So I have wanted to do summer research for a while now, but I’m having trouble finding programs for it. I was wondering if anyone knew of any summer research programs specifically for astronomy or astrophysics?
COSMOS at UC Davis has an Astrophysics cluster:
https://cosmos.sf.ucdavis.edu/cluster-4-introduction-astrophysics
Okay thank you, that looks very interesting I will look into it.
Take a look at variety of NASA STEM programs
I can recommend the UCSB SRA program:
https://www.summer.ucsb.edu/programs/summer-research-academies/research-tracks
It is for 1st time high school researchers. My daughter did the astrophysics track and it was a great experience. I believe that it is a competitive admit, but not as competitive as SIP (below) or COSMOS (recommended above)–but I could be wrong about that.
Once you have a year of research experience you would be eligible for UCSC SIP:
https://sip.ucsc.edu/
And there is SSP, which is insanely competitive to get into:
https://summerscience.org/
But if you do get in … you are set for college. This program is co-sponsored by Cal Tech, MIT and Harvey Mudd. I am pretty sure it is easrier to get into those colleges than this summer program (which offers great financial aid).
1 Like
delete
Both of my kids attended different astrophysics sections of SSP (mentioned above) a few years ago; great program that I would highly recommend. This past summer, SSP offered Astrophysics at three sites: UNC Chapel Hill, Univesity of Colorado Boulder, and New Mexico State.
Yale also offers a program somewhat similar to SSP founded by a former SSP instructor called YSPA (more info here: https://yspa.yale.edu/).
Both programs include an observational astronomy component.
Both are also highly selective so you should definitely have backup plans for the summer.