About

The Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) is a four-week, workshop-style STEM program hosted by MIT’s Beaver Works Center. It is designed for high-achieving high school students and focuses on hands-on courses like AI, robotics, hardware hacking, radar systems, wearable tech, and cyber-operations. The program emphasizes applied STEM skills over conventional coursework, with project-based labs and final challenge events. Although the exact number varies from year to year, BWSI generally runs more than a dozen simultaneous tracks each summer, from quantum software to humanitarian tech—making it one of the broadest STEM “design-challenge” programs available to U.S. high school students. Unlike most programs, Beaverworks offers both virtual and in-person programs.

BWSI does not publish admissions data but it is a competitive program with an acceptance rate that is likely about 20%, although this number fluctuates depending on the individual track. Eligible students must be physically residing and attending high school in the U.S. Residential housing is not provided and in-person students must arrange their own housing. Beaverworks is unique in its requirement that all applicants complete a mandatory prereq course, which functions as both a screening process and confirmation of academic ability in a specific field.

Over four weeks in July, students choose from MIT-designed courses that vary between in-person and virtual formats. Examples include Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing, Remote Sensing for Disaster Response, Embedded Security & Hardware Hacking, and Quantum Software. Each course consists of prerequisite online components, lectures, lab components (for in-person), hands-on coding or hardware exercises, and a final challenge or capstone project. All students engage in collaborative design and problem solving with peers, under guidance of MIT instructors. BWSI is one of the few high-quality STEM programs that allows students to engage with both software and hardware simultaneously.

While BWSI is not a fully residential, tuition-free lab research program, it offers strong admissions merit for students interested in tech, engineering, or computer science. The technical projects, capstone design work, hands-on hardware/software labs, and MIT affiliation give it weight, and in-person students especially should expect a rigorous and exciting summer.