Virtual Program (Sept-June): $439/month + deposit In-Person Program (Sept-June): $589/month + deposit We offer tuition support for those who need it, and discounted pricing for students who pay in a single payment.

No, you do not require any prior knowledge about technologies or coding. Many of our students get exposed to these areas for the first time in TKS. Students work on tech or science projects outside of sessions. We have online tools and resources to help anyone learn — no matter the level.

TKS is a 10-month program (Sept-June). Students can re-apply for the program each year. Many students stay in the program for several years.

There are 3-hour sessions every week. Usually, these sessions are on the weekend. The students who grow the most in our program invest the most time outside of the sessions into the projects they create while in TKS. Typically, this is usually 6-10 hours each week. There’s no homework in TKS. But, we’ve built our own learning platform for students to dive into emerging technologies/sciences and build their own projects. Students participate in project-based learning at their own pace.

TKS isn’t just about STEM; our goal is to train the world’s next thought leaders, CEOs and innovators to impact billions. This isn’t a tech boot camp. We’re a human accelerator. We believe leveraging exponential technologies is the best way to scale impact. TKS trains students on developing both hard skills and soft skills. We provide students with guidelines, resources and mentors to build expertise in fields of emerging technologies and sciences. Our secret-sauce is the emphasis on soft-skills. We model our curriculum after top innovation institutions like MIT, Google and Stanford. Students learn about:

• Networking
• Presenting
• Building confidence
• Philosophy
• Having thoughtful discussions
• Consulting frameworks
• Design
• Negotiation
• Mindsets
• Mental models
• Branding
• Leveraging curiosity to explore various areas of STEM
• Building friendships

TKS has 40+ internal learning modules where students can learn about a variety of emerging sciences and technologies. Each student can “explore” these learning modules. They include a few hours of hand-picked learning articles and videos. After some exploration, students choose a “focus” area. We provide them with guidance on how to complete a “focus.” Within each focus, students develop depth of knowledge in the topic through our project-based learning approach. This includes creating articles and videos around technical research, building algorithms/computer projects yourself, or interviewing researchers in the field. By joining TKS, students have access to our learning frameworks, guidelines and approaches. Students typically complete two focuses in one year of the program. Some examples of topics we offer:

• Alternative Energy
• Material Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Brain-computer Interfaces
• Viruses
• Cellular Agriculture
• Blockchain
• Space Exploration
• Cancer treatments
• Virtual Reality
• Metabolomics
• … The list goes on.

Students can study whatever interests them. If the topic they’re passionate about isn’t available, they’re still able to complete a “focus” in it.

TKS is an extracurricular program. Students attend school during the week and attend a TKS session on the weekend. However, we do have optional opportunities that may pop up during the week. Again, these are optional.

Sessions are run fully virtually, with students from around the world. TKS Virtual students use Slack, Zoom, and our own tks.life platform to coordinate hangouts and activities between sessions.

Opportunities outside sessions are limited to remote experiences. We host many incredible guest speakers and workshops online, but you won’t be able to attend in-person events or office tours.

Our priority is to prepare students for the real world. During the program, students work on unique projects and create a personal portfolio that can be used when applying to university. Some TKS students have gone on to attend world-class universities, and many have gotten incredible scholarships. We do not have a university feeder program, but TKS focuses on building skills to prepare students for life. Examples of schools our students attend:

• Stanford University
• UC Berkeley
• Johns Hopkins University
• University of Pennsylvania
• UC San Diego
• University of Waterloo
• University of Toronto
• Queens University
• Minerva Schools at KGI

TKS has partnerships with companies that may provide internship opportunities to select students. During TKS, we work with students to secure internships with leading companies like Microsoft, Deloitte, and KPMG, while also training them on how to be successful in these positions. This enables students to add tremendous value to the organizations they work with, while also maximizing their learning experience. Internships must be earned by the students and are not guaranteed. However, throughout the program, students learn valuable skills like cold-emailing and having meetings. Many students get internships on their own with the skills they learned through TKS.

TKS doesn’t stop after the 10-month program. We want to support our alumni during their journey towards impacting billions. We have an online platform and global community for our past and current students. They have access to our TKS resources, learning modules and mentors. We are also building an investment fund for startups founded by TKS Alumni, while also creating relationships with top-tier organizations to help them recruit talent to solve hard problems.

There are 4 types of sessions:

1. Tech/science sessions
2. Challenge sessions (students work with real companies on a “challenge”)
3. Hackathons
4. Philosophy and personal growth

Sessions are ~3 hours. We typically do them in-person, but are able to deliver the same quality online. We’ve designed these sessions to be interactive. These sessions involve:

• Group discussions
• Hands-on activites
• Research activites
• Presentations

For more information, please check out our program page.

TKS hosts several sessions at differnet timest throughout the week to accommodate Virtual students in different time zones. The specific time and day will be determined based on which cohort students get accepted into, and their own time zone. Each cohort is strategically designed based on interests and personality types to maximize relationships between students.

There are 2 steps before being accepted into TKS. First, you’ll need to submit an application. Then, based on your application, we may request additional material like a video or article before moving to the interview step. The interview is over video chat. If we think you are the right fit for TKS after your interview, we will extend an invitation for you to join the program.

You can access it in the top-right corner; click the green button. Or, right here:

Any high school student that is ambitious, driven, curious, and wants to make an impact on the world. If you aren’t a great presenter or you don’t have technical programming skills, don’t worry. Those are skills we train. But you DO need to be open to learning new skills by pushing yourself and committed to putting in the effort! (Seriously, this isn’t going to be a random extracurricular you go to once a week).

We don’t have a “quota” for the number of students we select. We only select students who we think can grow exponentially in our program and have a high degree of drive and curiosity. As a result, acceptance rates vary based on the number of applications and the city. Historically, the average acceptance rate has varied from 10-20%.

Students can join TKS while they’re in high school and on a gap year.

We get this question a lot, but unfortunately, we don’t accept students who will be in University during the program.

Our students are re-defining what teenagers can do. Some examples are:

• Building quantum-machine learning algorithms
• Building Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) robots
• Working on cutting-edge cancer therapies and conducting clinical trials
• Becoming thought-leaders and paid consultants in areas like alternative protein and healthcare.
• Working for companies like Microsoft, KPMG and XPrize
• Building and selling their own companies
• Speaking on stages like SXSW, CES and Web Summit.

To learn more, check out our student spotlight page.