If you’ve ever wondered why certain rituals exist across vastly different cultures, how archaeologists piece together a society from fragments of pottery, or how language shapes the way people understand the world, you’re already thinking like an anthropologist. Anthropology is the study of human beings across time, place, and culture, drawing on methods like ethnographic observation, archaeological excavation, qualitative interviewing, and comparative cultural analysis to understand what makes societies work the way they do.
Anthropology programs for high school students introduce you to these methods before college, giving you exposure to fieldwork techniques, primary source analysis, and research design that you won’t encounter in a standard high school classroom.
So, why choose a paid anthropology program?
Paid anthropology programs are typically run by universities and colleges, which means you’re learning from faculty who are active researchers, working with university-grade resources like museum collections and research databases, and sometimes earning transferable college credit. The structure tends to be more rigorous and formal than free alternatives, and the outcomes, a completed research project, a credit transcript, or a faculty recommendation, are tangible and useful for college applications. Many paid programs also offer need-based financial aid or scholarships, so the listed cost isn’t always the final word on accessibility. Below are 15 paid anthropology programs for high school students that offer structured opportunities to explore the discipline across its subfields.
If you’d like to explore more options alongside these, check out our blogs on Fall anthropology programs and Free anthropology programs for high school students.
15 Paid Anthropology Programs for High School Students
1. Stanford Summer’s Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology (ANTHRO 1S)
Location: Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Cost: Check the tuition-fees calculator
Dates: June 22 – August 13
Application Deadline: March 2
Eligibility: Current high school sophomores, juniors, or seniors; must be 16–19 years old by June 20
ANTHRO 1S introduces you to the foundational concepts and methods of cultural and social anthropology. The course is structured around ethnographic case studies that account for specific communities and cultural practices written by anthropologists who conducted long-term fieldwork, and use them to show how anthropological thinking illuminates contemporary social and political questions across different cultural settings. The weekly readings are drawn directly from canonical and contemporary anthropological scholarship. You’ll work through texts covering the origins of anthropology and its relationship to colonialism, race, and gender as cultural constructs, the anthropology of the body, ethnographic fieldwork methodology, and more. You’ll understand how anthropological data is actually generated, through sustained observation, documentation, and interpretation.
2. Harvard Secondary School Program’s Anthropology of Food and Foodways (ANTH S-1068)
Location: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (On Campus)
Cost: 4-Week Residential: $9,100; need-based scholarships available (U.S. Citizens, Permanent Residents, or DACA only)
Dates: July 13 – August 8
Application Deadline: April 1
Eligibility: High school students graduating and enter college in the next 3 years; between ages 16–18
ANTH S-1068 is a 4-credit, on-campus Harvard course that uses food as the central analytical lens for cultural anthropology. The course applies a comparative anthropological framework where you’re reading across multiple cultural contexts and using a range of source types like academic readings, podcasts, and visual material alongside hands-on field experiences. Required fieldwork takes place in the Cambridge area and at the Cabot House Community Garden, giving you direct experience of ethnographic observation and empirical data collection in real community settings. You’ll practice using empirical methods like observation, documentation, and analysis to research a dimension of your immediate foodscape. Additionally, this course earns you 4 credits and appears on an official Harvard transcript.
3. Harvard Secondary School Program’s Human Evolution (ANTH S-1300)
Location: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Cost: 4-Week Residential: $9,100; 7-Week Residential: $15,735; 7-Week Online/Commuter: $3,980 (4 credits) (8-credits); financial aid available for eligible US citizens and permanent residents
Dates: June 22 – August 7
Application Deadline: April 1
Eligibility: High school students graduating and enter college in the next 3 years; between ages 16–18
ANTH S-1300 is a 4-credit course in biological and physical anthropology that works through the evidence and methods used to reconstruct eight million years of human evolutionary history. The course focuses on the origins of features that define our species’ bipedalism, tool use, language, art, and agriculture, and evaluates competing interpretations of how and when these features emerged. You’ll work across multiple evidentiary lines like genetic data, fossil morphology, archaeological record, ethnographic comparisons with living primates, and evaluate how each type of evidence contributes to and complicates evolutionary interpretation. You’ll also work directly with fossils and artifacts from Harvard’s museum collections and complete exercises in Harvard laboratories.
4. Harvard Pre-College Program’s The Overdose Epidemic (ANTH P-16210)
Location: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Cost: $6,100; limited need-based scholarships available
Dates: July 20 – July 31
Application Deadline: April 1
Eligibility: Rising high school juniors and seniors who must be at least 16 years old by the program start date
ANTH P-16210 is a non-credit, on-campus Pre-College course that takes a biosocial approach to the opioid overdose crisis, which means it examines the epidemic not primarily through its biology but through the social, economic, and structural conditions that produced it. The course works through the relationship between opioid addiction and crime under conditions of poverty, violence, and economic precarity, and how people navigate healthcare and support systems when living in structurally vulnerable positions, and how social factors and pharmaceutical availability combined to produce the current crisis. The analytical framework asks you to hold biological and social explanations together rather than treating them as separate, which is a core methodological orientation in both medical anthropology and global health research.
5. Washington University in St. Louis’s High School Summer Scholars: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Location: Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
Cost: Online: $4,075 | Commuter: $4,075 (one course), $7,825 (two courses) | Residential: $8,385 (one course), $12,135 (two courses); need-based scholarships are available
Dates: June 7 – July 11
Application Deadline:
Eligibility: Current high school juniors enrolled in a challenging curriculum (honors, AP, or IB preferred)
WashU’s Introduction to Cultural Anthropology is an undergraduate credit-bearing course taught by WashU instructors as part of the five-week High School Summer Scholars Program. The course covers the foundational concepts, theories, and methods of cultural anthropology, the subfield concerned with the diversity of human cultures and societies, giving you a broad view of the types of research anthropologists conduct and the questions they investigate. You’ll engage critically with how anthropological research contributes to understanding the human condition and examining how they frame questions, collect data, and construct interpretations of cultural life. Beyond the course, the program includes non-credit enrichment activities focused on college readiness and academic success.
6. Barnard College Pre-College Program’s Health & Society Institute
Location: Barnard College, New York City, NY
Cost: Residential: $10,771 | Commuter: $8,160; limited need-based financial aid available (U.S. citizens/permanent residents only)
Dates: July 20 – August 7
Application Deadline: Rolling admissions starting in January
Eligibility: Rising high school juniors and seniors
In this program, you’ll examine how conditions come to be defined as illnesses, whose expertise gets recognized, and through what mechanisms health inequalities are reproduced across race, class, and geography. Major themes include biomedicine as a cultural system, the politics of healthcare surveillance, the performance and rituals of healing, and the structure of the US public health system. You’ll engage with work from a wide range of scholars, anthropologists, philosophers, historians, physicians, scientists, and journalists examining questions like whether biomedicine has a culture, how scientific knowledge interacts with other forms of representation, and how inequalities in health outcomes become reproduced structurally. Running concurrently with the main seminar is a dedicated qualitative research course.
7. William & Mary’s Archaeological Field Methods (ANTH 225)
Location: Peter Scott Site, Colonial Williamsburg, VA
Cost: Check tuition rates here
Dates: Session I: May 26 – June 26 | Session II: June 29 – July 31
Application Deadline: Typically Early May
Eligibility: Concurrent high school students may enroll; they must present academic credentials comparable to those of admitted full-time W&M students
This course introduces you to archaeological field and laboratory methods through direct participation in an active excavation project. In survey and mapping, you’ll work with compass navigation and site mapping techniques to document the spatial dimensions of the site. Excavation training covers shovel and trowel techniques within formal excavation units, data collection protocols, and systematic site recording. The laboratory component introduces artifact processing and analysis, washing, sorting, identifying, and beginning the interpretive work of understanding what recovered material culture tells you about past lives. Public interpretation is also part of the course, where you’ll learn to communicate archaeological findings to non-specialist audiences, which requires translating technical field data into accessible narratives.
8. Georgetown Summer College’s Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change (ANTH-3329)
Location: Online
Cost: $2,371 per credit; scholarships are available
Dates: June 1 – July 24
Application Deadline: April 1
Eligibility: High school students, recommended by their principals or guidance counselors, who will have completed at least their freshman year with a “B” average or better at the time of enrollment, and whose high school program applications are approved by the associate dean of Georgetown Summer Sessions
ANTH-3329 is a 3-credit Georgetown undergraduate course, in which, you’ll work with the concept of ethnocentrism to examine how climate knowledge is produced and evaluated differently across “Northern” and “Southern” societies; Science Studies frameworks to analyze how scientific facts are constructed within cultural contexts; and ethnographic methods to critique policy and development statements by taking local peoples’ viewpoints. The course also addresses climate change denial as a cultural phenomenon, analyzing how climate knowledge is constructed by ordinary citizens. Finally, the course explores the limitations of technological solutions and asks what paradigmatic behavioral change at the individual and societal level would actually require.
9. Cornell University’s Cultural Diversity and Contemporary Issues (ANTHR 2400)
Location: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Cost: $5,820 (Online/Commuter Tuition) or $9,274 (Residential, including housing/meals)
Dates: January 20 – May 5
Application Deadline: Residential: May 5; Online/Commuter: June 2
Eligibility: Current high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors; at least 15 years old
ANTHR 2400 is an undergraduate Cornell course that introduces you to cultural diversity as a framework for understanding contemporary global issues. The course draws on films, videos, and selected readings to confront you with different representational forms like documentary, ethnographic, and journalistic that portray cultures across different parts of the world, asking you to examine critically how your own assumptions and prejudices shape the perception and evaluation of cultural difference. The geographic scope is global, drawing on case studies from Africa, Latin America, and the West to examine how world areas are interconnected and mutually dependent rather than discrete or self-contained. Specific issues addressed include political correctness and truth, nativism, race and ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and more.
10. Yale Summer Session’s Political & Legal Anthropology (ANTH S2255)
Location: Online
Cost: $5,480 + $85 technology fee
Dates: June 29 – July 31
Application Deadline: Typically, early May
Eligibility: Current high school juniors or current seniors; must be at least 16 years old by program start date
ANTH S2255 is a 1-credit Yale undergraduate seminar that examines how power operates through legal and political systems using the methods and concepts of political and legal anthropology. The course takes ethnography as its primary analytical tool, where you’re reading firsthand accounts of how law, governance, and authority are actually lived and experienced across different societies. The course works through ethnographies of political emergency, prisons, war, counterterrorism, bureaucracy, and secrecy to examine what “law” actually names when it appears not in formal codes but in gesture, silence, confession, and refusal. The course also examines how legality becomes aesthetic, how emotions become rights, how evidence becomes story, and how dissent takes the form of both art and argument.
11. UCLA Summer College Immersion Program’s Anthropology Courses
Location: UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Cost: Course fees vary by program version; use the fee calculator; financial aid is available
Dates: June 22 – July 31
Application Deadline: International (with visa): April 1; Domestic: May 1
Eligibility: Currently enrolled in grade 10 or 11 with a minimum 3.8 GPA, unweighted and cumulative
UCLA’s Summer College Immersion Program (SCIP) allows high school students to enroll in UCLA undergraduate anthropology courses without requiring prerequisite documentation. Some anthropology courses available are ANTHRO 1- Human Evolution, ANTHRO 2- Archaeology Introduction, ANTHRO 3- Culture and Society, and ANTHRO 4- Culture and Communication, covering three of the four core subfields of anthropology: biological/physical, archaeological, and cultural/linguistic. You will explore topics ranging from the biological origins of the human species to the complex social structures and communicative patterns of modern global civilizations. Your week will consist of attending undergraduate lectures, participating in required co-curricular workshops on college admissions and research skills, and completing rigorous university-level examinations and essays.
12. Syracuse University Summer College’s Peoples and Cultures of the World (ANT 121)
Location: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Cost: Residential: $5,595 | Commuter: $4,624; discounts and scholarships are available
Dates: July 19–31
Application Deadline: May 1
Eligibility: Rising high school juniors or seniors, or high school graduates; ages 15+; minimum 3.0 GPA
This course introduces cultural anthropology through the lens of social inequality and global processes. The course is divided into two parts. The first Culture/Power/Identities draws on ethnographic writings and films to examine how race, class, ethnicity, generation, and gender shape social inequality and cultural identity. The second Global Assemblages investigates how global processes like neoliberalism, tourism, organ trafficking, commercial surrogacy, and migration generate new and emerging forms of social inequality across different societies. You’ll learn how anthropologists produce knowledge about cultures, and learn to think critically about what kinds of knowledge ethnographic approaches can and cannot generate. You’ll also write a research paper on a contemporary issue using core cultural anthropology concepts.
13. Northwestern University College Prep Program’s Anthropology Courses
Location: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Cost: Residential: $5,597 | Commuter: $5,781 + $60 nonrefundable application fee; scholarships are available
Dates: Multiple start dates depending on course; lengths range from 3–10 weeks
Application Deadline: March 16
Eligibility: Students who have completed sophomore or junior year of high school with a cumulative GPA of 3.0
Northwestern’s College Prep Program offers four undergraduate anthropology courses to high school students taught by Northwestern-affiliated instructors. Some anthropology courses include ANTHRO 211: Culture & Society, which covers cultural anthropology’s foundational frameworks, ANTHRO 213: Human Origins, which covers biological and physical anthropology, examining the evolutionary history of our species, and ANTHRO 214: Archaeology: Unearthing History, which introduces archaeological methods and the material record of human history, amongst others. A unique feature of this experience is that you earn official Northwestern credit by studying alongside current university students, providing a direct preview of Ivy-plus academic life. By the end of the session, you will have developed skills in qualitative research, critical cross-cultural analysis, and academic communication.
14. Binghamton University (SUNY) Community Archaeology Program: Archaeology for Teens
Location: Binghamton University (Science 1 Building) and local excavation sites (e.g., the Ayers 2 site in New York’s Susquehanna Valley)
Cost: $250 per participant; full or partial scholarships are available
Dates: July 21–25
Application Deadline: Rolling until full
Eligibility: Students entering grades 7–10
In the Binghamton University Community Archaeology Program, you will immerse yourself in the world of professional archaeology by excavating real historical sites alongside university experts. Throughout the week-long program, you will explore topics like precontact Native American history, preservation responsibilities, and the intersection of STEM and anthropology. You will participate in hands-on activities such as experimental archaeology, genuine site excavation, artifact identification, and field mapping with handheld GPS units. A unique feature of this program is that you actually contribute to ongoing university research at active archaeological field sites rather than practicing in a simulated sandbox. Ultimately, you will learn practical archaeological field techniques, proper site documentation skills, and the critical analysis required to interpret ancient material cultures.
15. ARI Public Archaeology Field School
Location: Ohio Valley region
Cost: $1,000 for non-University of Cincinnati students; scholarships available
Dates: Full-Time: May 27 – June 26 | Part-Time: May 27 – August 7
Application Deadline: Session 1: April 15
Eligibility: All high school students
The ARI Public Archaeology Field School is run by the Archaeological Research Institute, a nonprofit focused on the identification, investigation, and preservation of archaeological sites in the Ohio Valley.
In this program, you will master professional archaeology through three core areas: survey, excavation, and laboratory analysis. You’ll learn site mapping and Phase I shovel testing while practicing advanced excavation techniques like Munsell soil classification and flotation collection. In the lab, you will perform artifact washing, diagnostic analysis, and stabilization. Unique to this experience is a focus on public outreach and ethics, where you’ll guide community tours and study legal frameworks like NAGPRA and Section 106. By the end, you’ll possess technical skills in field methodology, artifact curation, and the ethical standards required for modern archaeological consultation.
One more option – Horizon Academic Research Program
If you’re looking for a competitive mentored research program in subjects like Archaeology, Linguistics, Physical Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology, consider applying to Horizon’s Research Seminars and Labs! This is a selective virtual research program that lets you engage in advanced research and develop a research paper on a subject of your choosing. Horizon has worked with 1000+ high school students so far and offers 600+ research specializations for you to choose from. You can find the application link here!
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