About

The Berkeley Summer Computer Science Academy is a two-week, fully residential introductory computer science program at UC Berkeley, designed specifically for high school students with little to no prior coding experience. The curriculum is built directly on CS10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing — Berkeley's actual introductory CS course for undergraduates — developed by Teaching Professor Dan Garcia, a national leader in the CS for All movement and recipient of multiple teaching and equity awards. Day-to-day instruction is provided by experienced BJC teachers. The program does not award academic credit; it is structured as an intensive immersion rather than a course-bearing academic experience.

Students spend two weeks working in Snap!, a visual blocks-based programming language, progressing from foundational concepts — abstraction, boolean logic, algorithms, recursion — to a self-directed coding project presented at a closing Code Celebration attended by Berkeley CS faculty. New for 2026, the curriculum adds an AI module covering supervised machine learning, reinforcement learning, generative AI, and AI ethics. All participants live in Bowles Hall, a historic Berkeley residence hall, under supervision of undergraduate resident assistant mentors. Extracurricular programming includes college preparation workshops, campus exploration activities, and at least one program-related excursion.

For students at the beginning of their CS journey who want structured, campus-based immersion rather than self-directed online learning, the Berkeley Summer Computer Science Academy offers a direct encounter with Berkeley's undergraduate CS pedagogy in a supervised residential environment. It is the right program for a student who wants to test whether computer science is a serious interest before committing to a credit-bearing course — not for students who already have substantive coding experience.