What Is the MIT Beaver Works Acceptance Rate? 2026 Data + How to Get In

Offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Beaver Works Summer Institute is an intensive pre-college summer program, running roughly for 160 hours in a four-week period. It creates a space for mainly rising high school seniors to explore topics, such as  robotics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, satellites, radars and more through lectures and hands-on exercises. Below is everything you need to know about getting into this prestigious STEM program for high schoolers.

TL;DR: the acceptance rate, who it's for, and the one thing that matters most in the application

Given that many rising high school seniors aspire to participate in BWSI, it is common for many to become curious about the program’s acceptance rate. However, as per the program managers, this is something that changes on a yearly basis, as it is affected by how many courses they offer and how many students apply to the program.

The only sure thing is that each summer course accommodates 20 - 35 students and you have no idea how many other students apply the same year as you. The best way to get into the summer program is by performing remarkably well in the relevant prerequisite online course(s).

What is MIT Beaver Works? Dates, format, courses, cost, eligibility

Organized by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and MIT’s School of Engineering, the Beaver Works Summer Institute is designed to equip academically talented high school students with essential and advanced skills by immersing them in projects and workshop-style courses. If selected to participate in the program, you will learn to solve real-world problems and gain hands-on practice in using some advanced technologies, thus making you feel more prepared for future careers in STEM.

Every year, the summer institute typically begins after July 4 and ends either on July 31 or August 1. It is scheduled to run from July 5 to August 1 in 2027. During the four weeks of the program, you will be attending a STEM course from a selection of offerings, which will include both in-person options held at MIT’s campus in Cambridge and virtual ones held via Zoom. The program ends with a final event for in-person participants on July 31st and an overall final event for both virtual and in-person students on August 1st.

There are 14 courses available at the moment, among which your in-person options include Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing (UAV), Autonomous RACECAR Grand Prix, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Challenges (AUV), Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking, E-Textiles and Wearable Technology, and Unmanned Air System-Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAS-SAR), and online options include Autonomous Cognitive Assistance (CogWorks), Basics of ASICs, Cyber Operations, Medlytics, MicroElectronics and Hardware Development, Quantum Software, Remote Sensing for Disaster Response, and Serious Games Development with Artificial Intelligence (SGAI). More are expected to come in the upcoming years.

To participate in the Beaver Works Summer Institute, you should be a rising 12th grader (or a rising 11th grader) who lives and attends a high school in the United States and will stay in the country for the duration of the program. You must also complete prerequisite online courses to be eligible; more details about them in the later paragraphs.

You can attend the program for free if you come from a household with an annual family income and asset liability of less than $200,000. Otherwise, you will be required to pay $3,000 for the program. BWSI will not fund your accommodation for in-person courses, whether you attend for free or at a cost.

Apart from BWSI, MIT also offers many other summer options for high school students. You can find more details about them here or here.

What's the acceptance rate? Number, source, and some context

According to a webinar posted by BWSI, program managers Lisa Kelley and Joel Grimm specify that they cannot share or even determine the program’s acceptance rate. This is because factors such as the number of summer courses available and the volume of applications they receive change every year and such factors highly influence the acceptance rate.

BWSI’s Kelley stressed that the summer program is highly competitive and Grimm added that each summer course will have a cohort size of 20 - 35 students. However, the online courses are much more lenient and almost everyone who applied gets to participate in them.

Who gets in: typical applicant profile

As per the Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) Online Course Access form, 9th to 12th graders can sign up for it and learn independently. However, as per a webinar posted by BWSI, the July portion of the program accepts mostly rising seniors, who account for more than 90 percent of the selected students. Rising juniors typically fill up the remaining spots.

Students accepted into the summer institute have met the minimum requirements for their summer courses. They additionally have a good academic standing, which has to be evident through their grades, the courses they have completed in high school, teacher recommendations, and more.

These are students who can commit to the entirety of the four-week intensive program, which will consist of lectures, team-based projects, office hours, and other enriching activities. The summer course schedule typically consists of lectures in the mornings and group projects in the afternoons, based on what you learned in the morning. When a student misses out a few hours, it can affect their team’s performance in the summer institute.

Students participating in the July program live in the US regardless of whether they will attend the in-person or virtual course. This is to ensure that the program can deliver the program project materials to you.

What the selection committee looks for

The selection committee is looking for students with a strong academic and extracurricular record, preferably with an inclination toward math and programming.

This is because many courses will touch on data analysis, calculus, algebra, and other math topics to help you better understand different algorithms. It also really helps to be genuinely comfortable in using a programming language, like Python, rather than simply knowing the basics alone.

Apart from your academic performance, BWSI also values an applicant’s personal characteristics. You should be someone who works well within a team setting, is comfortable learning new topics, follows instructions, and is disciplined when it comes to getting your work done. Other qualities that the program’s team prefers in the selected students are independence, leadership, and maturity.

How to apply: timeline, online course, and deadlines, kept brief

BWSI starts accepting student registrations for the online prerequisite courses in December and shares login information in mid-January. You can either self-register for the online course or be nominated by a teacher.

You will only be able to start attending the online courses on the Edly platform from February 1. The program managers recommend that you skim the available courses to make a more informed choice about which in-person or virtual course to take in the summer.

After deciding on your top-preferred in-person or virtual summer course, you should start working on the prerequisite course(s) for it. The information will be available on the course’s overview. For most courses, you would be expected to additionally finish modules in Python Core and Computer Science and Systems (CSS). Your course instructors will also inform you of the percentage of the prerequisite you need to complete to be eligible to attend the relevant summer course.

On March 1, BWSI will send the summer application form to all eligible students, due by the 31st. Along with your enrollment application, you should also submit a teacher recommendation by April 3. The program committee will start reviewing the applications holistically after the deadline and let all the applicants who got selected to attend the summer cohort know their results on May 3.

At this point, you will know which summer course you got into. If this is different from your first pick, you should immediately start working on the prerequisite courses for the summer course you actually got into. You will typically have until June 18 to finish it.

Tips to strengthen your application

As part of your enrollment application, you will be asked to choose the top three choices of courses you wish to attend in the summer. While BWSI will try its best to place you on your first choice, the program cannot guarantee the same. One way to improve your chances of getting your top pick is to take advantage of the essay portion of the application. The very first question is “Explain why you chose your first choice BWSI program and how participating in the course and program will support your academic and career goals?  What is exciting you about this field?”

Speaking of essay questions, it is highly advisable that you don’t use AI to write them. If BWSI detects the use of AI in multiple software, it will call you and your parents/guardians for a discussion before making a decision. This may even lead to your application being rejected.

Another simple yet crucial step to strengthen your application is to fill in all the details and avoid mistakes. This is because BWSI is managed by a small team and it may not be feasible for them to correct or add information for you, so check yours multiple times before sending in the application.

At the same time, make sure you are not waiting until the last minute to send your application. A BWSI program manager explains that when too many people submit at the same time before the deadline, the portal gets overloaded, resulting in the entire application submission process becoming slower for you.

More importantly, do your best in your online course, as your final grades determine whether you get into the summer program or not. If you didn’t get your first pick and are starting your prerequisites late, BWSI considers that and looks at your progress in the original online course as well.

Though this is not always the case, Grimm points out that taking BWSI online courses in the early stages of your high school years can help your case by giving you a taste of what to expect, rather than waiting until your junior year. Note, completing a prerequisite for a course in one year does not automatically qualify you for the course in the following years. The course syllabus changes annually.

Moreover, as part of your online registration, you will also be required to register on Piazza. Make sure that you actively participate in the Q&A forums and discussion boards, whether that is answering your instructor’s questions or engaging in educational and course-related conversations with your fellow participants. A Reddit user who previously attended the program shared this information, and program managers mention the same in their application webinar.

If you don't get in: a short section pitching Lumiere as a year-round research option

With MIT’s BWSI being highly challenging to get into, you can always consider the year-round Lumiere Research Scholar Program as your other option. In it, you will have the chance to work under the personalized supervision of a PhD mentor to complete an independent research paper. If your interest in STEM is what drew you to apply for BWSI, Lumiere lets you conduct research in STEM areas, including physics, data science, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and more.

FAQs:

Is MIT Beaver Works free?

MIT is free for students whose household networth is below $200,000 per annum and $3,000 for other participants. The prerequisite online courses are free.

What is the Beaver Works online course?

These are courses you will need to take to be eligible for the summer courses in July. In other words, these are your prerequisites, not to be confused with the synchronous virtual courses held during the summer.

Can juniors apply to BWSI?

With BWSI mainly welcoming rising high school seniors for its summer sessions, students in their junior year at the time of the application are in fact the target audience for the program. Shortly, juniors can apply to BWSI.

Which BWSI course is the easiest to get into?

While some courses will have multiple prerequisites, which will include completing additional Python and computer science courses, no summer course is considered easy to get into, as they all have their own intensities. Moreover, this also depends on your individual academic strengths and interests.

Stephen Turban is the co-founder of Lumiere Education and a graduate of Harvard College, where he earned an A.B. in Statistics before beginning a PhD at Harvard Business School. A former McKinsey & Company consultant and former researcher, his research has been covered by the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, BBC News, Freakonomics Radio, and the Washington Post. In his articles for Forbes, he writes on what students and professionals can learn from high school research, high school passion projects, critical thinking, and mentorship. At Lumiere, he leads a selective research program where students work one-on-one with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper. Connect with him on LinkedIn.