Tufts Pre-College Summer Intensives

Students choose a single intensive and stay with it for the whole programme. The engineering intensives cover artificial intelligence, broad engineering investigations and the design process from concept to prototype; the business and international relations intensives use case studies, seminars and simulations; the studio art intensive runs at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. All courses are taught by Tufts faculty in university classrooms, labs and studios. Most intensives are not for credit, while international relations offers pre-matriculation credit. Entry is by application, and the artificial intelligence intensive expects prior programming experience in Python or an equivalent language.

The residential programme fee covers tuition and all programme activities, materials used in labs and skills sessions, a room in a university residence hall, three meals a day, use of selected campus facilities, included programme and residential excursions, bed linen, pillow and towels, round-the-clock residential care, and a staff-accompanied airport transfer within the published arrival and departure windows. Airfare, laundry, spending money, meals taken away from the programme, transfers outside those windows, travel and medical insurance and any activity marked as carrying an extra fee are not included. A commuter option is available for students who live locally and do not need housing.

Residential students live on the Medford and Somerville campus in an air-conditioned Tufts residence hall, in the same buildings used by undergraduates during the academic year. Bed linen, a pillow and towels are provided. Residential staff are on duty around the clock and live in the building with the students, and the residential team also runs the evening and weekend programme. Laundry facilities are available on campus but laundry is not covered by the programme fee.

Three meals a day are included for residential students, served in the university dining halls, with brunch and dinner on Sundays. Meals taken away from the programme, for example while exploring Boston independently, are not covered. Students with dietary requirements or allergies should raise them at the point of enrolment so the dining team can plan for them.

Outside class hours the residential team runs a programme of campus activities and excursions that is included in the fee. Students explore Boston and the surrounding area in supervised groups and take part in evening activities on campus with the rest of the cohort. Because Tufts sits a short ride from central Boston, the city itself forms part of the experience, and students from across the United States and abroad spend their free time together rather than dispersing at the end of the teaching day.

The intensives use the working facilities of a research university: teaching laboratories, engineering workshops, art studios at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, seminar rooms and the campus dining halls. Residential students also have use of selected campus facilities during their stay. The Medford and Somerville campus is a self-contained green campus on a hill above the Mystic River, within easy reach of central Boston.

The programme is built as a preview of university life rather than a summer camp. Students take one subject seriously for two or three weeks, are taught by the same faculty who teach Tufts undergraduates, and produce something concrete by the end: a working prototype, a research poster, a case presentation or a portfolio of studio work. Class groups are small, and the residential cohort is deliberately mixed so that participants from different countries and school systems work together. For many families the appeal is the combination of a genuine academic workload with full residential supervision on a university campus.