AI & Machine Learning Programs & Competitions for High School Students

AI programs for high schoolers have exploded: research mentorships, university summer courses, and national challenges in machine learning and data ethics.

Colleges increasingly expect applicants claiming an AI interest to show real work — a trained model, a research poster, a competition entry. Start with these.

37 verified programs match this page; 21 of the featured listings are completely free; 13 can be done online.

Featured programs

Browse 30+ curated programs for high school students:

• Presidential AI Challenge — White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: National K-12 AI competition where students build real-world AI solutions for community challenges, with finals at the White House.
• Kaggle Data Science Competitions — Kaggle/Google: Join exciting online data science competitions for high school students! Build Python coding skills, explore AI, and strengthen your college applicati
• MIT Global AI Hackathon — MIT RAISE & App Inventor Foundation: Join a free virtual AI hackathon for high schoolers to develop apps tackling global challenges. Gain hands-on STEM experience and boost your college a
• Microsoft AI for Good Challenge — Microsoft: Empower global impact by joining this free AI competition for high schoolers. Develop machine learning skills, boost college applications, and tackle
• International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) — IOAI Foundation: Compete in the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence to enhance AI and machine learning skills, boost college applications, and gain hands
• World Artificial Intelligence Competition for Youth (WAICY) — Ready AI: Join a global AI competition for grades 6-12 to solve real-world problems using artificial intelligence. Build STEM skills, boost college applications
• Stanford AI4ALL — Stanford University: Discover a free summer program empowering high school juniors with hands-on AI experience, skill-building for college applications, and diversity-focu
• The Knowledge Society — TKS: Join a 10-month online STEM accelerator for high schoolers in grades 9-11. Build AI, biotech, and quantum computing projects to boost college apps and
• Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes — Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies: Three-week academic intensives across STEM, humanities, and arts.
• AI4ALL Summer Program — AI4ALL: Free AI education for underrepresented groups. Programs at Stanford, CMU, etc.
• Intel oneAPI Developer Challenge — Intel Corporation: Global coding challenge using Intel's oneAPI toolkit; cash prizes
• MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) — MIT Lincoln Laboratory & MIT School of Engineering: Rigorous 4-week STEM program. Students work on real engineering challenges in robotics, AI, cybersecurity. Free for selected students.
• Horizon Academic AI Essay Prize — Horizon Academic: Compete in a selective AI essay competition for high school students. Build research and writing skills, boost college applications, and explore cutti
• SECME AI Contest (High School) — SECME: Explore AI and machine learning in this free high school competition. Build programming skills, analyze energy data, and boost your college applicatio
• AIcrowd Challenges — AIcrowd: Tackle real-world challenges in AI and data science through free virtual competitions for high schoolers. Boost STEM skills, enhance college apps, and
• NWEA Data Science for Everyone Competition — NWEA: Join a free virtual data science competition for high school students to predict student performance using real-world education data. Build skills for
• MIT Battlecode — MIT: Develop coding, AI, and problem-solving skills in this free hybrid competition for high school students. Boost college applications with hands-on prog
• Technovation Girls — Technovation: Empower your future through this global competition for grades 6-12. Build apps, solve real-world problems with AI, and gain hands-on STEM and leaders
• Princeton AI4ALL — Princeton University: Transform your summer with a free AI program for high schoolers. Build Python, machine learning, and ethics skills while boosting college applications
• SHINE: Summer High School Intensive in Next-Generation Engineering — USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Transform your future with a summer high school research program at USC Viterbi. Gain hands-on engineering experience in AI, biomedical, and next-gen
• AIMI Summer Research Internship — Stanford Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine & Imaging: Two-week fully virtual Stanford AIMI internship where high schoolers do mentored, small-team AI-in-healthcare research with lectures from Stanford exp
• AIMI Summer Health AI Bootcamp — Stanford Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Imaging (AIMI): Two-week fully virtual bootcamp from Stanford's AIMI center introducing US high schoolers to machine learning in healthcare, with live lectures, codin
• Veritas AI x Sports Deep Dive — Veritas AI + Sports: Specialized AI program combining artificial intelligence with sports analytics for high school students.
• Veritas AI Program — Veritas AI: AI and machine learning program for high school students in grades 9-12 with project-based learning.
• Summer Match Me Pre-College Program — Summer Match Me: Pre-college program at Summer Match Me for high school students focusing on ai website for summer program matching.
• UT Computer Science Summer Academies — UT Austin Department of Computer Science: One-week residential summer academies at UT Austin for students entering grades 10-12, with tracks in game development, iOS apps, machine learning, ro
• Saturday Data Science Academy — UNC Charlotte Center for STEM Education: Semester-long academy at UNC Charlotte where 25 high school students spend six Saturdays (plus two virtual evenings) on data analysis, visualization,
• Computer Science and Informatics Summer Research Experience (CSIRE) — Stony Brook University: Six-week summer research program (June 29-August 7, 2026) placing ~50 high school students in Stony Brook University labs for mentored projects in mac
• AI & Health Summer High School Bootcamp — MIT Jameel Clinic: One-week bootcamp on MIT's campus (July 13-17, 2026) where incoming sophomores-seniors learn machine learning, Python, clinical AI, and drug discovery
• Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp — Mark Cuban Foundation: Free 20-hour introduction to artificial intelligence for high school students, held on Saturdays each fall at host companies in 30+ US cities. No comp

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