10 AI Summer Programs for High School Students in 2024
If you’re a high school student looking to explore the numerous possibilities AI offers, summer programs can be a great opportunity to do so. An AI summer program will allow you to delve into the dynamic field, gain hands-on experience, and hone your skills under the guidance of experts. The field of artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a foundation for various technologies such as machine learning algorithms, robotics, natural language processing, computer vision, biotechnology, and more.
In 2024, many prestigious institutions across the U.S. are offering AI summer programs tailored for high school students, providing a pathway to discover, learn, and create within the field of AI. These experiences can be a stepping stone in your future career and academic pursuits, improving your understanding of AI concepts. Participating in these programs is also a great way to boost your college applications, making your experience stand out.
Here are 10 of the best AI summer programs for high school students in 2024!
Location: Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Cost: $4,000; financial aid is available.
Application Deadline: March 25, 2024
Program Dates: July 8 - 26, 2024
Eligibility: Open to current 9th-grade students (rising 10th graders) during the summer.
Stanford AI4ALL aims to increase diversity in the field of artificial intelligence. During this three-week online program, students are immersed in AI through a combination of lectures, hands-on research projects, and mentoring activities. You’ll get a chance to engage with professionals in the field to learn about cutting-edge ideas, such as how AI can be applied in medicine, disaster response, and in combating poverty.
A key part of the program is small group mentoring sessions with AI faculty and senior AI researchers. You’ll get to attend online lectures by experts in career and personal development and social events with Stanford AI graduate students. You’ll also get to participate in small-group research projects led by graduate students and postdocs in Computer Science and AI.
2. Veritas AI
Location: Virtual
Cost: AI Scholars - $1,790 (financial aid is available); AI Fellowship - $4,900; Combination (AI Scholars + AI Fellowship) - $5,900
Application Deadline: Upcoming summer cohort deadlines - May 19, 2024. You can apply here!
Program Dates: You can find all available dates for the summer cohort here
Eligibility: High school students passionate about AI; Basic understanding of Python or completion of AI scholars is required for the AI Fellowship program
Veritas AI, founded and run by Harvard graduate students, offers programs geared toward high school students who want to build their foundations in computer science and AI. 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, hands-on 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 over 12-15 weeks.
3. MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute
Location: MIT, Cambridge, MA (Virtual options are also offered)
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: March 31, 2024
Program Dates: July 8, 2024 - August 4, 2024
Eligibility: High school juniors (11th grade) attending school in the U.S. can apply
The 4-week Beaver Works Summer Institute is a project-based STEM program featuring workshop-style courses on various subjects. Some of the courses offered in the field of AI include Serious Games and Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Cognitive Assistance.
Serious Games and Artificial Intelligence explores a combination of machine learning and game-like modeling to analyze socially relevant technology. Autonomous Cognitive Assistance is designed to help participants understand how to apply machine learning and game-like modeling to quantitatively analyze socially relevant policy questions like disease transmission and self-driving cars. The BWSI has generally received solid reviews from alumni, owing to the diversity of its cohorts, opportunities for networking and collaboration, as well as the uniqueness of the courses it offers.
4. Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR) High School Summer Program
Location: University of California, Berkeley, CA
Cost: None
Application Deadline: April 30, 2024
Program Dates: July 8 - 12, 2024
Eligibility: Bay Area high school youth entering grades 10–12 can apply.
In this free program, students entering grades 10–12 will explore cutting-edge AI technologies, concepts, and ethics as they learn about ongoing artificial intelligence research from Berkeley scientists and experts. You’ll get to work with UC Berkeley researchers across the areas of computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, planning, control, and robotics.
The program will be conducted on campus at BAIR Lab, where students participate in daily guest lectures and activities guided by BAIR Lab researchers, and select visits to research labs. Participants experience life on a college campus, including lunch provided daily at UC Berkeley dining halls and a campus tour. You can access the application here.
5. Carnegie Mellon’s AI Scholars Pre-College Program
Location: Carnegie Mellon University campus, Pittsburgh, PA
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: March 1, 2024
Program Dates: June 22, 2024 - July 20, 2024 (4 weeks)
Eligibility: Applicants must:
Be at least 16 years old by the program start date.
Be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Students who are registered with DACA are also eligible.
Be a junior in high school at the time of application submission.
AI Scholars (AIS), a CS Pathways initiative, is a four-week immersive experience on the CMU campus for rising high school seniors. This fully funded, merit-based program brings students together from around the country to explore artificial intelligence with Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff, and researchers who are leaders in the field.
As an AI Scholar, you will participate in project-based learning and attend lectures on various aspects of computing and artificial intelligence. You will engage in a hands-on group project that you will present to your peers and instructors at the end of the program. This project will apply your newly acquired skills to real-world challenges that use artificial intelligence for the betterment of humanity. Core classes, guest lectures, group projects, workshops, and academic tours and field trips are held Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Location: Princeton University, NJ
Cost: The 3-week residential program, including all accommodation, meals, and the field trip to Washington DC is covered by Princeton AI4ALL starting in 2024. There are no tuition costs.
Application Deadline: March 15, 2024
Program Dates: July 14, 2024 - August 3, 2024
Eligibility: Open to low-income current 10th graders (rising 11th graders).
Princeton AI4ALL is a summer program designed to empower high school students from diverse backgrounds to explore the field of artificial intelligence. The program’s main goal is to increase diversity in the field of Artificial Intelligence by lowering long-standing entry barriers that disproportionately affect students in underrepresented populations.
The program also aims to expose high school students to a variety of AI topics, discuss cutting-edge research, and explore the social impact of AI. During this program, you will attend daily lectures held by Princeton AI faculty, gain exposure to hands-on introductions to the AI lab, and attend social events and mentoring sessions.
7. NYU Tandon’s Machine Learning Program
Location: NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY
Cost: Tuition Fee - $2,750 (Optional housing fee - $616 and mandatory meal plan with housing - $192).
Application Deadline: April 22, 2024
Program Dates: Multiple sessions are available. June 17 - 28, 2024 | July 8 - 19, 2024 | July 29, 2024 - August 9, 2024
Eligibility: Students aged 14 and older, with completion of Algebra 2 or equivalent, and some programming experience, can apply.
NYU Tandon's summer program for Machine Learning introduces students to computer science, data analyses, mathematical techniques, and logic that drive the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Lessons cover fundamental knowledge behind video and image recognition technologies; interactive voice controls for homes; autonomous vehicles; real-time monitoring and traffic control; cutting-edge diagnostic medical technologies, and other technologies that are a part of our daily lives.
During the program, you’ll learn core principles in ML & AI such as model development through cross-validation, linear regressions, and neural networks. You will also be able to develop an understanding of how logic and mathematics are applied both to "teach" a computer to perform specific tasks on its own and to improve continuously at doing so along the way.
8. NSLC’s Artificial Intelligence High School Summer Program
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Cost: $3,895 (Residential)
Application Deadline: NSLC will continue to accept applications if space is available in a program or on a program’s waitlist. The online enrollment application will display all current availability.
Program Dates: Multiple sessions are available. June 16 - 24, 2024 | June 27, 2024 - July 5, 2024 | July 10 - 18, 2024
Eligibility: Students must be between the ages of 14-18 and have completed at least one year of high school (students may attend NSLC through the summer following high school graduation).
At the NSLC on Artificial Intelligence, you’ll get a chance to explore the real-world capabilities of AI and machine learning through projects that positively impact the world’s biggest industries. During the program, you’ll get to build an AI toolkit and participate in AI engineering challenges where you’ll learn to turn complex text data into structured numerical data.
You’ll have an opportunity to attend interactive coding workshops where you’ll learn to write code, apply technical skills, and debug in labs. You’ll also get to develop a social impact project using your newly learned skills and attend college and career workshops led by alumni and graduate students from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and more!
9. Columbia’s Pre-College Summer Sessions
Location: In-person on Columbia’s New York City campus or virtually.
Cost: $2,700 - $12,154. Varies based on whether you choose to attend in-person (residential or commuter) or online.
Application Deadline: Varies depending on the course. Applications for Summer Session A are closed but applications for Summer Session B are open.
Program Dates: One to three-week courses are available between June 24, 2024 and August 9, 2024.
Eligibility: High school students who will be in 9th-12th grades in Fall 2024 can apply.
There are plenty of AI-based courses to choose from, ranging from 1-3 weeks either in person or online. The AI courses, listed here, cover the most important fundamentals of computer science and coding like Java, C, and Python, and immersive courses on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. With no prior experience required, learning to program through Columbia’s Pre-college Summer Sessions would be a great way to both enhance your transcript and resume, as well as beef up your technological skills.
If you’re interested in AI, you can choose ‘Introduction to AI: Search Algorithms’ where you will start with the history of artificial intelligence and progress to focus on more powerful, classical techniques and learn to build functioning programs in Python and Java. ‘Introduction to Programming with Python’ is another introductory course designed to develop your reasoning and programming skills through Python.
10. The Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP)
Location: Northampton, MA
Cost: $5,745 (2-week session) | $9,748 (4-week session)
Application Deadline: May 15, 2024
Dates: July 6 - 19, 2024 | July 21, 2024 - August 3, 2024
Eligibility: High school students entering 9th-12th grade in the fall of 2024 are eligible to apply.
The Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP) is designed for exceptional high school students with strong interests in science and engineering. During the program, you will choose two-week research courses; in these, groups of up to 17 students work alongside Smith faculty members, assisted by undergraduate interns. You will also get to attend informal lectures in the lab and learn to conduct actual experiments.
Two- and four-week sessions are available for the 2024 program. You will participate in one course per session. If enrolled in both sessions, you will participate in two courses during your stay. Classes are held from Monday to Friday. If you’re interested in AI, you can participate in courses such as Designing Intelligent Robots, Introduction to Python Programming, or Computer Graphics and Game Development with AI Integration. You can check the various available courses and their detailed descriptions here.
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