About

The Rutgers Pre-College Physical Therapy Summer Academy is one of the only programs of its kind in the United States — a credit-bearing, residential one-week immersion into the field of physical therapy offered at a major research university. Hosted on the Rutgers–New Brunswick campus in New Jersey, it runs in two identical weekly sessions: July 12–18 and July 26–August 1, 2026. Students move into on-campus dorms Sunday and check out the following Saturday. The program is open to current sophomores and juniors ages 16–18, both domestic and international, with English fluency required.

The week is organized around faculty lectures, guest speakers from across the PT profession, hands-on labs, and facility visits. The schedule is notably specific about what students encounter: Monday covers the foundations of kinesiology and preparation pathways for a PT career; Tuesday includes a gym tour and fitness class at the Werblin Center and a presentation from a current Rutgers Exercise Science student; Wednesday features a theraband challenge lab, a goniometer measurement lab, and back-to-back guest lectures from an outpatient physical therapist and a travel physical therapist; Thursday is a field trip to the Rutgers School of Health Professions in Newark to visit the doctoral PT program campus; and Friday includes a human cadaver anatomy lab followed by group project presentations and a certificate ceremony. Guest speakers across the week represent outpatient, acute care, pediatric, and travel PT settings — a career breadth that is deliberate and well-constructed for a student trying to understand what the profession actually looks like day to day.

Students earn 1.5 transferable college credits upon completion through Rutgers course 01:377:144 Foundations of Kinesiology and Health, as well as a Rutgers Pre-College Digital Badge. Tuition is $3,784 for New Jersey residents and $4,804 for out-of-state students — the difference reflects Rutgers' in-state vs. out-of-state credit rate. The base program fee of $2,899 covers residential housing, meals, and all programming; the credit and student fees are added on top. Need-based financial aid information is not detailed on the primary source. Admission is selective but the primary source does not publish acceptance rates or cohort sizes. The application requires a transcript, a letter of recommendation, an essay, and an online form.

The program explicitly frames itself as a pipeline to Rutgers' own 4+3 Doctor of Physical Therapy program — a direct DPT pathway that allows undergraduates to earn their bachelor's degree and DPT in seven combined years. For a student already pointed toward physical therapy, this is the program's sharpest value proposition: a week that simultaneously confirms the career direction, earns real college credit, includes a cadaver anatomy lab, and provides direct exposure to the graduate program they may one day apply to. For a student still exploring the health professions broadly, the same week offers a rigorous, professionally grounded introduction to a field that receives far less dedicated pre-college programming than medicine or nursing.