11 Summer Enrichment Programs for Middle School Students
- Stephen Turban
- Aug 2, 2025
- 7 min read
Summer enrichment programs offer a good opportunity for middle school students to develop their skills in respect of critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork, while also upgrading their knowledge in their chosen fields. Departing from an overt focus on traditional classroom settings, these programs also incorporate hands-on activities and experiential learning to better contribute to your overall development.
Enrolling in such programs also prepares you for more challenging high school programs and sets the ground for internships. Lastly, the best programs are helmed by experienced faculty and give you a chance to engage with experts in various fields, thereby also enabling you to form valuable connections.
Here’s a list of 11 summer enrichment programs you could consider applying to as a middle school student:
Acceptance Rate: Selective
Dates: Varies for different cohorts, with three Summer cohorts starting on June 2, July 14, and August 25.
Application Deadline: Varies for different cohorts, more details here.
Eligibility: Students in grades 6-8
Fee: Varies; financial aid available
Location: Virtual
Lumiere’s Junior Explorer Program (JEP) is an 8-week virtual summer program for middle school students. Students engage in multidisciplinary training while exploring specific subjects in STEM, humanities, and social sciences through weekly virtual sessions under the stewardship of expert PhD mentors from top universities. These range from computer science, medicine, and environmental studies to entrepreneurship, history, and economics!
In the first four weeks, you will explore multiple topics before choosing to specialise in a subject of your choice in weeks 5 and 6. In the final 2 weeks of the program, you will team up with your mentor and apply your learnings to build an individual high-school-level project in the form of a research report, presentation, or any other medium of your choice! Aimed at addressing prevalent issues, these projects can take varying forms, ranging from a Harvard Business School-style case study to a data analysis project to forecast weather patterns.
Acceptance Rate: Highly selective.
Dates: June 23 - June 27
Application Deadline: March 3
Eligibility: Students entering grades 7-9 (students must attend school within a 60-mile radius of the university’s campus and at least have a B average)
Fee: $650; financial Aid available
Location: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn GEMS is an established STEM summer camp for middle school students. Over a 5-day period, you will engage with subjects like nanotechnology, bioengineering, materials science, graphics, computing, and more! The program objective revolves around upgrading students’ understanding of subjects in applied science, engineering, and mathematics under the focused guidance of reputed academicians. Through activities like Glow In The Dark Science & Mechanical Engineering In Action, the program aims to encourage students to ponder over and understand the importance of engineering in everyday life.
Acceptance Rate: Selective
Dates: June 9 - June 20 (Cohort I) | July 14- July 25 (Cohort II)
Application Deadline: Varies according to the cohort; more details here.
Eligibility: Students in grades 6-8
Fee: Varies, financial aid available
Location: Virtual
Veritas AI’s AI Trailblazers is a 2-week summer program for middle school students interested in upgrading their knowledge of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Students engage in virtual sessions with reputed faculty and expert mentors, while exploring foundational subjects like basic programming in Python, exploratory data analysis, linear regression, neural networks, AI ethics, and more! In a period spanning 25 hours, you will also engage in collaborative work for your AI-based group project. Through a 5:1 mentor ratio, the program also seeks to ensure that the individual strengths and gaps of the students are dealt with efficiently. In the past, students have designed projects to rein in artificial intelligence to detect malaria and enable CIFAR-10 recognition.
Acceptance Rate: Selective
Dates: Multiple cohorts in different locations between June and August, more details here.
Eligibility: Students in grades 7-8
Fee: $3,145 for residential program, $2,645 for day program; need-based scholarship available
Location: Multiple locations for different cohorts, more details here.
The Junior National Young Leaders Conference (JrNYLC) is a summer program for middle school students that focuses on a leadership curriculum. Over a 6-day period, you will shape your leadership skills by undergoing site visits, attending workshops & group activities and participating in interactive simulations. The educational curriculum also includes a study of the leadership habits and concepts derived from the lives of influential personalities from American history. In the process, you will learn more about attributes like overcoming intolerance, decision-making, and more! In the final bout of the program, you will also get an opportunity to showcase your debate and presentation skills as part of the Peace Patch Protest workshop.
Acceptance Rate: Highly selective
Dates: June 23 - July 30
Application Deadline: February 26
Eligibility: Students entering grades 6-9 (from public and parochial schools based in New Haven, CT)
Fee: $75; full scholarship available
Location: Dwight Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT
The Ulysses S. Grant Foundation program is one of the oldest summer enrichment programs that focuses on middle school students. Every week, students engage in 6-hour sessions between Monday and Friday. Spanning 6 weeks, students delve into subjects categorised under two heads, Humanities and Investigation. The former includes subjects like history, poetry, creative writing, and others. Through the latter, on the other hand, students develop their problem-solving and interpersonal skills through hands-on learning and participatory projects on natural & social sciences. Other activities include sports, games, music, debates, mock trials, and more!
Acceptance Rate: Selective
Dates: 4-week program, typically conducted in the month of July
Application Deadline: April 15
Eligibility: Students in grades 7-12
Fee: Free
Location: Columbia University, NY
Columbia University’s State Pre-College Enrichment Program (S-PREP) is a preparatory summer program for middle school and high school students who aspire to build a career in medicine or associated STEM fields. Over daily 4-hour classes from Monday to Friday for 4 weeks, you will explore subjects like anatomy, chemistry, physics, geometry, cognitive science, statistics, and more! The program’s selection process is tailored to prioritise the representation of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students. Students selected for the program also automatically become eligible to apply for high school summer research programs like the BRAINYAC program and the YES in THE HEIGHTS program.
Acceptance Rate: Selective, more details on the review process are available here.
Dates: June 16 - June 27 (Session I) | July 7 - July 18 (Session II)
Application Deadline: March 20
Eligibility: Students in grades 8-11
Fee: $3080, not including $65 registration fee and other course-specific costs. (Financial Aid available)
Location: Virtual
Stanford’s Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes offer close to 70 virtual summer programs for middle school and high school students. With courses rooted in fields like humanities, science, mathematics, business, and social science, students get to choose a program of their choice from a variety of options. Options include courses on creative writing, ethics, C++ & java programming, game design, product design, biosciences, and more! In a span of 2 weeks, you will participate in two-hour live online classes every day between Monday and Friday. Students will also be expected to keep aside an additional 3 hours of each day for homework, assignments, and projects. The class size of 16 students on average ensures holistic learning and offers a conducive atmosphere for peer and mentor interaction!
Acceptance Rate: Selective.
Dates: Varies according to the program, more details here.
Application Deadline: May 16
Eligibility: Students in grades 5-11
Fee: Varies according to the program; financial aid available.
Location: Multiple locations, more details here.
Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth offers a variety of on-campus summer programs for middle school students interested in fields ranging from science, engineering & mathematics to history, social sciences & language arts. Students can opt for courses in anatomy, astrophysics, essay writing, cryptology, data science, electrical engineering, poetry, psychology, microeconomics, and more! Typically spanning 3 weeks, each course incorporates hands-on learning and activities, delving into areas & teaching methods beyond the school curricula and traditional classrooms. Students are required to achieve qualifying scores on the CTY assessment to be eligible to apply to any program.
Program Dates: Varies for different cohorts, more details here.
Application Deadline: Varies for different cohorts.
Eligibility: Students in grades 7-9
Fee: $1,465 (Financial Aid available)
Location: UC Berkeley, CA
UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science offers a range of STEM research programs for middle school students. In the week-long programs, students engage in STEM courses focused on animal behavior, biomedical innovations, space exploration, electrical engineering, and more! Through 8-hour daily sessions from Monday to Friday, you will learn more about real-world applications of STEM research and practical skills, along with upgrading your theoretical understanding of the chosen subject. For instance, in the Coding and Engineering Nano-Satellites for Space Exploration program, you will cement your understanding of block-based coding while also tackling relevant engineering problems with respect to modelling satellites. Towards the end of the program, you will also get a chance to rein in your learnings to curate and present your final project.
Acceptance Rate: Not Selective
Program Dates: Multiple sessions between June and August spanning 1-4 weeks, more details here.
Application Deadline: Varies as per cohort, more details here.
Eligibility: Students aged 13 and above
Fee: $1,795
Location: Virtual
Georgetown University offers multi-length summer enrichment courses in entrepreneurship to middle school and high school students. Through 30 hours of online instructions, the course aims to guide you through the basics of developing a business idea. The course curriculum teaches students to identify market needs, to target customers, to curate a business pitch, to create a business plan and to efficiently put out product stories. The final capstone project will give you the chance to develop your business idea and plan and showcase it before an expert panel!
Acceptance Rate: Highly Selective
Dates: June 11 - August 13
Application Deadline: Early Bird Rate Deadline ends 10 days before the start of the session; participants registering afterwards will have to pay an additional fee of $25.
Eligibility: Students in grades 7-11
Fee: $700; financial aid available
Location: Virtual
The Leadership Intensive hosted by Northeastern University is a 9-week summer leadership program for middle school and high school students. Through 105 minutes of online instructions and individual coursework on a weekly basis, you will engage with the leadership habits of influential figures from different professions. The learnings are then used by students to assess the gaps in their own skills with a view to sharpen their leadership qualities. The program curriculum also focuses on teaching teamwork and problem-solving through hands-on activities. Importantly, the program also gives you a chance to meet and network with acclaimed leaders working in government, in businesses and in the non-profit sector.
Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a Ph.D. 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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