Indiana high school students interested in meaningful research programs have many options close to home. Between two major research universities, a cluster of specialized institutes and a program that runs entirely online, the state offers a broad set of research programs for high school students and pre college students in Indiana who are looking to explore future careers. Options span life sciences, physics, data science, agriculture, mathematics and the humanities.
The challenge is figuring out which ones offer research experience, and which are better described as classes, camps, or internships. Program names alone rarely make that distinction clear, and marketing language tends to blur the line between an eight-week lab placement and a week of structured activities. Most of the summer programs for high school students in Indiana covered here run between one week and 12 weeks, though a few extend across the full school year.
This guide covers 12 programs open to younger or older students in Indiana, drawn from public university outreach offices, national research institutes, and one fully accredited online option. Each entry has been checked against the program’s current site rather than secondhand summaries. The list is ordered with an eye toward selectivity, access to genuine research environments, and the quality of mentorship a student can expect.
The highest quality research programs for high school students fall into two categories:
The strongest programs tend to share two qualities: a high degree of student agency in shaping the research direction, and meaningful institutional oversight that ensures academic rigor. Programs run by universities, government bodies, and established non-profits typically possess these qualities, giving students the closest approximation to what college-level research actually looks like, making the experience valuable college preparation.
To read more about the different types of research programs available, and how they differ from popular “independent mentor-matching” services, read our comprehensive guide on choosing the best research opportunities.
The programs below were selected based on:
The SEED/STEM Summer Program aims to place students interested in stem fields in a research lab at IU School of Medicine, IU Indianapolis, or the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute for a full-time, eight-week experience. Students are matched with a faculty research mentor and contribute to an active research project in fields ranging from biomedical engineering to computer science, working roughly eight hours a day, five days a week.
The program, run in partnership with the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED, concludes with a research poster presentation. Because it draws a large applicant pool each year, students should plan to apply as soon as the window opens rather than waiting until close to the deadline.
The Pioneer Research Institute is the only research institute for high school students that is itself an accredited academic institution, operating as an extension of Oberlin College. Students explore their own research question within a chosen concentration and work one-on-one with a faculty mentor who guides the process rather than assigning a predetermined project. Research within the Pioneer Research Institute spans a wide variety of disciplines, including life sciences, data science, social sciences, and humanities.
The application takes roughly nine hours to complete, including an essay and an interview for finalists, and research concentrations span the sciences, social sciences and humanities. Learn more in Pioneer’s complete guide to the Research Institute.
The Future Scientist Program is a non-credit summer research experience for juniors at Indianapolis and Marion County public schools. Students spend eight weeks on a research project under the mentorship of a university researcher, with admission based on scholastic ability, attendance record, and demonstrated interest in scientific research. This programs is well-suited for those with an interest in biomedical research, cancer research, or molecular biology.
The program also functions as a structured summer job of sorts, with expectations around attendance and professionalism that mirror an entry-level research role, making it a useful proving ground for students weighing a future in a lab-based career.
The Summer Science Program is a five-week residential research program run across sixteen university campuses nationwide, with Indiana University and Purdue University both serving as 2026 host sites.
Students work in teams of three on an original research project in astrophysics, biochemistry, bacterial genomics or cell biology, using professional-grade equipment and mentorship from faculty and graduate teaching assistants. Admissions are need-blind, and SSP commits to covering 100 percent of demonstrated financial need for every admitted student.
Pioneer’s complete guide to the Summer Science Program breaks down admissions, cost and fit in more detail.
The High School Research Internship, run through Notre Dame’s Center for Broader Impacts, pairs students with a Notre Dame graduate or postdoctoral mentor in a campus lab across the academic year. Participants also attend Friday group sessions covering research topics and college preparation.
This program is worth noting for its depth and practical skills, but its eligibility is restricted to a specific set of partner schools. The program has run since 2013 and moved under the Center for Broader Impacts in 2024, when it also expanded beyond its original focus on energy research into additional STEM disciplines.
The Notre Dame QuarkNet Center connects students to research tied to high-energy physics experiments at CERN, Fermilab and SLAC. Students work with Notre Dame physicists on live data, learning the fundamentals of particle physics alongside teachers and researchers participating in the same national network. QuarkNet centers exist at universities across the country, and Notre Dame’s is one of a small number in the Midwest with an active summer research track specifically for participating students rather than teachers alone.
Operation Catapult is a residential STEM program built around applied engineering projects, from robotics and electronics to biodiesel production and civil engineering. During the two week program, students work alongside Rose-Hulman professors to design, build and test their projects and build technical skills while living on campus.
Now in its sixth decade, Catapult has run continuously since the late 1960s, and its scale – several hundred students across three summer sessions – makes it one of the largest residential STEM programs available to Indiana students.
This six-week IU Physics research program pairs students with a physics faculty mentor on a project drawn from the department’s active research areas. Applicants submit a cover letter and a short essay identifying three potential research topics and mentors, making it a good fit for students who already have a specific area of physics they want to pursue.
Because placement depends on matching a student’s stated interests to an available faculty mentor, applicants who research the department’s active labs in advance and speak specifically to a mentor’s work tend to submit stronger application essays.
The World Food Prize Youth Institute asks students to research and write a paper on a food security challenge facing a specific developing country, then present their findings to Purdue faculty, staff and industry experts at a one-day event. Participants also network with peers from across the state and qualify as Borlaug Scholars, a designation that opens the door to further World Food Prize opportunities, including internships and the organization’s Global Youth Institute.
Because the research paper is written before the event, students should treat the writing itself, not just the presentation day, as the substantive part of the experience.
MIT PRIMES-USA is a remote mentorship program in mathematics research, distinct from the Boston-based MIT PRIMES program that most students associate with the name. Students spend the year working through an advanced reading period, an active research period with an MIT-affiliated mentor and a fall write-up phase that culminates in a formal paper and a presentation at the PRIMES conference.
Unlike the in-person Boston program, PRIMES-USA does not offer separate computer science or computational biology tracks; it is a mathematics research program, and most projects fall in pure math areas such as combinatorics, number theory or topology.
Pioneer’s MIT PRIMES-USA participation guide breaks down the application timeline and expectations in more detail.
The Future Deaf Scientist Program offers a clinical shadowing internship across oncology, surgery and pathology, paired with hands-on pathology lab experience. Interns also join daily video conversations with deaf physicians and scientists at partner sites nationwide, closing the program with a presentation to family, peers and instructors.
It is one of the smallest and most tailored programs on this list, built specifically to give underrepresented students who are deaf and hard-of-hearing direct contact with deaf professionals working in medicine.
For students drawn to the humanities rather than the sciences, the Teen Council internship is a museum education role rather than a lab-based research program. Duties can include gathering research on upcoming exhibitions, assisting with school tours and helping design gallery activities. It is a smaller commitment than the other programs on this list, but it is one of the few Indiana options that lets a student build research, presentation and critical thinking skills in an art history context.
A few of these programs come with eligibility restrictions worth double-checking before a student builds a summer plan around them.
The Notre Dame High School Research Internship is open only to partner-school students, and the Future Deaf Scientist Program is limited to students at the Indiana School for the Deaf. Others, like the IU CTSI SEED/STEM Program and the World Food Prize Youth Institute, are open to any eligible Indiana student who applies by the deadline. Grade level matters too: freshmen and sophomores have options like the Pioneer Research Institute and the World Food Prize Youth Institute.
Cost and time commitment vary just as widely. A student weighing a one-day event like the World Food Prize Youth Institute against a year-long commitment like MIT PRIMES-USA is really weighing different kinds of experience, not just different price points.
The same is true comparing a free eight-week lab placement against a paid twelve-week online research term. A shorter, free program can be a legitimate first exposure to research; a longer, more selective one asks for a heavier commitment in exchange for deeper ownership of the work and more extensive professional development.
Neither is automatically the right choice. The better question is which trade-off fits a given student’s schedule, academic interests, and stage of high school.
The strongest fit depends on a student’s grade level and academic focus, but a few research programs stand out by category.
Yes. Several Indiana programs charge no fee at all:
Several of these also offer stipends. Programs that do charge, including the Pioneer Research Institute, Operation Catapult and the Summer Science Program, offer need-based financial aid or scholarships; the Pioneer Research Institute and Summer Science Program’s need-blind model covers 100 percent of demonstrated need.
Options for freshmen and sophomores are more limited than for high school juniors and high school seniors, but they exist.
A university-driven program is hosted and academically supervised by a college or university, meaning the institution takes responsibility for the quality of the mentorship and the research question a student pursues.
An independent mentor-matching program connects a student directly with a researcher, often without a university formally overseeing the arrangement or vouching for its rigor. Both models could produce meaningful work, but university-driven programs carry a level of institutional accountability that independent arrangements generally do not.
You can check out our longer comparison of university-driven and independent mentor-matching programs, as well as a programs that fall in each time, in our comprehensive “how-to-choose” guide.
Research and hands on experience can strengthen a college application when it demonstrates genuine intellectual curiosity, independent effort, and readiness for college-level work, and admissions readers do pay attention to programs with real academic rigor behind them. It does not guarantee any admissions outcome on its own.
The programs that tend to carry the most weight are the ones where a student can speak specifically to what they researched, how they approached the problem, and what they learned with some degree of authoritative oversight, rather than simply naming the program they attended or the type of activity they completed.
Selectivity ranges widely across this list. Some, like the IU CTSI SEED/STEM Program and the World Food Prize Youth Institute, are competitive but built to serve a broad group of interested Indiana students.
Others are highly selective by design: Pioneer’s Research Institute admits fewer than 30 percent of applicants, and MIT PRIMES-USA is estimated to admit in the single digits based on a demanding entrance problem set.
The Summer Science Program is similarly competitive, with an estimated acceptance rate of roughly 5 to 10 percent. A handful, including the Notre Dame High School Research Internship and the Future Deaf Scientist Program, are less about broad selectivity and more about a narrow eligibility pool tied to a specific school or community.
None of these approaches is inherently better than another; they simply serve different goals, from wide access to intensive, one-on-one mentorship.
Not every research experience on this list will look the same, and that is by design. What separates the strongest options is not prestige alone but whether a student walks away with real ownership of a question and real oversight from people equipped to guide the work. Judged against that standard, Indiana students have more legitimate paths into research than most states offer. The work is matching the right program to the right student.
If you’re interested in conducting the highest level of research for high school students, consider joining a Pioneer information session to learn more about the Pioneer Research Institute.
Based on a recent survey, 71 percent of Pioneer Research scholars’ acceptances were to the top 20 US colleges and universities. Additionally, our alumni report acceptances to highly-selective institutions at a rate five times higher than the school’s published acceptance rate.
If you are a 9th or 10th grader, we encourage you to also check out the Global Problem-Solving Institute. You’ll have the rare opportunity to take an interdisciplinary approach to complex world programs, while earning college credits from UNC-Chapel Hill.
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