9 Tech Programs for High School Students in California
Finding tech programs can be hard– finding tech programs as a high school student can be even harder. If you’re a high school student in California, looking for compelling tech programs that can add to your knowledge repertoire, we have researched and ranked 9 tech programs for high school students in California. If you have time this summer, give them a shot!
Why do a tech program in high school?
With technology playing an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, gaining proficiency in tech skills can be really crucial for future success. Tech programs provide hands-on experience and exposure to various technological disciplines, from coding and programming to robotics and digital design, fostering a deeper understanding of the digital world. Tech programs cultivate critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity and can demonstrate a student’s passion and dedication to learning and challenging themselves. Note that these programs can be competitive and have limited seats available, so you should be extremely keen on joining them and be able to show your enthusiasm.
How we selected and ranked the programs
We selected and ranked these programs based on these criteria:
1. Technical Rigor and Reputation: This criterion looked at the reputation of not only the quality of education, the intellectual challenge offered, and the credibility of the program host but also the student testimonies and the program's selectivity.
2. Resources and Depth of Learning: In addition to technical rigor, we also looked at the resources and opportunities that could be available. At university-organized programs, we looked at whether participants get to work with faculty and whether the programs were mentored.
3. Accessibility: Lastly, we looked at how accessible these tech programs were. We looked at elements like whether or not it was virtual, how open the application was, and how wallet-friendly the program was.
With that, here’s a list of 8 tech programs for high school students in California!
1. UCSD Research Experience for High School Students - SDSC StudentTech
Location: UC San Diego campus (San Diego, CA)
Fee/stipend: Program with a research project– $1,500. Program without research project– free.
Application deadline: Tentatively March (based on previous year’s application).
Program dates: June to August
Eligibility: Open to high school students in grades 10, 11, and 12. May have course-specific eligibility requirements.
Essentially a summer high school internship, the UCSD Research Experience for High School Students (REHS) is a great opportunity to work on ongoing research projects conducted by faculty. Primarily aimed at students interested in computational science, there is an expectation that participants have some amount of prior programming experience. It’s a great opportunity for mentored research – you can expect to be exposed to machine learning, data analysis, and high-performance computing.
Location: Virtual
Fee/Stipend: $1,750. Need blind financial aid is offered.
Application deadline: TBA, but based on previous years – February
Program dates: TBA, but the previous years’ were between June and July.
Eligibility: High school freshmen, rising sophomores.
Offered virtually, the StanfordAI4ALL program entails lectures, hands-on mentored research projects, and other mentoring activities by Stanford faculty and graduate students. Run by Stanford’s human-centered artificial intelligence, the program focuses on applying tech and, specifically, AI to different fields like medicine, disaster relief, and combating poverty. If you are still exploring how AI can intersect with other interests, you may have – this program might be good for you. This program is also a great opportunity to network and connect with faculty and graduates at Stanford as well as your peers. The program is capped at 50 seats, making it highly competitive and selective.
Location: Virtual
Fee/Stipend: $1,490 for the AI Scholars program (The 10-week boot camp). $4,200 for the AI Fellowship (12–15 weeks, 1-1 mentorship). Need-based financial aid is available.
Application Deadline: The program runs in cohorts, applications can be found here!
Program Dates: Rolling - Cohorts during spring, summer, fall, and winter
Program Selectivity: Open Enrollment for the AI Scholars Program, Moderately selective for the AI Fellowship
Eligibility: High school students.
Veritas AI has a range of AI programs for high school students, starting from close-group collaborative learning to customized project pathways with 1:1 mentorship. The programs have been designed and run by Harvard graduate students & alumni.
In the AI Fellowship program, students work with PhDs from top institutions to work on their own research projects. These research projects can be across fields that intersect with computer science or artificial intelligence. Students in the past have worked on projects in AI & finance, AI & medicine, creating software for educational resources, applications of computer science in gaming, and more. Examples of more interesting projects students have worked on can be found here.
4. Horizon Academic Research Program
Location: Virtual
Application Date: May for the summer cohort and September for the fall cohort
Program Dates:
Summer: June - September
Fall: October - February
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!
5. Berkeley Summer Computer Science Academy | PreCollege Programs
Location: University of Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
Fee/stipend: $4,625
Application deadline: March (based on previous year’s schedule)
Program dates: June (based on the previous year’s schedule)
Eligibility: Applicants must be high school students who are 16-17 years old by June, and have good academic standing. For detailed eligibility criteria, please visit here.
This is a rigorous 2-week program where participants are placed in one of two groups based on their skill level in coding. Participants use Snap! (visual programming language) to deal with a set of unique coding challenges every day. Through this program, you will also be expected to plan and create your own programming project at the end of the program. Given that the curriculum and courses are developed by UCB’s professor Dan Garcia, and instruction is given by prior teachers of the course, it is a great chance to not only interact with faculty at Berkeley but also gain exposure to what the campus and learning experience is like.
Location: UC Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA)
Fee/stipend: $4,770. Financial aid is available.
Application Deadline: Online applications are available from early January through February every year.
Program Dates: July to August, based on the previous year’s schedule.
Eligibility: Students in grades 8 through 12, California residents.
The California State School for Mathematics and Science at UC Santa Cruz is an intensive 4-week residential research program. The program is structured to have both a learning component and a research component – students choose one cluster of courses, attend lectures, and develop and present their final research project to their peers in the symposium at the end of the program. Clusters include Quantum Information Science and Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Video Game Design. You can see the full list of Clusters here.
7. Research Experience | UCSB Summer Sessions
Location: University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)
Fee/Stipend: $75 application fee + $250 enrollment deposit
If you’re commuting, the tuition and program fees is $4,700.
If you’re residing on-campus, you’ll have to pay $4,700 + $6,599 as Housing and Meal fees.
A limited number of scholarships awarded to California Residents.
Application Deadline: TBA
Program Dates: Likely in June, based on the previous year’s schedule.
Eligibility: High School Sophomores and Juniors
In this six-week intensive program, students are paired with a mentor (either a graduate student, postdoc, or faculty) to take part in a specific research project. This program has a bonus of earning university credits. CS research varies in topic choice year to year but has included topics ranging from developing an open-source pH sensor to Monitor Ocean Acidification to the creation of a Low-Rank Neural Network for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis. You can find rosters of different years’ research projects here. This is a great choice if you’re looking for a mentored research experience in CS.
Location: University of California, Irvine
Fee: $3,995 - $9,495 depending on program type. Scholarships are available.
Application deadline: TBA, but likely to be in March
Program dates: between June and August (dates TBA)
Eligibility: All high school students
Note that this program might be more suitable if you’re specifically interested in medicine and AI! Covering mechanical/chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, anatomy and neurobiology, neurology and neurological surgery, the UCI x GATI’s Biology Engineering Artificial-Intelligence and Medicine (BEAM) program connects participants with faculty and researchers at UCI.
The program includes online and in-person components, but you can choose your preference from three different program types. Depending on the one you pick, you are eligible to earn up to 4 college credits. UCI x GATI also offers a program in Game Science Entertainment Technology.
9. UCLA Computer Science Summer Institute - Introductory Track
Location: University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
Fee/ stipend: Fee - $2,223. Scholarships are available for students in California.
Application deadline: TBA, likely to be in June (based on previous years schedule)
Program dates: June – July (based on previous year’s schedule)
Eligibility: Applicants must be enrolled in a high school as of Spring.
This program is a computer science introductory track which awards credit for certain UCLA coursework. Students will learn how to use computers as tools for problem-solving, creativity, and exploration through the design and implementation of computer programs. Key topics covered in this program are data types including integers, strings, and lists; control structures, including conditionals and loops; and functional decomposition. If you’re looking to start your CS/tech program and learn about what the classes are like at UCLA, this is a good place to start.
Image source: Stanford AI4ALL