About

SMASH Academy is a free, residential STEM program with a structure unlike virtually anything else in the pre-college landscape: scholars commit to three consecutive summers of programming, beginning after their 9th or 10th grade year and continuing through high school. Founded in 2004 at UC Berkeley under the Level Playing Field Institute, SMASH operates today at approximately ten university campuses nationwide — including UC Berkeley, Morehouse College, Spelman College, the University of Michigan, and Northeastern University — and runs each summer for three to four weeks. The 2026 residential program runs July 11–31. Everything is free: tuition, housing, and meals are fully covered.

SMASH's mission is explicit and structural: the program was created to build a pipeline of underrepresented students of color, first-generation college students, and low-income students into STEM fields and careers. Applicants must be current 9th or 10th graders with a minimum 3.0 GPA and strong math skills, and must attend a public high school or a private school on scholarship. Applications typically open in fall and close around April 1 of the following year.

The curriculum centers on computer science, AI, and machine learning, alongside STEM workshops, College Success coursework, and electives — all grounded in project-based, design-thinking frameworks that ask scholars to identify problems in their own communities and build STEM-based solutions. The residential experience on a university campus is supplemented throughout the academic year by monthly workshops and Saturday CS sessions, meaning SMASH is a year-round commitment, not just a summer one. Scholars build mentorship relationships with CS and STEM professionals who reflect their own backgrounds — a deliberate design choice that distinguishes SMASH from programs where diversity is a recruitment goal rather than a structural feature.

The outcomes data is among the strongest of any pre-college STEM program in the country: 100% of SMASH alumni have graduated high school and enrolled in college, 94% at four-year universities, and 74% declared a STEM major as college freshmen — more than three times the national average. Alumni attend UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, and Penn, among others. For an eligible student willing to make a three-year commitment, SMASH is one of the most consequential free STEM opportunities available anywhere in the country.