Summer Springboard Middle School Electrical Engineering

Class runs from 9am to noon, Monday to Friday, which makes five 3-hour sessions, and Wednesday afternoon is set aside for extra academic time that may include an excursion or a guest speaker. Check-out is at 2:30pm on Friday.

The rest of the day follows Summer Springboard's typical Georgetown schedule. Residential students have breakfast at 8am, and after lunch at noon there's either an academic excursion or a recreational activity at 1:30pm, followed by an Academic Skills Lab at 3:30pm, where students work on their final projects. Free time starts at 5pm. Commuters leave before dinner, while residential students eat together and then join a supervised evening activity such as trivia or karaoke at 7pm.

The course's two off-campus trips go to the Smithsonian and a robotics laboratory, and the week finishes with students showing the working electronic project they've built.

The course is led by Ekundayo Shittu, PhD, a professor in George Washington University's Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, where he directs the Systems Modeling Laboratory for Economic Decisions. He has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Ilorin and a PhD in industrial engineering and operations research from UMass Amherst. He also co-edited a book on renewable energy, and he's a KEEN Fellow who has led summer spreadsheet modeling workshops for high school students.

Summer Springboard doesn't publish a class size or staff ratio for this course.

Students who complete the week get a certificate of completion and a letter of recommendation from their professor, and they'll have built and presented a working electronic project. Summer Springboard says both the certificate and the letter are earned rather than automatic, so it can withhold them for a Code of Conduct breach or for not taking part.

The course carries no college credit, and it isn't a Georgetown University qualification. The letter comes from a one-week course, so treat it as a record of what the student did rather than an academic credential.

Summer Springboard's middle school courses are for students who have finished 6th grade by the start date, up to those completing 8th grade, and applicants need a 3.0 GPA or the local equivalent. No electronics experience is needed. International students show their English through a telephone interview or a minimum test score.

The application includes short-answer essay questions and signed agreement forms, and the deposit and application fee are paid when you submit it. Applications are reviewed against Summer Springboard's Essential Eligibility Criteria, which cover things like managing your own medication and walking more than a mile, and Summer Springboard may ask for medical documentation. A decision comes within 5 to 7 business days. Summer Springboard doesn't publish an acceptance rate, and places on each course go first come, first served, so when a course or session is full you're put on a waitlist.

A residential place costs $2,998 and a commuter place $1,598. Every student on this course also pays a mandatory $250 course supplement and an application fee starting at $99, which brings the total to $3,347 residential or $1,947 commuter at the lowest application fee. Summer Springboard says these prices apply to applications made by 30 November 2026 and that tuition rises on 1 December 2026, but it hasn't published the higher figure.

Residential tuition covers all meals, a shared dorm room, the course, excursions and weekend trips. Commuter tuition covers lunch, the course and excursions on weekdays from 9am to 5pm, and weekend excursions cost $125 a day extra. The application fee rises to $149 after 21 February 2027 and to $199 after 18 April 2027, and it's never refunded. You pay a $600 deposit when you apply, and the rest is paid in installments, with the final payment due by 10 May 2027. Flights aren't included, and the airport shuttle costs $95 each way.

If you cancel before 1 March 2027, you get all tuition back apart from the application fee. From 2 March to 1 April, tuition is still refunded but the deposit and application fee aren't. After that, the refund drops to 75% of tuition from 2 April and 25% after 1 May, again minus the deposit and fee, and after 1 June nothing is refunded.

Need-based scholarships can cover up to 30% of residential tuition or 60% of commuter tuition. You apply with your family's tax information, and the award can't be used toward the deposit or application fee.

Residential students live in a Georgetown residence hall with 24-hour security and key-card entry, and Summer Springboard staff live on the same floor. Rooms are air-conditioned doubles with one roommate, and floors are separated by gender. Students are back in the dorm by 8:30pm with a mentor check-in at 9:30pm, and the middle school program has its own staff and housing, separate from the high school program.

Staff supervise classes and excursions, and Summer Springboard says all program staff go through background checks and training. A student who is sick or injured is taken by staff to the nearest medical facility and parents are contacted, but the family pays any medical costs. Before the program every family completes a medical form and shows proof of health insurance.