14 Computer Science Programs for High School Students in Maryland
Computer science programs for high school students give you a chance to apply what you're learning in school to problems that actually matter. Through internships, research placements, and mentorship-driven programs, you can develop tangible technical skills in areas such as Python programming, machine learning, cybersecurity, and data analysis, working alongside professionals who do this work. Many programs also put you in direct contact with researchers and engineers who can become meaningful references and connections as you move into college and beyond.
Why should you attend a computer science program in Maryland?
Maryland has a strong concentration of universities, federal research agencies, and defense organizations that run programs for high school students in computing and related fields. You could spend a summer analyzing satellite data at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, exploring what it means to build trustworthy AI systems at the University of Maryland, working on live cybersecurity projects at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, or contributing to measurement science and IT research at NIST in Gaithersburg. Many of these programs offer very reasonable commuter options, making them a natural fit if you live or go to school in Maryland, while virtual programs and nationally competitive options on this list are worth considering regardless of where you're based.
To help you figure out where to start, we've put together a list of 14 computer science programs for high school students in Maryland.
If you’re looking for programs in Maryland, check out our blog here.
Key takeaways
These 14 programs span AI, cybersecurity, satellite data analysis, bioinformatics, cryptography, computational biology, actuarial science, and trustworthy AI, so students with a wide range of computer science interests can find a relevant option in Maryland or online.
Several programs are free and paid, including SEAP ($4,000 stipend), NIH Summer Internship (monthly stipend), NSA High School Work Study (paid positions), and JHU WISE (paid internship), while programs such as APL ASPIRE and NIST SHIP, are free to attend through federal research placements.
Many programs prioritize Maryland residents or students within a specific commuting radius, including NIST SHIP (within 50 miles of Gaithersburg), NASA Goddard Scholars (within 50 miles of Greenbelt), NIH Summer Internship (within 40 miles of an NIH campus), and JHU WISE (Baltimore City public school students), so local students should take note of these targeted opportunities.
Programs vary significantly in length and format, from three-week introductory AI camps, such as TRAILS AI at UMD, to year-long paid work placements, such as NSA High School Work Study, so students can choose based on their availability and depth of interest.
Application deadlines for the most competitive programs fall early, including SEAP (November 1), NIST SHIP (January 26), APL ASPIRE (February 15), and NIH Summer Internship (February 18), so students should begin preparing materials in the fall.
1. NSA High School Work Study
Location: NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, MD
Cost: No cost; these are paid positions
Acceptance rate: Varies by role
Dates: School-year placement running September through August during senior year
Application deadline: Varies by role
Eligibility: High school juniors who plan to participate in a school-sponsored work experience program during their senior year. Must live close to the NSA headquarters in Maryland
The NSA's High School Work Study program is a part-time placement that runs through senior year and lets you work inside the National Security Agency itself, rotating through positions that can include computer and engineering technology, Chinese language and intelligence analysis, printing and graphic arts, and logistics. You’ll be working alongside NSA professionals, gaining access to the kinds of institutional knowledge and operational culture that you won't encounter in an academic setting. Multiple positions open each year, depending on the office’s requirements, and each has a practical bearing on and allows you to contribute to the actual field-work being done by NSA agents.
2. Veritas AI
Location: Virtual
Cost: Varies; Financial aid offered
Acceptance Rate: Selective
Dates: Multiple 12-15-week cohorts throughout the year
Application Deadline: Varies by cohort. You can apply to the program here.
Eligibility: Ambitious high school students
Veritas AI, founded and run by Harvard graduate students, offers programs for high school students who are passionate about artificial intelligence. Students who are looking to get started with AI, ML, and data science would benefit from the AI Scholars program. Through this 10-session boot camp, students are introduced to the fundamentals of AI & data science and get a chance to work on real-world projects. Another option for more advanced students is the AI Fellowship with Publication & Showcase. Through this program, students get a chance to work 1:1 with mentors from top universities on a unique, individual project. A bonus of this program is that students have access to the in-house publication team to help them secure publications in high school research journals. You can also check out some examples of past projects here and read about a student’s experience in the program here.
3. NIH Summer Internship Program
Location: NIH Campus, Bethesda, MD
Cost: Free; a monthly stipend is offered based on academic level (check updated details here)
Acceptance rate: Extremely selective
Dates: May 11 – August 31
Application deadline: February 18
Eligibility: Graduating high school seniors, ages 18 and up, who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents and living within 40 miles of an NIH campus, and who will have graduated from high school before the internship begins
The NIH Summer Internship Program drops you into an active research lab at one of the world's most concentrated collections of biomedical scientists. You'll work alongside postdocs, graduate students, and principal investigators on the lab's ongoing research, with your contributions integrated into their scientific workflow. Placement depends on which PI you reach out to and secure a position with, and can range from computational biology and bioinformatics to data-heavy neuroscience research, genetics, structural biology, and immunology. If you have programming skills and an interest in applying them to biological questions, you can seek out labs and PIs doing that kind of work. The internship runs full-time for a minimum of eight weeks, and you're expected to complete an independent project during that time. The summer closes with an oral or poster presentation of your findings.
4. Lumiere Research Scholar Program - Computer Science Track
Location: Virtual
Cost: Varies; financial assistance offered
Acceptance rate/cohort size: Selective
Dates: Sessions run throughout the year, including in the summer
Application deadline: Varies by cohort. You can apply here.
Eligibility: High school students; accepted students typically have an unweighted GPA of 3.3 out of 4.0
The Lumiere Research Scholar Program is a rigorous research program tailored for high school students. The program offers extensive 1-on-1 research opportunities for high school students across a broad range of subject areas. The program pairs high school students with Ph.D. mentors to work 1-on-1 on an independent research project. At the end of the 12-week program, you’ll have developed an independent research paper. You can choose research topics from subjects such as physics, data science, computer science, engineering, and more.
5. APL ASPIRE
Location: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD
Cost: Free; this is an unpaid internship
Acceptance rate: Highly selective, less than 10% of applicants admitted
Dates: 190 hours completed (30-40 hours per week) between June 23 and August 21
Application deadline: February 15
Eligibility: Current high school juniors and seniors aged 15+ with a minimum 2.8 GPA and permanent residence in select Maryland or Virginia counties. You can see the detailed criteria here.
ASPIRE places you inside one of the largest university-affiliated research and development organizations in the country to work across fields like national security, space exploration, cybersecurity, and autonomous systems. You're paired with an APL staff mentor and assigned a project based on your interests and chosen placement area. Past interns have worked on Python tools for data analysis, AI systems for detecting cyber threats, applications of cryptography to secure communications, and projects touching robotics and computer vision. APL's mission areas include cyber operations, national security space, homeland defense, and research in human-machine intelligence, so the technical terrain you could land in is wide.
6. NIST Summer High School Intern Program (SHIP)
Location: NIST Campus, Gaithersburg, MD
Cost: Free
Acceptance rate: Selective
Dates: June 22 – August 7
Application deadline: January 26
Eligibility: U.S. citizens who are current high school juniors and seniors with a minimum 3.0 GPA, and living within 50 miles of the Gaithersburg, MD campus
At NIST, you're working inside a federal research organization whose entire purpose is developing the measurement tools, standards, and technologies that underpin modern science and industry. The SHIP program gives you a specific research project assigned by a staff scientist, and you'll work on it independently for seven weeks. In NIST's Information Technology Laboratory, research topics include computer network modeling, cybersecurity, cryptography, computer forensics, biometrics, machine learning, data mining, image analysis, and bioinformatics. Students have worked on projects like federated learning experiments, IoT device interoperability tools, and software for smart manufacturing automation. You're expected to submit an abstract midway through and present a research poster in the final week. The multidisciplinary nature of NIST's work means your project might cut across physics, statistics, and programming simultaneously, and the staff mentors are generally career researchers with deep domain expertise.
7. National Space Club Scholars Program at NASA Goddard
Location: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Cost: Free
Acceptance rate: Highly selective
Dates: June 29 – August 7
Application deadline: April 17
Eligibility: High school students in grades 10–12, aged 16+ by program start, with a minimum 3.0 GPA. Must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents living within 50 miles of NASA Goddard
For six weeks, you'll be working alongside NASA scientists and engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center on projects drawn from the center's active mission work. Placements cover computer science and engineering in addition to earth and space systems science, with potential projects including building downstream task evaluation tools for a foundation model, developing a software platform for ground software development training, refining core flight system training, writing test software, working on a simulation environment for mobile robots, and developing optical navigation sensor hardware and software. Some projects also involve AI applications like wildfire sensing from drone systems. Your project is set by your mentor based on your interests and background, and you work on it five days a week for the duration. The program wraps with a formal presentation of your work.
8. Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP)
Location: Multiple Department of Navy labs in Maryland (Annapolis, Bethesda, Patuxent River, Silver Spring)
Cost: Free! Participants earn a $4,000 stipend
Acceptance rate: Highly selective, only around ~300 placements across 38+ labs nationwide
Dates: 8 weeks in June – August, exact dates varying by lab and role
Application deadline: November 1
Eligibility: Rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors aged 16+. Must be U.S. citizens, though some labs accept permanent residents
SEAP places you at one of the Department of the Navy laboratories in Annapolis, Bethesda, Patuxent River, or Silver Spring for eight weeks of active research. The work is distinct and specialized in each lab. At the Naval Research Laboratory, for example, SEAP students have been placed in the Information Technology Division, where research spans AI, high assurance systems, modeling and simulation, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and high-performance computing. The Radar Division at NRL works on RF sensing technologies, and other divisions cover computational physics and electronics science. At NAWCAD in Patuxent River, intern work can involve cybersecurity assessments, systems engineering, and development support for Navy aircraft and weapons systems. In all cases, you work under a direct mentor who is a practicing scientist or engineer, you participate in technical meetings and seminars, and you produce a final report and presentation on your research. SEAP is a Department of Navy program, and its high selectivity makes it a highly prestigious add-on to any resume.
9. AEOP High School Apprenticeship Program (HSAP)
Location: Multiple Army research sites in Maryland (Aberdeen Proving Ground, Adelphi, Fort Detrick/Frederick, Silver Spring)
Cost: Free
Acceptance rate: Highly competitive
Dates: June – August
Application deadline: Varies by lab position
Eligibility: High school students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Specific roles can have additional criteria.
AEOP's HSAP program partners you with a university researcher working on a project sponsored by the Army Research Office. You'll contribute to your mentor's active research for up to 300 hours across the summer, with work ranging across computational sciences, materials, biomedical fields, environmental science, and engineering. Each placement reflects the specific focus of an ARO-sponsored lab, so one student might be running computational simulations while another is contributing to experimental data collection. At the end, you're required to write a research abstract documenting your work.
10. JHU Whiting Internships in Science and Engineering (WISE)
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Cost: Free! This is a paid internship.
Acceptance rate: Selective
Dates: July 9 – August 7
Application deadline: March 1
Eligibility: Baltimore City public high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors with As and Bs in all math and science courses
WISE is Johns Hopkins' pipeline for Baltimore City public high school students who want to work in a JHU research environment before college. Your mentor is a JHU researcher, graduate student, or postdoc, and you're expected to contribute meaningfully to their work. The summer wraps with a presentation of your research and experiences in front of other WISE students, your research lab, your family, and the JHU community. Because WISE is specifically for Baltimore City public school students, it's one of the few programs that actively routes local young researchers into one of the country's top engineering universities without requiring a travel component.
11. ESTEEM/SER-Quest at UMD
Location: University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Cost: Free
Acceptance rate: Highly selective
Dates: July 7 – July 31
Application deadline: March 29
Eligibility: Rising 12th graders intending to attend the University of Maryland, College Park with a major in engineering. Must have a minimum 3.2 GPA with no C's in math or science, and have completed Trigonometry, Chemistry, and Pre-Calculus with a B or better
This four-week mentored experience involves developing a research proposal, completing a literature search and review, and then actually executing the project. Alongside the research component, you'll get exposure to engineering departments across UMD through departmental tours and information sessions, meet undergraduate and graduate students in engineering programs, and work through college preparation material, including financial aid guidance. Past participants have worked on projects ranging from machine learning to materials testing to systems involving math and data analysis, depending on which faculty member they're matched with.
12. TRAILS AI Camp at UMD
Location: Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, College Park, MD
Cost: $600
Acceptance rate: Open enrolment
Dates: July 20 – August 7 (July 20–24 asynchronous, July 27–August 7 in-person)
Application deadline: March 27
Eligibility: Rising 10th, 11th, and 12th graders
TRAILS is organized around a specific and underexplored question: what does it mean for AI to be trustworthy? Over three weeks, you'd approach that question from both the technical and social sides, learning how AI systems work and how they fail, and examining the ethical and legal dimensions of deploying them. The curriculum is split between morning sessions focused on trustworthy AI concepts and team-based mini-projects, and afternoon blocks dedicated to research group work mentored by faculty from UMD, George Washington University, and Morgan State University. The first week runs asynchronously, with a series of Python coding assignments designed to get you ready for the in-person phase. When you're on campus at the Brendan Iribe Center, you'll participate in field trips and hear from guest speakers working in industry and policy. The program is easier to get into than most research experiences on this list, nor does it require prior research experience, making it a solid introductory option if you’re curious about AI.
13. NASA STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES)
Location: Virtual + UT Austin campus, Austin, TX
Cost: Free
Acceptance Rate / Cohort Size: Highly selective
Dates: Online modules and project work: May 15 – July 3 | Virtual symposium: July 20 and 21
Application deadline: February 22
Eligibility: Current high school sophomores and juniors who are U.S. citizens and at least 16 years old
SEES connects you with a NASA research team for a summer of work using actual satellite mission data. The learning begins from the online training phase itself, teaching you how to handle geospatial data and building foundational skills in Python. Projects can range from data analysis of GRACE-FO twin satellites, which track changes in Earth's gravity field to measure water resource shifts across continents and the search for pulsars through citizen science platforms using real radio telescope data, to the analysis of planetary geology by comparing Earth's tectonic and volcanic features to those on Mars. Whatever project you're involved with, you'll work with project mentors through the virtual phase of the program, apply data analysis and systems thinking, and present your findings at the Virtual SEES Science Symposium.
14. SAAMS at Morgan State University
Location: Primarily virtual, with the final week at Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD
Cost: Free
Acceptance rate: Highly selective
Dates: June 29 – July 24
Application deadline: April 30
Eligibility: Rising 11th or 12th graders, or graduating seniors who will enter Morgan State as freshmen
SAAMS gives you four weeks inside a program that treats computer science, mathematics, and actuarial science as interconnected fields. You'll be attending coursework in mathematics and actuarial science daily, working through a curriculum that incorporates case studies, professional development seminars, and field trips alongside the academic content. There's also an actuarial science competition component, where you're judged by professionals from the actuarial field. A significant part of the value is exposure to professional pathways through faculty, practitioners, and the Morgan State campus environment. The final week takes place on campus, giving the program a residential component and letting you experience the rigor and pace of a university campus.
Frequently asked questions
1. What computer science programs are available for high school students in Maryland?
Options include federal research internships, such as NIST SHIP, APL ASPIRE, SEAP, and AEOP HSAP, NASA and space science programs, such as NASA Goddard Scholars and NASA SEES, university-based AI and computing programs, such as TRAILS AI at UMD, ESTEEM/SER-Quest, and SAAMS at Morgan State, paid internships, such as NSA High School Work Study and JHU WISE, and virtual programs, such as Veritas AI and Lumiere.
2. Are there free or paid computer science programs for high school students in Maryland?
Yes, several programs are free and provide financial compensation. SEAP offers a $4,000 stipend, NSA High School Work Study provides paid positions, NIH Summer Internship provides a monthly stipend, and JHU WISE is a paid internship. Programs, such as APL ASPIRE, NIST SHIP, NASA Goddard Scholars, AEOP HSAP, ESTEEM/SER-Quest, and SAAMS, are free to attend without a stipend.
3. Which Maryland computer science programs are best for students interested in cybersecurity and AI?
Students interested in cybersecurity and AI might consider APL ASPIRE for work on AI-driven cyber threat detection and cryptography at Johns Hopkins APL, SEAP for placements at Naval Research Laboratory divisions covering AI, high assurance systems, and human-computer interaction, TRAILS AI at UMD for an accessible introduction to trustworthy AI systems, and Veritas AI for independent AI research with mentorship and publication support.
4. Which programs are open to students outside Maryland?
Veritas AI and Lumiere Research Scholar Program are fully virtual and open to students anywhere in the world. NASA SEES is also virtual and open to U.S. students nationally, and AEOP HSAP accepts applications from U.S. citizens and permanent residents regardless of state, with placements at Army research sites in Maryland and elsewhere.
5. What is the most competitive computer science program for high school students in Maryland?
APL ASPIRE admits fewer than 10 percent of applicants, making it among the most selective programs on this list. SEAP places only around 300 students across 38 or more labs nationwide, and NASA Goddard Scholars is also highly selective, prioritizing students within 50 miles of Greenbelt with strong academic records.
6. When should I apply to computer science programs for high school students in Maryland?
SEAP has the earliest deadline, closing November 1. NIST SHIP closes January 26, APL ASPIRE closes February 15, and NIH Summer Internship closes February 18. Programs, such as JHU WISE (March 1), TRAILS AI at UMD (March 27), ESTEEM/SER-Quest (March 29), NASA Goddard Scholars (April 17), and SAAMS (April 30), fall later in the spring. Students should begin researching options in the fall to avoid missing the earliest deadlines.