The Best Finance and Economics Summer Programs 2019

Earlier this week, we got an email. It read:

"I am a junior in high school interested in pursuing finance or economics and management in college. Do you know of any summer programs at decent/top tier colleges for high schoolers less than two weeks long in June or July that would help me show colleges my interest in these areas? Thank you very much for your help!"

We love questions and emails like this. We love it because of how specific it is and because this student clearly knows exactly what they are looking for in a summer program. We also love getting emails like this in January, because it means that you’re thinking about the summer now.

We’ve written a lot about various summer programs, different things that you can do (like tour colleges or not) over the summer, and how to turn your summer into an Ivy League application, but we want to reply to this email directly with some highlights that we’ve come across thus far in our summer program research.

Harvard University

Harvard University Pre-College Programs (two-weeks long)

  • Various Economics-focused courses taught in small, seminar-style classroom settings with between 14-18 students like*:

    • Game Theory and Strategic Decisions

    • The World According to Economics

    • Macroeconomics and Finance

  • Dates for 2019:

    • Session 1: June 23–July 5, 2019

    • Session 2: July 7–July 19, 2019

    • Session 3: July 21–August 2, 2019

*Note: this specific course information is based on 2018 courses, as 2019 courses had not yet been posted at the time of publishing. Please visit the website for up-to-date information on next summer.

Oxford University

Oxford Economics Academy (two-weeks long; various dates) or Oxford Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Academy (two-weeks long).

  • Economics courses and seminars taught on Oxford’s campus focus on developing your knowledge of economic theories and learning how to apply them in practice through organizational analysis and economic strategy.

  • Dates available in July:

    • Session 1: 7 July – 20 July 2019

    • Session 2: 21 July – 3 August 2019

Foundation for Economics Education (FEE)

FEE Economics in the Real World Seminars focus on applying finance and economics-related knowledge to real-world situations in order to further your understanding of how economics influence human behavior and social trends.

Foundation for Teaching Economics

This organization’s Economics for Leaders program focuses on the employment of economics strategies and theories to public policy decisions, and is offered at various colleges throughout the summer, including (but not limited to):

  • Yale (June 17-23 and June 24-30)

  • UC Berkeley (June 24-30 and July 1-7)

  • UCLA (June 24-30)

  • Tufts (July 1-7)

  • Wake Forest (July 8-14)

  • Emory (July 15-21)

  • Washington University at St. Louis (July 15-21)

  • Brown (July 22-28)

  • Cornell (July 22-28)

Drexel University

  • Camp Business’ week-long residential program (July 13-19) takes place at Drexel’s LeBow School of Business. The program focuses on the basics of economics and finance, like accounting, marketing, finance and management, and leadership in a team-building environment.

University of Pennsylvania

Wharton’s Global Young Leaders Academy offers high school students with a demonstrated interest (but not extensive experience) in business (finance, economics, leadership) two-week summer intensives to explore their interests.

  • Session A: June 8 – June 22, 2019

  • Session B: June 15 – June 29, 2019

  • Session C: July 6 – July 20, 2019

  • Session D: July 13 – July 27, 2019

  • Session E: July 20 – August 3, 2019 (after date range specified)

University of Chicago

University of Chicago Pathways and Immersion Programs focusing on economics. These are a bit longer than 2 weeks, but worth considering due to the intensive nature of the material and the opportunity to study and explore various economics-related questions in this environment.

A couple of other program highlights that are a bit longer than 2 weeks (typically 3-6), if you’re interested are offered through Georgetown’s Economics Policy Academy, Wharton’s Management and Technology Institute, Wharton’s Moneyball Programs (focusing on sports analytics), and Yale’s Summer Session courses with classes like Micro/Macroeconomics, Game Theory, Intro to Corporate Finance, and Causes and Consequences of Corruption.

Although we’ve written about this before, we want to reiterate the very important point that attending a school’s summer program really has no impact on your chances for admission to that particular school. Summer programming/marketing and admissions are two totally different entities on campus and there’s really no overlap in terms of influence.

We know that the summer can be super overwhelming, so let us know if you have any questions related to summer. We are so happy to do this research for you and let you know about programs that we think are awesome.

As always, email us if you have any questions about anything at all.