AI Summer Camps: 6 Top Programs to Start an AI Summer
Summer goes by fast, especially as a highschool student. Only 12 weeks before days are bombarded with school work, leaving barely any time for extracurriculars. Another reason for how valuable starting summer is! This list will hopefully help guide you through finding inspiration for AI projects through various summer camps.
In this list, we will include important details about each program (pricing, location, etc.) and short descriptions of each one. This list includes camps of varying costs that are both virtual and in person.
Location of AI Summer Camps
In Person
Pros
Better environment to learn for some people.
Easier to immerse yourself in AI.
Asking questions is accessible.
Find people with similar interests.
Cons
Usually available in only popular areas/main colleges.
Much pricer for housing (living on campus).
Limited seats, so selection is very competitive/tight.
Virtual
Pros
Available to many more students.
More programs with high level instructors.
Cons
Harder environment to learn and stay engaged for some students.
Berkeley Coding Academy - Data Science to AI
Location: Virtual
Program Dates: June 10 - June 28 2024, Weekdays
Cost: $2,495
Eligibility: Ages 12-14, 15-18
Application Deadline (2024): Mar 1, 2024
Experience Needed: None
Berkeley Coding Academy Scholars program is a highly intensive AI Summer Camp. This class teaches an introduction to Python and AI, learning to run models. This is through cohorts, with 52 hours of instruction.
Students who complete this course have access to 100+ videos/coding notebooks. BCA has multiple levels of courses
Inspirit AI Scholars Program
Location: Virtual
Program Dates: Summer 2024
Cost: $1,100
Eligibility: High School Students
Application Deadline (2024): January 31, 2023
Experience Needed: None
Inspirit AI’s scholars program provides highschool students with valuable virtual teaching of coding and python programming. 25 hours of teaching for 2 weeks.
Although no prior coding experience is required, Inspirit has a variety of levels and teaching for all levels. Taught by graduate students from notable colleges such as Standard. The first week is filled with establishing machine learning concepts, while the second week directs students towards specific projects across all fields, such as healthcare, Automated driving, and Physics.
BeaverWorks Summer Courses
Location: Virtual and In Person
Program Dates: Jun 22 - Jul 20 (4 Weeks)
Cost: Free
Eligibility: Incoming High School Seniors
Application Deadline (2024): March 30, 2024
Experience Needed: None (Many parts to application process)
Beaver works is a joint center founded by MIT school of Engineering and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Being a part of Beaverworks is highly prestigious, yet competitive. Beaverworks STEM courses are one of the best and immersive program experiences that a highschooler can do in the summer!
BeaverWorks students say that being in this program helped them get into prestigious Ivy League colleges such as Stanford and Yale.
Courses:
Carnegie Mellon AI Scholars
Location: Carnegie Mellon Campus (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
Program Dates: Jun 22 - Jul 20 (4 Weeks)
Cost: Free
Eligibility: Current High School Juniors and Seniors, Age 16+
Application Deadline (2024): Mar 1, 2024
Experience Needed: None
Carnegie Mellon AI Scholars is one of many Pre-college programs that the university offers! This program is group intensive, run by CMU Grad students. The curriculum learns through projects and goes over college application workshops.
4 weeks is a long period from home, however this camp is filled with outside activities/team bonding.
This program is directed to create opportunities for students who don’t have as much access and resources in their lives. This can mean financial needs or a lack of computer science in their communities. However, this program is available for all.
Experience needed is none, however there is a prerequisite Python program a month before the camp starts to allow everyone to be on the same field.
Princeton AI4ALL
Location: Princeton Campus
Application deadline: TBA
Program dates: July 14th and ends August 3rd.
Eligibility: Rising 11th Grader
Program Cost: Free
Princeton AI4ALL is a program that is open to all rising 11th grade students. This program teaches students through a combination of lectures, hands-on research projects, field trips, and mentorship.
AI4ALL programs aim to provide accessible AI instruction to all for example for people in financial need.
Inspirit AI 1:1 Program: AI + X Individual Research
Location: Virtual
Application Deadline: December 31, 2023
Prerequisites: Completed AI Scholars or has Python experience
Program Cost: $2,400
Eligibility: High School Students
Upcoming Start Dates: January 10, February 10
For highschool students that have high motivation / interest in a certain field, Inspirit AI has a program to apply AI with an experienced mentor of that field.
Inspirit AI offers virtual mentorship sessions (10 hours) and fellowships (25 hours) to guide students through making a research paper or applying for colleges/competitions. Motivated students may decide to enter into science fairs or write into a journal, all led through highly experienced mentors.
NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING’S SUMMER PROGRAM ON MACHINE LEARNING
Location: Inperson
Application Deadline: April 20, 2024
Prerequisites: Completed Algebra 2
Program Cost: $4,100+
Eligibility: Age 14+
The NYU Tandon Summer Program puts strong emphasis on teaching students core principles to tackling engineering problems with model development, such as cross-validation, linear regressions, and neural networks.
Lessons include tackling societal challenges/everyday needs such as traffic control and interactive voice control.
Conclusion
Learning AI is not a straightforward path by any means. There is no “fail proof way” to learn how to construct a machine learning model.
In a similar way, watching/reading millions of videos of people coding up a linear regression model to predict car prices will not make you an AI expert. AI Summer Camps are great ways to learn/apply AI to all things through structured learning from experienced instructors. These projects can inspire you to make a brand new application with AI to change the world!
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
