Summer Springboard: Fundamentals of Engineering at UC Berkeley
A two-week immersive pre-college program held on the UC Berkeley campus where high schoolers tackle hands-on mechanical, structural, civil, and biomedical engineering design challenges, including building a prosthetic limb and a scale-model building to code and budget, plus tours of Tesla Fremont Factory and Google HQ.
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Santa Clara University Summer Engineering Seminar (SES)
A free, five-day residential program at Santa Clara University's School of Engineering for current high school sophomores and juniors, with priority for first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students, featuring workshops in bioengineering, civil/sustainable/environmental engineering, computer engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering.
COSMOS UC Davis - Cluster: Introduction to Engineering Mechanics
A residential four-week COSMOS cluster at UC Davis (5:1 student-to-faculty ratio) that introduces students to engineering mechanics through hands-on labs, field activities, and lectures taught by UC faculty researchers.
GetSET (SWE Santa Clara Valley)
A four-year outreach program of the Santa Clara Valley Society of Women Engineers in which 25 incoming high school freshmen are selected annually to attend an intensive week-long summer program with over 50 hands-on engineering and science workshops led by volunteer women engineers, returning each summer through senior year.
California MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement)
A year-round college and career prep program, headquartered in Oakland since its 1970 founding at Oakland Technical High School, that serves over 350 middle and high schools statewide with engineering-focused enrichment activities that feed into MESA's community college and university tracks and the National Engineering Design Competition.
NSLC Engineering Summer Program
The National Student Leadership Conference's Engineering program is a residential pre-college experience (offered at UC Berkeley among other U.S. campuses) where high schoolers explore civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering through hands-on projects such as drone design, aquatic robotics, and wind turbines.
ASHRAE High School Design Competition
A free, international virtual competition in which teams of 1-5 students ages 13-18 use SketchUp to design the HVAC system for an assigned building (2026: a fitness center in Cairo, Egypt), addressing heating/cooling loads, equipment selection, ductwork, and indoor air quality, judged by ASHRAE professionals for cash prizes.