About

SNP-REACH is a two-week summer program run by the Stanford Neurodiversity Project within Stanford's School of Medicine, focused on neurodiversity education, advocacy, and applied design thinking. It is offered in two sequential cohorts: a hybrid format in early July and a fully in-person format in late July, each enrolling approximately 50 students. The program is open to all high school students regardless of prior exposure to neurodiversity, and explicitly welcomes both students with personal experience of neurodivergence and those approaching the subject for the first time.

The application requires short-answer responses to questions about interest in neurodiversity and learning goals, and is reviewed on a rolling basis ahead of the April 16 deadline. Approximately 140 students are selected from around 400 applicants annually — an acceptance rate of roughly 35% — making this a moderately competitive program whose selection criteria center on demonstrated interest and fit rather than academic achievement. No transcript or GPA threshold is specified. Scholarships covering a portion of the program fee are available to approximately 10–20% of admitted students.

The curriculum draws on Stanford School of Medicine faculty, researchers, clinicians, and neurodivergent student advocates, who deliver lectures and seminars on topics including the strengths-based model of neurodiversity, universal design for learning, and current research and clinical practice in the field. The academic component is organized around design thinking: students work in small groups to develop neurodiversity advocacy projects of their own choosing, with the expectation that most participants will continue those projects in their home schools and communities after the program ends. Past projects have included published children's books, teacher and parent education videos, and school-based awareness campaigns.

SNP-REACH occupies a genuinely unusual niche — there is no comparable program at this subject matter intersection at a peer institution — and for students with a serious interest in neurodiversity, disability advocacy, or the intersection of medicine and social change, it offers access to Stanford's clinical and research infrastructure that would otherwise be unavailable to high schoolers. It is not a research internship and carries limited conventional admissions weight, but for the right student it represents an ideal convergence of subject matter, institutional setting, and peer community.