Hackathons for High Schoolers: What are They and Where to Find Them
In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving digital world, there are tons of opportunities for young minds to explore their passion for technology, problem-solving, and innovation. Among the most exciting and immersive experiences available to high school students are hackathons. These intense, collaborative events bring together budding programmers, designers, and tech enthusiasts for a whirlwind of coding, creativity, and camaraderie.
Hackathons have gained significant popularity in recent years, offering an unparalleled platform for high schoolers to unleash their potential, test their skills, and push the boundaries of what they can achieve. These events go beyond traditional classroom settings, allowing participants to dive headfirst into real-world challenges, build innovative solutions, and forge connections that can shape their future careers.
What are hackathons?
Hackathons, sometimes called "hack days” or “hack fests,” are intense, time-limited events where individuals or teams come together to collaborate and develop innovative solutions to specific problems or challenges. Its name is a combination of the word “hack,” because of its relation to the tech field, and “marathon,” because of its intensive nature of operating under time constraints. Originally popularized in the tech industry, hackathons have expanded to various domains and now many are available to high schoolers to challenge themselves.
Despite its name, hackathons aren’t actually related to hacking! Instead, it’s usually a competition to create a project or the prototype of a project, based on a set of instructions given by the event.
During a hackathon, participants typically work non-stop for a set period, which can range from a few hours to multiple days. They brainstorm ideas, design prototypes, write code, create applications or websites, and often present their projects to a panel of judges or the larger hackathon community.
Hackathons encourage creativity, teamwork, and rapid problem-solving. Participants bring diverse skill sets to the table, combining expertise in coding, design, project management, and domain-specific knowledge. This encourages knowledge-sharing, learning, and networking, as participants interact with industry professionals, mentors, and like-minded peers.
Hackathons usually ask a variety of questions to challenge participants, assess their problem-solving abilities, and evaluate their understanding of the given problem or challenge. This depends on the specific hackathon and can vary depending on the theme, focus, and objectives of the event. Here are some common types of questions you may encounter in a hackathon:
Problem identification: What problem are you trying to solve? Why is this problem important or relevant?
Solution design: What is your proposed solution or approach? How does your solution address the problem effectively?
Technical implementation: How will you architect and structure your code?
Impact and viability: How will your solution create a positive impact? What is the market demand or potential for your solution?
…and many more!
Why should high schoolers participate in hackathons?
Meet like-minded peers: hackathons will connect you to many others who are participating, just like you are. Going through a difficult challenge like a hackathon can bring you and your teammates together, forming lasting friendships and cooperations!
Gain knowledge: during the hackathon, you will have to adapt quickly and learn . You could be learning from absorbing information from your teammates, or from your fellow competitors, or you could even be learning new things as you go.
Build your experience: what’s the use of knowledge if you can’t put it to use? Hackathons will challenge you to put your skills to the test, developing a working model or prototype according to the guidelines of the competition. This will aid you in your career in the future, as you learn how to put your knowledge to good use.
Challenge yourself: as a nonstop coding fest, hackathons are extremely hard to complete. Even if you don’t win an award, it’s still an incredible feat to participate in one, that requires a lot of effort and concentration! Not everyone can do it, and by participating in a hackathon you will be pushing yourself to your limits.
Finish a project: as mentioned before, hackathons usually revolve around creating projects or prototypes of projects. So, when you walk out of one, you should be leaving with a project—whether that be a website, app, or something else—that’s pretty developed or even nearly done! Once you do, there are lots of possibilities of what you can use it for: you could develop it further, release it to the public, pitch it to companies, etc. One example of a successful hackathon project was GroupMe, which started out as Grouply, and was created at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference and eventually acquired by Skype for about 80 million dollars.
Win awards: Obviously, there is the competition aspect of hackathons—meaning that you could potentially earn an award for your work. Not only does this feel extremely rewarding, it can also add to your resume and catch the attention of potential colleges or employers.
Add it to your resume: even if you don’t win an award, you still get the opportunity to put the event on your resume as something you did. This showcases your skills and perseverance, as well as your willingness to challenge yourself and put yourself out there.
Hackathon Opportunities for High Schoolers
Skynet Hacks: Skynet Hacks is a Hackathon that is oriented toward providing incentives for how great someone's idea is. They give out prizes based on ideas, creativity, and coding prowess. The beginner section is for young programmers!
A Midsummer’s Hack: A Midsummer’s Hack is a 24-hour hackathon happening on June 3-4. It’s open to middle and high school students, no matter your level of experience! Please note that this is only open to students in Canada.
Treasure Hacks: Treasure Hacks is a free generative AI and blockchain themed hackathon open to high school and college students. Although the 2023 event is over, you can always keep an eye out for next year’s event.
LaunchHacks: LaunchHacks is the ultimate hackathon where high schoolers and pre-college students can compete with coders to showcase your creativity, innovation, technical skills and LAUNCH your project into reality, all while competing for $10,000+ in prizes! It happened from April 7 to April 9 in 2023.
Encode Justice Washington Hackathon: It’s a hackathon hosted by Encode Justice, a youth-led organization that fights for AI regulation and ethics, that lasts for 15 days and is centered around social justice. Teams of 1-4 have the opportunity to win prizes.
Local opportunities: Many hackathons are also in person! Be sure to do some research or ask around to find more hackathon opportunities near you.
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.
