Summer Springboard Artificial Intelligence: A Responsible Approach

Class runs from 9am to noon at Æthos in the Cambridge Innovation Center, just off the MIT campus. There are nine of these three-hour sessions, Monday to Friday in week one and Monday to Thursday in week two. Session 2 starts on Monday 5 July 2027 because of the holiday, so its first week of classes runs Tuesday to Friday and the second runs Monday to Friday.

Summer Springboard's sample day for its Cambridge campus starts with breakfast at 8am. After class and lunch at noon, 1:30pm brings either a recreational outing or a course excursion, and 3pm brings a College Readiness Workshop or the True You personal development sessions. Commuters leave at 5pm, while residential students have dinner at 6pm, clubs from 7pm and dorm checks at 10:30pm. Trips Summer Springboard lists for the campus include a Boston Duck Boat tour, the Freedom Trail, guided tours of MIT and Harvard, and Six Flags New England. It calls this schedule a sample that can vary. You'll also need to bring a laptop for the course.

Two co-founders of Aikreate, an education company that teaches students about AI, lead the course. Mireia Torello, its CEO, holds a PhD in Earth Sciences and an Executive MBA from IESE Business School. She was named a 2025 Leading Woman in AI at the ASU+GSV Summit and was selected for MIT's Venture Advancement Program. Marc Oliveras, who heads its curriculum, has a PhD in Economics, more than 20 years in STEM education and nine years leading AI literacy programs. He built KreatePrompt, Aikreate's own large language model, which lets students explore AI without writing code.

Summer Springboard adds advisors from the Æthos AI Education Consortium and says students get mentorship from professionals at institutions such as Harvard and MIT. It doesn't publish a class size for the course.

You leave with a completion certificate and a letter of recommendation from your instructor, along with the final project in which you apply what you've learned to a real-world problem. The certificate and letter are earned rather than automatic, and Summer Springboard can withhold them for a Code of Conduct breach or for not taking part.

There's no college credit, because Summer Springboard offers credit only on its Cal Poly and NYSID programs. The claim that the course gives you a competitive edge for college and internships is Summer Springboard's own.

The course is open to students from rising ninth graders through graduating seniors. You must have finished 8th grade by the start date and have a 3.0 GPA or your school's equivalent. International students prove their English in a phone interview or with a TOEFL score of 490 on paper or 60 on the iBT, a Cambridge PET with Distinction or FCE at grade C, or an SAT Reading and Writing score of 450.

The application includes short-answer essay questions and signed agreement forms, and Summer Springboard says you'll get a decision within 5 to 7 business days. It publishes no acceptance rate and fills courses first come, first served, so the real test is meeting the criteria and applying before your session fills. Applications are also reviewed against its Essential Eligibility Criteria, which expect students to manage their own care and medication, walk more than a mile and follow instructions in English. It isn't a therapeutic program, and students with some health conditions may need extra paperwork and a doctor's sign-off.

With the mandatory $250 course supplement and the application fee, which starts at $99, the residential option comes to at least $7,147 and the commuter option to at least $3,647. Residential tuition of $6,798 covers your dorm room, all meals, the course and every excursion, weekends included. Commuter tuition of $3,298 covers the course, lunch, excursions and weekday programming from 9am to 5pm, and weekend excursions cost $125 a day on top.

These are Summer Springboard's published prices, and it says tuition goes up on 1 December 2026 without yet giving the new figure. The application fee rises to $149 after 21 February 2027 and to $199 after 18 April 2027. You also pay a $600 deposit when you apply, and Summer Springboard doesn't say whether it counts toward tuition. Flights aren't included, the airport shuttle costs $95 each way, students must have health insurance, and any medical costs fall on the family.

Need-based scholarships cover up to 30% of residential tuition or 60% of commuter tuition, though not the deposit or application fee. If you cancel, Summer Springboard refunds on a sliding scale that depends on the date, from all tuition except the application fee before 1 March 2027 to nothing after 1 June 2027. An optional Tuition Protection Plan lets you cancel for any reason up to the start day, and it cost $699 under the terms Summer Springboard published for 2026.

Summer Springboard staff live on every dorm floor, and the campus director and other senior staff also live in the residence halls and are available 24 hours a day. The dorms are access-controlled with individual cards, MIT Security patrols the campus and residence halls around the clock, and students must be in their rooms after 10pm. Rooms are shared, floors are separated by gender and bathrooms are communal.

Staff supervise classes, field trips and excursions, but in free time students can move around within set campus boundaries in groups of three or more. All staff pass background checks and training. A student who falls ill is taken by staff to the nearest medical facility and parents are told. Students keep and take their own medication. Breaking the Code of Conduct can mean being sent home at the family's expense with no refund.