COSMOS is a four-week residential summer time STEM program the place motivated California highschool college students dive into superior matters, work in labs, and get to expertise life on a university campus. This system is normally hosted throughout six completely different UC colleges: UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA , UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Merced.
(Helpful facet observe: Should you’re planning on making use of to the UC Faculties, take a look at this information to writing your UC utility.)
How the COSMOS program works
Whereas dwelling on campus, you be a part of a “cluster” with a bunch of scholars who share your pursuits. Every cluster contains two superior STEM lessons and one science communication course, led by UC professors, researchers, and scientists.
You’ll spend your time studying by way of labs, lectures, fieldwork, and workforce initiatives. Along with this, you’ll additionally full a analysis undertaking related to your cluster subject. (NASA has printed previous COSMOS scholar initiatives, and that’s fairly cool.)
You also needs to know that this system is fairly selective. Every campus can solely accommodate 160-200 college students, and a typical COSMOS scholar has a GPA of three.5 or increased.
Additionally: Residing on campus for the complete length of this system (4 weeks) is a agency requirement, which is perhaps one thing else that candidates must take into account.
Historical past of COSMOS
COSMOS was established by the California Legislature in 1998 (Meeting Invoice 2536) to present gifted and motivated highschool college students the chance to deepen their curiosity and expertise in STEM by way of rigorous coursework, hands-on experimentation, and enrichment actions.
Modeled after the California State Summer season College for the Arts, COSMOS was created to offer a equally immersive tutorial expertise—however targeted on science, know-how, engineering, and arithmetic.
COSMOS launched in 2000, with UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz as the primary campuses to host this system. As demand grew throughout the state, the UC system expanded COSMOS to extra websites: UC Davis in 2001, UC San Diego in 2004, UC Los Angeles in 2024, and UC Merced quickly after.