Get a Glimpse of College Life on the Harvard Campus

Application for summer 2022 is now open!

Test your intellect (智力) without the pressure of leer grades. You will be challenged by lvy League scholars as you immerse yourself in one subject in a small class of approximately 15 students. Classes are noncredit, so you can take a college-level course for learning’s sake.

●Live a balanced (college) life. When class is not in session, you can participate in creative and social activities. Join in co-curricular activities that stimulate your mind. And take time to have fun and get to know your peers.

●Discover your passions. Whether you’re undecided about potential areas of study or want to take a deeper dive into subject you love, the Pre-College Program can help you find what really excites you.

How to Apply

The admissions committee is looking for mature, academically motivated students who meet both of the following criteria:

●Will graduate from high school and enter college in 2023 or 2024

●Are at least 16 years old by June 18, 2022, and will not turn 19 years old before July 31, 2022

The Course Experience

With over 30 courses to choose from in each session of three, you’re sure to find a topic that inspires your interest.

You take one course during a session, and although courses are non-credit and do not have letter grades, they are rigorous (严格的).

At the end of the program, you'll receive a written evaluation from your instructor, as well as a Harvard transcript (成绩单) with a grade of AR or NM (“above requirements” or “requirements not met”). This is a great way to boost your college application.

Explore the 2022 course catalog or browse courses.

Cost: $4,950+$75 application fee, $100 health insurance (The program fee includes tuition, room and board, and activity costs for the full two weeks.)

Learn More About Costs Option

Francis Kere was named as the winner of the 2022 Pritzker prize, architecture's highest international honor. He is the first African architect to be recognized in the influential award's 43-year history.

“Francis Kere’s entire body of work shows us the power of materiality (物质性) rooted in place,” said the Pritzker jury (评委会), “His buildings, for and with communities, are directly of those communities—in their making, their materials, their programs and their unique characters. They have presence without pretence and an impact shaped by grace.”

Born in Gando in 1965, Kere was the first in his community to attend school, sent away at the age of seven, after which he won a scholarship to study woodwork in Germany. He saw slim chances for a career in carpentry and switched to architecture at the Technical University of Berlin. For his final project he designed a primary school for his home village-and set about fundraising and mobilizing friends and family to see it built. He thought he owed a lot to his community. The project was realized in 2000, for about £20,000.

Kere’s Gando primary school set out the basic principles that would go on to define his work, using earth bricks made on site, topped with a perforated (有孔的) ceiling crowned by a thin “flying roof". He suspended his metal canopy (顶篷) above the classrooms to draw cool air in through the building's side windows and release hot air through the holes in the ceiling. The whole village was involved in construction, beginning a cooperative model of practice that he has continued ever since. The school won an Aga Khan award in 2004, taking Kere to international fame and prompting him to found his practice in Berlin the following year.

One invitation after another, Kere continues to experiment with natural alternatives to modern materials and systems, “I am constantly looking,” he said. “I am not limiting myself with a formal language.” Kere’s most ambitious buildings are still to come, despite having received the lifetime achievement of Pritzker prize.

“Robots are klutzes,” says Ken Goldberg, an engineer AI expert at the University of California, Berkeley. A computer can easily defeat a human grandmaster at the game of chess by coming up with better moves. Yet a robot has trouble picking up an actual chess piece.

Though computers have advanced by leaps and bounds since 1980s, babies and kids still beat machines at certain types of tasks.

The first task. Robots face three challenges in grabbing an object. Number one is the ability to locate an object. Even with advanced cameras and sensors that measure distance, robots still get confused by anything “shiny or transparent,” Goldberg notes. The second challenge is control. A robot’s cameras and sensors won't always be in perfect symc (同步) with its moving “hand”. And physics poses the final challenge. To grasp something, you must understand how that object could shift when you touch it. Physics predicts that motion. But on small scales, this can be unpredictable, for very tiny bumps on the floor or the object may change the motion (运动).

Despite these challenges, humans grasp things all the time. Millions of years of evolution provided brains and bodies with ways to adapt. To help robots learn “robust (强有力的) grips”, Goldberg’s team set up a virtual world DexNet where the AI model receive training. The DexNet contains more than 1, 600 different virtual 3-D objects and five million different ways to grab them. To be more like the real world, the team threw in some randomness. For each grasp, they shifted either the object or grabber just a little. After completing the training, a robot can figure out its own robust grasp for a real-world object it has never seen before.

Thanks to research like this, robots are getting less of “the klutze”. Currently robots have trouble with other tasks including getting around the world, understanding people and thinking of new ideas. With engineers’ work and efforts, it’s expected that someone will design a graceful robot or even an AI model with common sense. “For now, though, if you want to beat a robot at chess, make it play on a real, physical chess board.” Goldberg adds.

We’re living in the age of digital overload. This culture of constant connection takes a toll (造成损失) both professionally and personally. We are kept busy but can’t concentrate. We keep constantly checking our laptops, tablets, and phones with stress, for fear of missing out. Are we addicted? How to regain our focus?

The solutions of two experts, Larry Rosen, a psychologist, and Samuel, a technologist, offer useful approaches separately on how we can begin to tackle this huge and growing challenge.

In one of his studies, Rosen’s colleague Nancy Cheever brought 163 students into a lecture hall, asked them to sit without talking, doing work, or using their phones, and then assessed their anxiety over the next hour. Although light smartphone users showed no change, moderate users experienced initial alarm that leveled off, and those accustomed to checking their phones all day long felt their anxiety rise immediately and continue to increase. Some people refer to the overuse of digital devices as an addiction. But since most of us don’t appear to gain much pleasure from the behavior—a defining feature of addiction—Rosen doesn’t classify it as such.

How do we calm the anxiety and thereby avoid the distraction? Rosen recommends using behavioral principles to disconnect yourself from your digital devices. Allow yourself to check all modes of e-communication, but then shut everything down and silence your phone. Set an alarm for 15 minutes, and when it rings, give yourself one minute for a tech check-in. Repeat this process until you are comfortable increasing your off-grid time to an hour or several hours.

Samuel argues that “Turning off” is simply not a well-founded solution in the digital age. Technology was not the problem; our use of it was. We were not using tools designed to make online communications as focused and productive as possible. Now the first step is to abandon the myth (荒诞的说法) of “keeping up”. Instead, your goals should be to sort and limit the information you receive and to streamline the work of reading, responding to, and sharing what matters. Then, as for E-mail, news consumption and posting, automation offers huge benefits. Outlook, Gmail, and most other major e-mail tools will allow you to set rules and filters.