Georgetown University 2-Week Summer Academies for high school students

Each Academy is a single, non-credit subject course taken for the whole two-week stay: students choose one Academy and stay with the same faculty and the same group throughout. Teaching mixes lectures, guest speakers from the relevant profession, guided discussion, group work and hands-on laboratory or practical exercises with off-site visits in Washington. The two-week format gives room for a full sequence of laboratory work in the science Academies — gene cloning and DNA analysis in biotechnology, crime scene and evidence exercises in forensic investigation — and for a project or case built up over the fortnight in the business, marketing and sports Academies. Academic programming runs from mid-morning to the evening on weekdays. Instruction is in English and no credit is awarded.

Residential tuition covers the Academy itself, a room in a Georgetown residence hall and 19 meals per week in the campus dining halls, together with the evening and weekend student activities programme and residential supervision. Georgetown also sells each Academy on a commuter basis, at a lower published rate, which covers the academic programme only and includes neither housing nor meals; commuter students may buy a meal plan separately from Georgetown Dining. A non-refundable application fee applies and is waived for applications received by the school's Early Bird Deadline. International students pay a health insurance fee. Spending money, books and any laboratory fees attached to particular courses are not included.

Residential students live in a Georgetown University residence hall on the main campus, with residential life staff on site and a curfew. Georgetown does not publish the room occupancy for its high school Academies — how many students share a room is not stated anywhere on the programme pages. The room type recorded on this card is therefore a technical placeholder required by our catalogue, not a statement about the accommodation; we will confirm the actual arrangement with the university before any booking. Commuter students live at home and travel in for the academic day.

Residential tuition includes 19 meals per week, eaten in Georgetown's campus dining halls alongside the university's own students. Commuter students are not covered for meals and can buy a meal plan directly from Georgetown Dining, chosen from the plans it offers. The neighbourhood immediately around campus has a wide range of places to eat, including vegetarian options.

Beyond the academic day, students join an organised programme of evening and weekend activities: film screenings on the lawn, campus social events, arts and music, athletics and college-readiness sessions. Because the campus sits in the middle of Washington, much of the programme happens off campus — museums, the monuments, the Capitol and other sites in the city, which double as teaching visits for several Academies. Participation in the evening programme is optional, and there is free time before curfew.

Academies are taught in Georgetown's own lecture rooms and laboratories on the main campus, the same spaces its undergraduates use. Medical and nursing students work in the O'Neill Family Foundation Clinical Simulation Center with a lifelike patient simulator. Residential students use the university residence halls and the campus dining halls, and the campus itself runs down to the Potomac, where the university's crews row.

The Academies are built to feel like a first taste of university rather than a summer camp: students live in a hall of residence, eat in the dining halls, are taught by Georgetown faculty and practitioners, and work in a group of peers who chose the same subject. The setting does a lot of the work — Washington means the people who make policy, practise law or treat patients are a short journey away and turn up as guest speakers. Students leave with a finished piece of work, a view of one profession from the inside and a realistic sense of what a university course in it demands.