8,400
Location: Virtual
Application deadline: Rolling, cohort-based. Applications for the winter cohort are now open. You can apply here!
Program dates: Upcoming - December 18
Eligibility: High school students
Ladder Internships (Tech Track)
Ladder Internships is a selective program for high school students to work with startups. There are startups that work in a variety of fields including computer science, technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and more. You can check out all the available options here on their application form.
As part of Ladder Internships, students will work on real-world projects in the field of computer science and technology. At the end of the program, they present their work to showcase tangible outcomes on their CVs. As part of engineering internships, students can work on biotech projects like formulating and refining generative AI products with the capability to simplify complex medical information, and software engineering projects that require you to use low code stack and work in a SWE team to add metrics, measure performance, and user research.
In addition to working closely with their manager from the startup, each intern will also work with a Ladder Coach throughout their internship, who is like a second mentor and a sounding board who guides you through working with a startup.
Cost: $1490 (Financial Aid Available)
Location: Remote! You can work from anywhere in the world
Application Deadline: Upcoming deadline - October 15, Winter cohort deadline - November 26Program Dates: Upcoming start date - October 29, Winter cohort start date - December 11
Eligibility: Students who can work for 10-20 hours/week for 8-12 weeks. Open to high school students, undergraduates, and gap year students!
Rice University’s ELITE Tech Camps
Rice ELITE Tech Camps is a pre-college engineering summer program that focuses on technology and engineering! In this program, you will attend college-level engineering lectures which include topics such as machine learning, AI, the Internet of things, data analytics, deep learning and more! You can also expect to participate in real-life simulations where you can apply the engineering design process to develop a deeper understanding. You can view the entire course catalog here!
This program is created and managed by the engineering faculty from the Rice University School of Engineering and the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership, so it is an excellent opportunity to learn from faculty and experience the workload of a university student!
Cost: $1,695 for commuters and $3,795 for residential
Location: Rice University Campus (although this camp is also offered at UCLA and Emory University!)
Application Deadline: Rolling admissions
Program Dates: There are 4 cohorts:
June 16-22, 2024
June 23-29, 2024
July 7-13, 2024
July 14-20, 2024
Eligibility:
Open to all high school students.
The George A. Jeffrey NanoExplorers Program is an opportunity for you to do original research work in nanotechnology. Your role in this program will be assisting faculty members in their research lab (allocated based on your interest), and you will be taught the skills needed to test your ideas, how to work as a team. The goal is for the work you participate in to have tangible results and potentially be an actual funded program at UT Dallas!
Cost: Not specified
Location: University of Texas, Dallas
Application Deadline: Application is yet to open for 2024 - expect it to be open 2-3 months before the program as decisions are released in April.
Program Dates: To be announced with the opening of the application.
Eligibility:Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors.
UT Dallas’ Deep Dive AI Workshop
UT Dallas offers an 8-week program for advanced-level high school students where you will explore the foundations of AI and machine learning under current UT Dallas computer science graduate students, with supervision by Dr. Anurag Nagar - a computer science professor at the university.
The list of topics for the course are:
Introduction to Python programming - tools for data analysis such as NumPy, pandas, and graphics, which are essential for machine learning models
Getting started with data processing – various file formats, loading into data frames, and performing basic statistical operations
Introduction to machine learning - Identifying what problems can be solved using ML by looking at real-life scenarios AI/ML model building – decision trees, neural networks, etc.
Deep Neural Nets using TensorFlow
Convolution Neural Nets(CNN) and Recursive Neural Nets (RNN)
Model Evaluation – accuracy, error, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve
An added benefit is that at the end of the 8 weeks, you can request a letter of recommendation based on your performance which can supplement your college application!
Cost: $1,200 (Note:you can email and ask about any financial aid/scholarships available. Get more information here!)
Location: UT Dallas Campus
Application Deadline (2023): Rolling admission
Program Dates (2023): June - July (tentatively, based on previous year’s dates)
Eligibility:
Open to all advanced-level high school students.
Prerequisites include familiarity with Python programming and high school level mathematics.
SEES Summer High School Intern Program by NASA and UT Austin
While not a summer program, the SEES internship is a collaboration between NASA, the Texas Space Grant Consortium, and UT Austin. This national-level summer internship program is an opportunity for you to work alongside NASA subject matter experts!
The program is centered around Earth and space research. As an intern, you will be expected to assist with analyzing and visualizing data in your respective area of research. You can expect to work on areas such as Earth and space research (either through astronaut photography or galaxy classification), climate research, mission design (through satellite design or Mars Rover resource utilization) or more.
The program has a virtual learning component and an onsite experience on campus at the University of Texas, Austin. You are also expected to present your research at the program's concluding symposium.
Cost: No cost
Location: University of Texas, Austin Campus
Application Deadline: 20th February 2024 (tentatively, based on previous year’s dates)
Program Dates: Tentatively, based on previous year’s dates
June 25th-July 7th (remote)
July 8th - July 22nd (onsite).
Eligibility:
Open to rising Juniors and Seniors (at the time of the program)
Must be a U.S. Citizen
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 - Ladder Internships Logo