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Ask Slashdot: Tech-Related Summer Camps For Teenagers?
First time accepted submitter jcreus writes "I am a teenager (aged 14, though turning 15 before summer), and I've recently been looking for summer camps in the USA. My interests include physics, mathematics (to a lesser extent) and computer science (I already know several programming languages). However, I haven't been able to find anything really exciting. The difficulties I've found include the fact that most are general-oriented, whereas I'm seeking something specific. Furthermore, some are USA-student-only (and I'm European), and most computer-science oriented camps seem to be for non-programmers. What are your experiences with such camps?"
Why would you want to come to this gestapo country? Stay in Europe. What are you going to want to do next summer, go to summer camp in North Korea?
There are just too many people in those places.
space camp! run by NASA.
Our eldest is going to one of the NASA Space camps later this year. It's costing us a bit in airfares and suchlike, but she expects it will be worth it.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
You might want to look into something like this or this .
My daughter took one out of this one, specifically one on Physics. She loved it and we plan to do another. My other daughter is looking forward to this one.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Not useful for the original poster, but Ohio high school students can apply for a two week camp at the Ohio Supercomputing Center (http://www.osc.edu/education/si/). I went a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Most students don't get an opportunity to do massively parallel programming across thousands of processors.
If you're open to considering locations in Canada, then Shad Valley is a great program that a lot of my friends have gone to. It's hosted by a university in Canada and is well suited for someone interested in tech. I'd recommend the University of Waterloo location as it probably provides the best exposure to the tech companies in Canada.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
In the mid-1990s, I went to a Civil Engineering "summer camp" as a 8th grader (about 14) at Michigan Technological University. It was mostly geared towards fun applications of things and not the math/calculation part of it. Unfortunately, as you've found out, many programs are going to be pretty lightweight.
However, John Hopkins University has put together a decent list of summer programs for people about your age. http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/linka4.htm
Many of them don't require US citizenship because they aren't funded by USgovernment money. The Penn Summer Science Academy has a set for Experimental Physics which could be interesting.
My best advice would be to email the contact people and explain what you are looking for, focusing on what your experience is and your desired challenge level. Ask them if they think their program would be a good fit.
A lot of universities either run or sponsor summer programs for high school student. this one http://www.summerscience.org/home/index.php sponsored by CalTech and MIT looks good, for instance.
I am a teenager (aged 14, though turning 15 before summer), and I've recently been looking for summer camps in the USA
Also, your advice is completely worthless since this student specifically mentions they are less interested in learning to program than they are in learning about math and physics.
P.S. Do you happen to work in my IT department? Your writing style feels oddly familiar for some reason...
If you want to do just one course for three weeks, find out if you're eligible for CTY, which does do an international talent search, though you may be too late for Summer 2012
Center for Talented Youth is a programme that runs camps at various universities in the US.
There is one in Dublin Ireland that might be an option for you.
At your age it would be far more healthy, and a far better use of your time, to seek out an opportunity to get laid.
I'm only half joking here. You'll probably continue to enjoy your hobby, and perhaps turn it into a career, regardless of yet another nerd fest. You'll have plenty of opportunities to attend LAN parties, and other socially inept gatherings, later in life. By most definitions I suppose I'm a geek, given my professional and amateur interests; but I've never regretted the stupid, wonderful, awkward, outrageous things I did in my teens. If you insist on a structured Summer, at least choose something that takes you outside your narrow comfort zone. Fuck your interests - they won't bring a smile to your face in twenty years time.
It's really too bad that it no longer exists, but back when I was in high school (71-74), there was a great National Science Foundation program. The program invited science-oriented HS kids for 2-4 weeks (?) to programs on college campuses. It was like summer camp, but educational.
I went to a chemistry program at University of North Dakota and a electrical engineering one at University of Southern California. The programs were relatively inexpensive and there was scholarship money available to offset tuition and meals.
This was back in the days of the cold war and flush science spending. I'm sure a number of graduates of these programs went onward to great science & engineering achievements.
I'd bet that a number of older /. readers participated in these programs -- don't know when they were discontinued.
As much as he's been marred for his personal mishaps, Tiger Woods has set up Learning Centers in LA, DC, and a couple of other locations that focus on teaching STEM type curriculum, while providing some physical activity to break up any academic tedium (exercise is good for the mind). I have no accounts of the quality, however it is an option to be explored. www.tigerwoodsfoundation.org
I might be completely off-base here but, at 14, It seems that you already spend more than fair share of your time on these "tech" pursuits (you already know a lot of programming languages and have interests in physics and math). I have been on that path before - pursuing purely tech/geek oriented tasks and activities. My suggestion is to go for something that's completely tangential to your personality, something out of your comfort zone - it'll expand your horizons and challenge you in a way that'll continue to benefit you throughout your life. I would highly recommend ballroom dancing (or salsa for that matter) - it's a highly social activity, you interact a lot with the members of opposite sex and you learn dancing too [trust me, it comes in handy when going out clubbing in college :D]. Other options include painting and learning a new musical instrument.
I may seem familiar because I've been wring on off and on Slashdot since 2000. More time to post here when I'm unemployed, I'm around here less when I have a job to do.
Stanford has their EPGY program..I did it last year and it was really good. They have a bunch of Math/Physics courses and some CS stuff. http://epgy.stanford.edu/summer/index.html
I'd suggest Wolfram Summer school, http://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool/2012/ It is math-oriented programming, in Mathematica. I have not gone there myself, but Mathematica is a quite nice language. However, Stephen Wolfram is sort of strange, being obsessed by cellular automatas and all that, but otherwise, my guess is that it is a nice school.
I was going to suggest Camp CAEN at University of Michigan, but I just found out they stopped! So sad.....
When I was younger, during the summers between junior high and high school, I used to go to iD tech camps. I went to the one on the Stanford campus specifically. While there, I got to meet other kids interested in the same things as myself, and I got to go through some short, week long programming language crash courses. If I remember correctly, iD taught me Java, C++, and C#. They had other courses besides programming, such as video editting, and web page design. It was a lot of fun and I would definitely recommend it to others!
hey!
In the summer of '87, just before I graduated high school, I was among a small group of students chosen to spend a week in a computer science summer camp run by Stuart Reges at Stanford. The lectures were all across the board, a smattering of a lot of stuff. We had a lab of Mac 512Ke computers (and a Mac Plus fileserver) on which we learned the basics of Lisp, and there was a networking lecture which posed the Two Generals' Problem, and a lecture on artificial intelligence gave us the Muddy Children Puzzle, and we got to learn Emacs on the school's VAX running VMS, and we got a glimpse of X windows running on a Sun workstation, and I remember a night in an auditorium where we got to see an Amiga use its 4096-color palette to display photorealistic images!
But the most important thing I learned that week - the thing that I've carried with me all the years since then - is that there are *other people like me*. I was a geek in an athletic high school. I was the kid who got beat up and picked on. I was told I had no future because I spent my free time disassembling Apple II games and figuring out how they worked instead of kicking a football. And I believed it - until the day I arrived at that Stanford camp and found other kids who did this sort of stuff, and built robots at home, and memorized pi to a hundred digits, and knew magic tricks, and had a whole bunch of other neat things in their heads which today seem stereotypically nerdy but, back then, the important thing is that none of them involved kicking a football, and these kids were *proud* of who they were and what they could do.
It was only a week. I could say that week changed my life, but it would be more accurate to say that, without it, I might not be here today.
There is an organization in NYC called HTINK that offers programs through school districts and homeschool groups. If you contact them, info@htink.org, they can help you find summer programs and they may be organizing one this year.
www.htink.org
New Mexico Tech has a set of summer camps. nmt.edu
They're all engineering/science/computer related. I'd chuck my kids off there, if I had them, without any reservations.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
When I was in high school, I was lucky to get a summer job at IBM doing internal Linux support in one of their software divisions. I learned a lot, enjoyed my work, and made some industry contacts. At the time, it was pretty sweet to make some money as well. So if you want something a little more intensive and specific than a general science camp, maybe an internship would be a good fit.
As I said, I got kind of lucky with this -- my high school CS teacher knew someone -- but if you just take some initiative and start emailing people, you might be surprised at the results.
Disclaimer, I learned to program from one of the founders(who was my high school math and programming teacher, and now teaches math at YSU) and I was a teacher there for a couple summers.
This is the country's 2nd oldest computer camp, is on 450+ acres on lake Erie, just outside of Erie PA, Is attached as an add on onto Camp Fitch, the Youngstown, Oh. YMCA's summer camp. (Don't let the YMCA part scare you away if you aren't of a Christ oriented religion, many non-Christians go to the camp,(and don't have issues with the way it is run,etc.)
They teach from age 8 to 16, everything from logo (for the 8 year olds) to HTML, PHP, C++, and it looks like C# now also. (used to teach Pascal, VB, etc, when they were relevant, so they keep up to date)
I honestly can say that even being a teacher, and never a camper, was one of the best things I've ever done. The campers love it. They get hours of outdoor play time, and learn some "cool" things with the computer(generally the older they are the more they get out of it, which makes sense, but ehh), and then get 1hr of time to play computer games(optional, they can also play in the evening sports event.)
The camp is co-ed, about 50/50 overall and the computer camp was about 2/3 boys& 1/3 girls when I was there.
Also repeat campers often become teachers in later years.
To this day, several of the best programmers I know, have come through this program.
They have their own website www.campcomputer.com (which seems to be down right now for maint. or something)
But here is the Facebook page with most of the relevant info.
http://www.facebook.com/CampFitchComputerCamp?sk=info
It sounds like your looking for a camp where you can do more of what you spend your time doing anyhow. I'd suggest something completely different. If you are planning to attend a camp here in the US, take advantage of everything this country has in the way of natural resources. Whether that is along one of the coasts or farther inland, hiking, fishing, camping (as in sleeping on the ground under a tree next to a fire that you built) would likely be far more of a challenge for you than anything tech related. You can get that anywhere. Do something different now, while you have the opportunity (and the energy). Just my advice. Good luck with whatever you decide.
Space Camp.
Yeah. Go hike around the Alps or something. As the years roll by, you'll look back on that sort of experience more fondly than a summer spent coding.
It's not really "tech," but for physics,math, and computer science try the summer science program here.
It includes international students, is 50+ years old, affiliated with top colleges, and is alumni supported... So someone must think it's pretty good. It also offers financial aid.
you just have to find the right one (possibly not an easy process). I attended Engineering State at Utah State University and had a lot of fun. It helped me decide between computer engineering and electrical engineering. http://www.engineering.usu.edu/htm/engineering-news/e-state
It's slightly off-topic, so pardon this, but many of the Slashdot readers are also atheists, freethinkers, etc.
There is an international network of summer camps called Camp Quest (www.CampQuest.org), and they teach about science, peer review, skepticism, evolution... plus all your traditional camp activities like hiking, arts and crafts, campfires, etc.
There's about a dozen locations in the US, including two in California, plus three overseas.
-David
Hi - I can very honestly recommend Petnica research center in Serbia to all high school kids (from anywhere in the world). They specialize and focus on working with talented kids on advanced material. Teachers are typically University profs.postdocs and grad. students. I went there half dozen of times myself, and after that to Caltech. I work in Bay area now.
http://www.mathcamp.org/
If you are really interested in physics you'll need all the math you can get. It's a good program, my son went for a couple years and worked as a junior counselor for a couple years after that. Kids from all of the world go to it.
You have to take a quiz to get in.
http://www.mathcamp.org/prospectiveapplicants/quiz/index.php#html
At that age I remember having a great time at summer computer camp in Vermont (2 weeks sleep away) in the early/mid 80's. I had the best time doing the non-computer things (like sailing on Lake Champlain), but I always did as many computer related activities/classes as I could. We got to use the newest Commodore CBM with Pascal! As an advanced class I also learned Fortran on the big IBM (System/34 I think). I don't use the old programming languages any more, but I'm still happy to take out a sail boat!
If you're going to visit the USA I think you should focus on non-computer activities. Like visiting the great national parks, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and a hundred others that are unique to America. Spend time programming nearer to home. You can always play with a computer in a windowless closet anywhere!
Just getting out of your hometown, seeing different part of the world, learning what college is like is a great experience. And you may meet nice people too. I did this a couple of summers and found it very rewarding.
You might look into 'Operation Catapult' http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult/program.htm for a future summer. It is for students between junior and senior year of high school, and they are selective about who attends (the session I was there had 100 students and there were only two sessions in the summer).
I had an absolute blast at it and it is what drove me to major in mechanical engineering.
I got my first real PC,
so we had a LAN and we tried real hard,
we played games to my eyeballs bled
Beebop was a noob and quit,
TJ Wootie got a girlfriend,
those were the best times of my life,
it was the summer LAN of 69
My honest advice, is to get a fucking life. Seriously, get away from the computer this whole summer and meet new people, socialise, have some fun, do some normal teenage things, drink beer, get laid, go travelling, teach English, whatever. Just stay away from the fucking computer and other geeks and nerds. In twenty years' time, you'll either thank me for this, or regret the day you signed up for summer camp 2012.
When I was 14, the only kind of camp I was interested in was one with hot girls. That isn't going to be a tech camp...
If you end up wanting to go to school here (they give a LOT of financial aid for exchange students), these camps are an easy foot in the door.
I attended the iD tech camp at the University of Minnesota when I was like 10 or 11. It was one of the funnest camps I've ever been to and really sparked my interest in computers and science. I'd recommend them because the iD program is nationwide and all their camps are really fun.
If you have an interest in game development, ProjectFUN at DigiPen, maybe?
https://projectfun.digipen.edu/
Beats me, how this is supposed to be better than some sort of "Jesus camp." Leave people to make up their own mind instead of creating an environment where people are basically tought to feel superior because they believe in some things while not believing in other things. Children (and most young adults) should be kept away from any sort of organized philosophy.
For Juniors (about to be Seniors) Rose-Hulman has a wonderful 3 week summer program called Operation Catapult.
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult/
I did this program had a blast and now attend the school.
Camp Watonka.
http://www.watonka.com/cgi-local/wpage
I am making the assumption that you're male (which I realize may be incorrect); the camp is boys-only. It's a neat place with a very particular subculture. I spent 4 summers there when I was a little younger;. there were the best summers of my teenage life. They are very welcoming of teens from other countries (my last year there we had a guy, Eisa, straight off the plane from Japan. He spoke little English. We spoke zero Japanese. We made it work because that's the kind of kids that are there). It's a family run operation; the Wackers (no jokes; that really is the family name!) are damned nice people. The food is pretty good by camp standards; the instructors and counselors are generally excellent.
Do give it a look. It might be just the mix of things you're looking for.
Chris Knight is my hero.
When I was your age I was in a similar boat. I went to the Hillsdale Science Camp for two or three summers -- I loved it, and can speak very highly for it. Definitely worth checking out!
This is the 21st century. "Computer camp" means getting involved in an open source project from the comfort of your basement.
If you want to come to summer camp in the U.S., by all means do it. You'll have a blast! But if you find aspiring young programmers in camp, it'll be sheer coincidence. Camp isn't where young programmers go to aspire.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Sandusky's judge recommends The Second Mile.
I come here for the love
http://game.unf.dk/index-en.php?language=en
This camp is held every year. Did it 5 years ago - not too shabby.
The premise; create a game from scratch in 3 days, in teams of 5. Really fun.
- Witticism is an epitaph on the death of a feeling
Seriously. Work for an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) this summer.
Better yet, if you're really adventurous (since you're going to be 15), get an internship at CRS4 - a really neat place in Sardinia (Sardegna) about 25 miles from Cagliari. Sardegna is an incredibly beautiful place (I lived there for a few years, but up north in Sassari.)
http://www.crs4.it/
There are probably exchange parents in the area you could stay with.
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It's called Operation Catapult. You can choose what to specialize in for your project.
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult/program.htm
In the US we have a concept called "community colleges". They're often more community oriented than a large university and offer many two-year degree programs. Anyway, community college classes can be easier than university classes. I'm not sure if there's something like that in your country, but how about enrolling in a college class in the summer? Most summer semesters are much shorter. You'll probably find the structure of the classes much more appealing than the school you're in right now. You won't find others your age in the classes, but perhaps that's not important to you. I wouldn't be intimidated by being in a college class - you likely have more experience than a lot of others in there.
----- obSig
Dunno, I thought it was pretty tame. There are folks who have nerdy interests and who pursue them because they enjoy them. Then there are the ones who memorize pi to 100 digits and wear capes. The former type may do quirky things if they happen to enjoy doing them. The latter do quirky things for the sake of being quirky because their identity is built around being the "quirky outsider". It's irritating.
Yep a bully. So the ones who do something useful or that you approve of are, "folks who have nerdy interests and who pursue them because they enjoy them," and the ones who aren't are just doing it, "for the sake of being quirky because their identity is built around [it]."
Don't you get it. You're bullying them because you don't accept that they're DIFFERENT than you. Yes there's some overlap in nerd types, so the second type may have associated with your friends, or maybe they ostracized you because you never accepted them for who they were. Either way, that you don't like them is something for you to get over, not them.
I used to work at the Institute for Quantum Computing (http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca) in Waterloo, ON, Canada.
They offer a summer program called QCSYS for deserving high school students. You should check it out: http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca/conferences/qcsys2012
Back in the 80s, I attended National Computer Camp (please don't hold the web design against them) where I got my first real taste of coding. My daughter attended last summer and it is still an amazing environment run by its founder, Dr. Zabinski. Of course, they continue to update lessons to keep up with modern technology. They cater to all levels of programming so if that's your thing, you will definitely not be bored. There's a lot of time given to creative computing and gaming. They're pretty flexible about supporting campers various areas of interest. The food is good and there's a lot of freedom.
The only downside is that I'd say that you're probably on the older side of their campers. The mean age is probably about 12 with the majority between 11 to 13. But I know from first hand experience that they've had non-US campers before.
Take a white water kayaking course, and figure out what physics is for.
Nobody under the age of 25 should spend their 'recreational time' doing something to purposely advance their careers or anything so stupidly dull. Secondly, you will learn more by doing something real than hiding in a nerd lounge.
Perhaps most importantly, young people should seek out experiences that cause extreme emotional sensations as a way to build up the emotional muscle they need for real life. Thrill seeking, adventure, or if they aren't available, drugs are all good candidates. Wanking in a room of proto-dufuses is just another kick in the crotch that hasn't landed yet.
There are a lot of summer math programs for high school students. I know that Canada/USA mathcamp (www.mathcamp.org) accepts international students (I've been a student and councilor there for a number of years). Other options include Promys (number theory focused; www.promys.org), Ross (number theory focused; www.math.osu.edu/ross/), Sumac (math.stanford.edu/sumac/), HCSSiM (www.hcssim.org/). I'm not sure whether all of them accept international students; you should check their websites.
http://www.hackerspaces.org
It's a stretch, since:
A) Most don't offer a summer camp ; )
B) Not all are open to those under 18
C) They don't provide you with any sort of curriculum. You create everything.
I couldn't imagine a more awesome place to be (Okay, maybe Space Camp) at the age.
I disagree. Camps are a about a lot more than just learning material - there is a huge social interaction component that goes along with them that you're just not going to get on a summer job. And frankly, the social skills are the more important aspect of the program than the academic material for many of the participants (myself having been one of them.)
I strongly recommend:
http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/explorations.php
Summer Youth Programs at Michigan Tech University. I suppose it's been 16 years since I've been, but they were excellent then and a quick perusal of their site leads me to believe they are excellent now, especially if you're interested in Engineering.
There are just not many opportunities for High School students to get exposure to real engineering, but this program definitely offers them.
Oh, and there are girls there.
Anyway, I went 2 or 3 summers and always had a great time. It's not just tech class stuff, there's a strong social program associated with it as well.
Great for those of you who are in HS, and those of you who now have HS-aged children yourselves. I'm honestly not aware of another program in the US like it.
I also did the Illinois Math and Science Academy program as an incoming freshmen or sophomore (it's been a while), but their program focuses more on straight math/science and not so much on practical engineering application, so I definitely preferred Tech. Then again, I don't remember much from the IMSA camp other than the girls and the pinball machine (much time spent on both, although probably more on the pinball machine) so take that as you will. Depending on your age, you could do both; IMSA as an incoming Freshman and Michigan Tech after that.
One other difference is the IMSA program was loaded with a lot more math/science nerds (I recognized a lot of people at IMSA from math competitions), while Tech had a more well-rounded group of people and programs (a lot of participants are Tech alum who just think it's a good idea to get their kids exposed to engineering), so I also liked Tech as an opportunity to work on social skills with non-nerds in a low-pressure environment (nobody knows you when you start and you're leaving in a week or two, so no permanent damage) - and I needed the practice.
Oh, one more I did:
http://engage.illinois.edu/entry/5785
Now called "Exploring Your Options", back in my day it was S.I.T.E., student introduction to engineering. I was pretty sure at that point I was going to Illinois though (summer prior to senior year) so it was double-helpful for me in just learning the engineering department and campus, and a lot of the people I met in the camp ended up attending Illinois as well so it was a leg up on meeting people. I'd say this is a good program if you're a Senior and did the others, but if I was picking ONE, I'd still probably go with Michigan Tech. IMSA vs. UofI will just depend on age. I think the UofI program would have been less interesting if I were not already sure I were goingto UofI.
Caveat: I was in high school 16-20 years ago, so my info is a bit dated. :)
paintball
Just to let you in on a little secret, all engineering and physics classes are math classes. Almost every single one....only harder in most regards. On the plus side, you will really be challenging yourself on a daily basis unlike your friends in liberal arts classes who will take long naps everyday and have coursework that is easier than most average high schools. They will also whine that they should have the same starting salary as you whenever you spend hours and hours studying, doing homework, doing projects, etc. (Sorry for the rant). On the whole engineers get fascinating jobs with good pay and there is a huge demand for them all over industry and research. Physics is a little more competitive with less demand. I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but thought you should know.
If you do electrical engineering you will have several programming classes so your knowledge of coding will definitely pay off! Good Luck!
Check out Michigan Tech. Their summer camp for computer programming, has several different sections to choose from. Coding, Game Development, Graphics. I think you should at least consider looking into the youth program.
My two boys went to ID Tech Camp when they were younger. They enjoyed the video and game programming/multimedia camps but did not get to the full up programming. The Robotics camps were not well rated by other kids word of mouth - they had one bot for like 6 kids so only a couple got to actually do hands on. My nephew has been going to Explo camp for several years and enjoying it tremendously. http://www.explo.org/
You, Sir, have won the thread!
If you think you can cut it, try SSP. It's a heavy-duty course on astrophysics and mathematics with some applied programming. If you plan to apply to a top tech school like MIT, Caltech, or Harvey Mudd (the vast majority of the alumni when I attended went on to those schools), it's a pretty representative of what you can expect in terms of class/study/sleep schedule (meaning very little sleep). The material is first or second year college level, and (assuming they haven't changed the program) goes very in-depth into a specific problem - calculating orbits of asteroids based on observational data. You do everything, collecting the data, to deriving how to calculate the orbit, to crunching the numbers. Quite a departure from all the textbook idealized stuff you're probably used to from high school coursework.
Firstly, well done for looking to do something different for your summer holidays.
Most of my friends were either looking to get laid or paid, very few had the idea to do something else.
1. Universities often run (or at least know about and can point you towards) such summer camps. Worth contacting a few of the more well known ones. ,etc. on Twitter/G+/Slashdot - maybe reach out to them, ask if they run anything like this (or would be willing to do so?)
2. There are plenty of people from companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, IBM
3. Some of the other posters here have already posted links to direct camps and courses.
Good luck and enjoy the summer!
http://www.emrtc.nmt.edu/explosivescamp/gallery.php
Explosives Camp - its a blast...
Buy an interrail ticket, tour Europe. You'll gain far more than from a summer camp.
Take a laptop, you can still program..
There are TONS of community colleges through out the United States. Most of them offer some sort of education enrichment courses that pretty much mirror what you are asking for. When I was a kid, my local community college (Rock Valley Community College), offered a program called Whiz Kids (this program is still run, but I believe under a different marketing name). I took classes on computer programming, robotics, electronics, and rocketry. These were classes that were designed for junior-college students, but without the exams or book work (all hands-on and labs). Both local community colleges in the area where I live now offer similar programs under the "community education" monkier.
Many larger universities offer program geared towards high-school students during the summer as well. An earlier post mentions the University of Michigan. I know that Michigan State's CS and Telecommunications programs both offer really cool classes during the summers as well.
Most of these places will start to advertise them in the early spring. You can probably do some calling of places you wish to target first to see if they have any info they would be willing to share before the marketing material comes out.
You need to google it. It's aviation oriented, but there are workshops where you get to build things too using a variety of tools and materials. My local EAA chapter gets enough YE points to sponsor a couple kids each year and we have them come back to give a report in the fall. Every one of them has had an awesome time.
Check out Buck's Rock Camp: www.bucksrockcamp.com
More of a "creative arts" camp, than a C.S./math/physics camp, but it may be nice to try something different!
is a great option for general sciences. http://www.ucop.edu/cosmos/ Go learn something you don't know from the university of california faculty!
I went through Summer Discovery Camps, which operates through multiple colleges over 6-8 weeks during the summer. The Camp costs includes summer tuition at a well known American University (I went to UCLA). You receive college credit in a course of your choice, and then they have focused classes (non credit) for things that students are interested in.
It was absolutely great for me to experience a university I wanted to go to, it also got me a grade at that university for when I applied. In addition, I had experienced dorm life, eaten in cafeterias, and they did lots of sightseeing on the weekends. When I actually moved to LA to go to UCLA, I had a huge adjustment advantage.
You will discover that the camp is filled with, well youth. So kids will skip classes, and little things will happen along the way. The camp is controlling to handle some of those issues, but if you are focused on learning and not particularly worried about being well watched for 6 weeks It is definitely worth it. You do have to go on all their weekend plans which can range from fun to ridiculously boring. In addition you definitely cant go out on your own outside a strict boundary area...at UCLA we were allowed to hang out in Westwood by ourselves, but if we were caught outside the area you were kicked out of the program. (two or three individuals were). I don't think the experience was any worse than other camps I attended.
The Link is http://www.summerdiscovery.com/.
Good luck!
I don't know about what's available in the U.S., but perhaps going to Canada would be an alternative? Vancouver is a very nice city, and there's Science AL!VE program at Simon Fraser University, run by student volunteers. I've heard some praises of it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
"Understanding the Science for Tomorrow: Myth and Reality"
Taught By Professor Jeffrey C. Grossman, Ph.D.,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(recently released by TheGreatCourses.com)
Among other topics, Grossman very carefully goes through
each of the well-known energy sources' advantages and dis-
advantages (from a Scientific (not political) point of view).
These alone might give tech campers food for thought on
what's worth creating some tech for / around / etc.
Disclaimer: I have NO financial interest in the publishers or the course's teacher, et al.
To readers in Australia: TheGreatCourses.com.au -doesn't- .com counterpart
seem to offer this course; get info
from their
The experience is difference between the smaller camps and the flagship camps such as Stanford. I taught at a smaller camp where there were only 4-6 programmers a week, and the vast majority of them were 11-13 and it was their first time programming. For the older kids, it mostly ended up being me suggesting cool things for them to teach themselves and giving them my college textbooks to flip through, but mostly having my time sucked up by working with the younger kids. At a larger camp there would be more instruction for advanced programmers, and more importantly, other advanced programmers to team up and work on projects with. Also there tends to be more older kids at the bigger universities, while at smaller camps a lot of the break time activities tend to be geared towards the younger kids.
Officially when I worked there the choices for the programming classes were C++ or Java, but I pretty much forced my students into using Java. The reason was because they wanted the kids to use specific IDEs, and while I'm pretty decent with Eclipse, I know nothing about Visual Studio, and even had to ask my 12 year old campers how to do some pretty basic stuff in Windows XP (all of the computers there used windows, and I didn't get a chance to see how they were set up until the day before camp starded).
To avoid sounding too negative though, I should point out that iD tech actually does a really good job at running their company and making sure the kids are safe and taken care of. The training they gave for health and safety and administering medications was very thorough. Even the first-time instructors were very professional, a bit older, and much more mature than camp counselors other places I've worked. Also the basic staff training covered how to handle kids with problems like adhd and aspergers, and we worked especially hard to make sure kids had fun with the social experience (teaching them to play poker, playing pool and ping pong in the student union, etc). Basically it's a safe and comfortable experience especially for pre-teens with social difficulties, but there are other camps that cater better to older teens.
This is only for those entering their senior year, but I learned a lot at http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult (about a billion years ago).
Can't seem to find a link to a similar program now, but around middle school age my father sent me on a 2-week camp trip. In retrospect, it was pretty amazing... We traced our way down the Patuxent River watershed. We mucked around in the swamps pretending we were muskrats, smearing detritus on our faces. We canoed to campsites, jumping out of them and sheltering below the reeds as a freak thunderstorm blew through. We took two showers the entire time, one of them lasting less than 2 minutes. We rode a skipjack to Tangier Island, and shucked oysters which used to cover the bay and filter all of the water every 4 days. We built shelters out of branches and pine needles. We were scattered out on an island and spent 3 hours of alone time just out of earshot of the next human being. We were blindfolded and led to a tree in the woods, which we later had to go find. We wrote stories about what it would be like to be a crab or a seagull. And yes, there were campfires and songs and jokes and girls and all of those other camp mainstays as well.
Good, memorable times. And yes, it was pretty educational too.
Seems I'm a bit late to the party, but my youngest is going through this process right now so I have lots of info.
I'm assuming that by "camp" you really mean "going to cool classes filled with lots of nerds and maybe even some cute girls." If that is the case, then you probably won't find any "camp" that does it. What you need is a summer program, likely run by a top 100 US college/university.
A large number of them offer high school programs during the summer. Some of them give you college credits (way cool!), while others don't. At 15yo, I think you should focus on finding a good program before considering whether credits are give. If you were older, I'd place a higher priority on the credits but you have time to get those.
All of these programs have competitive admission. That means you have to apply and be accepted. Many offer scholarships. Deadlines for them are in the next couple of months so you need to get a move on.
These programs widely vary in nature so be sure to do your research. Here are some examples that I happen to be familiar with (not recommending them, I can just describe them without researching them). Here is a comparison of two programs. Both provide on-campus housing with other high-school program students, and lots of evening and weekend social activities. The BU program is fairly typical while the Stanford one is rather unique. :-) They only offer about a dozen programs. I think this year they are offering several computer science ones (eg; AI) and all of them require some degree of programming skill. I think you spend most of your time with your classmates so if female company is important to you, you may want to contact the school to find out about the typical male-to-female ratios. While they may not be able to give you exact numbers, they will have good estimates as colleges carefully track these stats.
- Boston University: Wide array of subjects. You take regular classes with other BU summer students (eg: you could be the only high school student in a class of 40 students). Must take ~8 credits (2 classes) for the ~6-week program.
- Stanford University: Has a program similar to BU's but also offers a series of 2-week, non-credit program. You take one class and are given a written appraisal when done. If the appraisal is good, it can be used for college admissions. The class has about 15~40 students, all in the same program. You live in a small dorm that only houses your classmates and your class's teaching assistants. Basically, you think about one subject, 24x7, for the two weeks. There's a formal lecture in the morning, taught by a full faculty member and then the afternoon is small groups and individual work done in your dorm (remember your teaching assistants are living with in your dorm). Looks like a wonderful 2-week geekfest. I wish they took people my age
Something like 90% of the top 100 universities have programs like BU's. My son went to BU last year and simply loved it. The Stanford program is the only one of its kind that I am aware of.
All of these programs really like taking non-American students as they like to brag about how many countries were represented in their summer program for the previous year. While you still need to apply to these programs, being non-American will likely give you a bit of a boost.
Hope this helps,
Neil
PS: You can use http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities for the list of best colleges. I'm not sure it's the best list, but it is easy to find and good enough to point you at the summer programs.
Neil Smithline http://www.neilsmithline.com