15 Best Programs for High School Students
- Stephen Turban
- 2 hours ago
- 11 min read
If you’re a high school student planning to apply to top colleges, you already know that you need more than good grades to get in. Participating in a program for high schoolers shows admissions officers that you’re committed to exploring your subject outside of school. Programs outside school allow you to explore fields that interest you, and rigorous ones can prepare you for undergraduate coursework. The best programs challenge you to engage fully and take responsibility for your work.
What will I do as a participant?
Top programs for high schoolers usually involve competitive admissions and clearly defined goals. You might get to work with academics or industry experts, and you’ll develop skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and time management. You might finish with a research paper, a technical project, or work experience that gives direction to your academic interests. More importantly, you gain experience in intellectually challenging environments and meeting expectations that go beyond routine schoolwork.
This list focuses on programs that are demanding by design and intentional in what they offer. With that, here are 15 of the best programs for high school students to consider!
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly competitive; 1.5–5%
Location: MIT Campus, Boston, MA
Cost: Free of charge
Dates: Six weeks from late June through early August
Application Deadline: Applications are open now! Apply here
Eligibility: To be eligible, students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and High school juniors
The MITES Summer Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a fully funded six-week residential course that combines rigorous academic study with applied research experiences in STEM. You will study mathematics, science, and humanities while taking specialized electives such as machine learning, genomics, and engineering design. Practical learning extends to laboratory work, field visits to research facilities and technology companies, and workshops that apply theoretical concepts to real-world challenges. Collaborative projects provide opportunities to work alongside peers and professionals, develop problem-solving strategies, and present research outcomes.
Location: Remote — you can participate in this program from anywhere in the world!
Cost: Full financial aid is available!
Application Deadline: Varying deadlines based on cohort. Spring (January), Summer (May), Fall (September), and Winter (November).
Duration: Options range from 12 weeks to 1 year.
Program Dates: Multiple cohorts throughout the year, including summer (June - August), Fall (September - December), Winter (December - February), and Spring (March - June)
Eligibility: You must be currently enrolled in high school and demonstrate a high level of academic achievement (Note: accepted students have an unweighted GPA of 3.3 out of 4)
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 that you can explore as a high schooler. 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, engineering, and more. You can find more details about the application here.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly competitive
Location: Tandon School of Engineering, New York University Campus
Stipend: $1,000
Application Deadline: February 21
Program Dates: June 1 - August 14
Eligibility: Applicants must live in New York City and be completing 10th or 11th grade in June
New York University’s ARISE program runs for ten weeks and treats you like a junior researcher rather than a visitor. After an initial training phase, you’ll be placed in an NYU lab to work alongside faculty, grad students, and postdocs on projects in areas like robotics, AI, bioengineering, or computer science. Your time is split between lab work and skill-building sessions that cover things researchers actually use, like handling data responsibly, thinking through ethics, and learning how to explain technical work clearly. You move between different labs, see how research cultures vary by field, and slowly build confidence contributing to real experiments or systems. The program ends with a formal presentation where you explain what you worked on to an academic audience.
4. Veritas AI
Location: Virtual
Cost: Varies by the program. Need-based financial aid is available for AI Scholars. You can apply here.
Application deadline: On a rolling basis. Spring (January), Summer (May), Fall (September), and Winter (November).
Program dates: Multiple 12-15-week cohorts throughout the year, including spring, summer, fall, and winter.
Eligibility: High school students. AI Fellowship applicants should either have completed the AI Scholars program or exhibit experience with AI concepts or Python.
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, you will be 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, you will 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.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Competitive. <2%
Location: Columbia University Labs, NYC
Cost: No cost; stipend provided
Application Deadline: February
Dates: June 29 – August 8
Eligibility: Open to high school students from select schools in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx
Columbia University’s BRAINYAC program, run through the Zuckerman Institute, places you inside a real neuroscience lab in New York City for the summer. You’ll be matched with a Columbia researcher to learn how experiments are conducted, collect and analyze data, keep lab notes, and understand how a research question is tested. You sit in lab meetings, ask questions, and learn the rhythm of daily research, including the parts that are confusing, repetitive, or unexpectedly exciting. As the weeks go on, you start to see how small tasks connect to larger scientific goals, and by the end of the program, you present what you worked on, explaining your process and results to scientists who know the field well.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly competitive
Location: Manhattan, NYC
Cost: A stipend of $2,500 upon completion of research and program requirements
Application Deadline: Typically, March
Dates: Varies with summer component in August (4 weeks) and research lab sessions starting in Fall (260 hours September – May), AMNH Colloquium in June
Eligibility: High school student currently enrolled in 10th or 11th grade or equivalent standing, and passing classes for the last three or more semesters + either attended an AMNH partner school or participated in previous AMNH programs
The Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) offers a Fall research experience that begins with a 4-week summer institute focused on data science, AI, and machine learning. Throughout the academic year, you will work in AMNH laboratories on projects spanning astrophysics, anthropology, and genetics, developing technical skills in coding languages such as Python and R, data analysis, and scientific communication. You will work with professionals, engage in data collection and interpretation, and learn how to effectively present your research findings. The program also includes workshops on teamwork, STEM equity, and professional development, culminating in a presentation of your work at the AMNH June Colloquium.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly competitive. Less than 2%
Location: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Cost: No cost; a stipend of $1,200 will be given to participants
Application Deadline: February 7
Dates: June 30 - August 22
Eligibility: You must live in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut within 25 miles of the Main Campus of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, be currently enrolled as a high school junior, have a 3.5 grade point average in science subjects, and be 14 or older by June
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Summer Student Program places you inside a working research lab for eight weeks, where you focus on a real biomedical or computational project. You’ll be matched with an MSK researcher and work in a lab to run experiments or analyses, discuss results, and analyze what went wrong when something doesn’t work. Alongside the research, you sit in on seminars and talks across the institute that show how basic science connects to patient care and clinical decisions.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective
Location: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: March 1
Dates: June 21 to July 19
Eligibility: Applicants must be between the 10th and 11th grade years in high school during the summer of the program and must be at least 16 years old.
Carnegie Mellon University’s CS Scholars program is a fully funded, four-week residential experience that drops you straight into how computer science is actually taught and used at the college level. You will learn Python, work through algorithms, data structures, debugging, and problem-solving techniques, and build the math and logic skills that support CS thinking. The program isn’t just classes. You work on a group project that applies computing to a real problem, present your work, and get feedback from faculty. You also hear directly from CMU professors and industry professionals, take part in workshops about college readiness and equity in STEM, and visit tech companies to see what CS looks like beyond campus.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Mildly competitive
Location: Virtual
Cost: Free
Application Deadline: May 1
Program Dates: July 7 to July 25
Eligibility: Applicants must be high school students between 9th and 11th grade at the time of application, and students from countries outside the US are welcome to apply.
Stanford University’s SPINWIP program is a three-week virtual experience that pulls you into modern physics without assuming you already know everything. You will learn ideas from quantum physics, quantum computing, astrophysics, and cosmology, and then use Python to work through physics problems. Small groups led by Stanford undergraduates give the program a workshop feel, where you talk through confusion, test ideas, and figure things out together. You also hear directly from Stanford professors and researchers about what they study and how they got there, alongside practical sessions on college planning and research paths.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Competitive; 3–5%
Location: Online and on-campus
Cost: $5,500–$6,000 (financial aid available)
Application Deadline: March 6
Program Dates: July through August
Eligibility: Applicants must be above 15.5 years old at the start of the program, be a rising senior or equivalent in their school system, and be proficient in English
Yale University’s Summer Program in Astrophysics begins online, where you ease into the physics, math, and coding you’ll need, then shifts to four weeks living and working at the Leitner Family Observatory. Once on campus, your days revolve around real data. You will use telescopes, collect observations, write code to clean and analyze what you’ve gathered, and interpret data. You spend time working with bugs in your scripts, revising models, and learning how astronomers decide whether a result is meaningful or just noise. The work builds toward a research paper and presentation, which means you’re constantly explaining your choices, rewriting sections, and defending your reasoning in front of peers and mentors who take the science seriously.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective
Location: Available online or in person at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Cost: Tuition is $1,840 per credit, and students are responsible for additional costs such as textbooks and nonrefundable fees for required materials or course supplies.
Application Deadline: Fall session: August 20
Dates: Fall session: August 25 – December 20
Eligibility: High school students aged 15 and older can enroll in fall courses at Cornell.
The Fall Pre-College Program at Cornell University’s School of Continuing Education (SCE) allows you to study college-level history and related disciplines while earning official Cornell credit. You will take the same courses offered to undergraduate and graduate students, where you’ll learn to analyze historical sources, construct evidence-based arguments, and interpret global political and social change across time. Through online discussions, research assignments, and interactive lectures, you will collaborate with Cornell faculty and peers, developing skills in academic writing, critical inquiry, and historical reasoning. The program also offers access to university libraries and digital archives, enabling hands-on exploration of historical texts and data.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Highly selective; 3–5%
Location: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Cost: $6,100 + $75
Application Deadline: Feb 11
Dates: Session I: June 21–July 2; Session II: July 5–17; Session III: July 19–July 31
Eligibility: All applicants must be high school students
The Harvard Pre-College Summer Program offers high school students the opportunity to engage in academically rigorous, university-level computer science courses, providing a deeper understanding of data science, quantum computing, and computational analysis. Through the Introduction to Data Science with a Focus on Visualization course, you will learn to collect and analyze data using Python, creating visualizations to communicate findings effectively. In the process, you will develop proficiency in web scraping, data cleaning, and data visualization using both Python and JavaScript. In the Quantum Information and Quantum Computation course, you will explore the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, learning how spin states function as qubits and how quantum systems transform information processing. This course covers essential topics such as superposition, entanglement, and the physical implementation of quantum computing.
13. Pre-Med and Health Professions - Pre-College Programs for High School Students – Syracuse University
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Competitive
Location: Syracuse University (online options as well)
Cost: Residential: $4,295; Commuter: $3,318
Application Deadline: March
Dates: July 6 – July 18; July 20 – Aug. 1
Eligibility: Students must be of rising high school sophomore, junior, or senior status, or a current year high school graduate
Syracuse University’s Pre-Med and Healthcare Professions pre-college course gives you a broad, practical look at what different healthcare careers actually involve before you commit to one path. You will learn how fields like obstetrics, physical therapy, neuroscience, gerontology, and public health differ in day-to-day work, training length, and certification requirements. The course walks through the science behind medicine while also pulling in psychology, nutrition, and social factors that shape patient care.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Competitive
Location: Online
Fee: Free
Application Deadline: None
Dates: Varies as per course, but the dates usually fall in August
Eligibility: All high schoolers are eligible to apply
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s History School runs online courses that ask you to do history, not just learn it. You will work with primary documents, reading closely, questioning narratives, and talking through ideas in live classes led by historians and experienced educators. Past courses have focused on topics like constitutional change, civil rights, immigration, and U.S. foreign policy, using examples from programs such as The Cold War or Black Lives in the Founding Era. The emphasis is on forming arguments from evidence, writing clearly, and connecting historical moments to issues that still matter now.
Acceptance Rate/Cohort Size: Selective
Location: Philadelphia, USA (on campus)
Cost: Costs range from $7,899 to $9,799, depending on the particular course. There are online courses as well, which range from $329 to $4,099
Application Deadline: Priority deadline: January 29; Final Deadline: April 2
Dates: July 13 - August 2
Eligibility: All high school students with a minimum GPA of 3.3 are invited to apply
The Wharton School’s Data Science Academy puts you straight into working with data rather than talking about it in the abstract. You will learn how to clean messy datasets, visualize patterns, and use machine learning tools in R, the same language used in many research and industry settings. Most of the learning happens by doing. You analyze real datasets, run models that don’t always behave the way you expect, and figure out how to explain what the numbers are actually saying. Faculty lead the core instruction, while Wharton TAs help you troubleshoot code, refine analysis, and think through your approach.
Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.
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