If you are a high school student interested in the humanities, a structured program can help you understand what studying these subjects involves beyond regular classes. Humanities programs give you time to focus on history, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, writing, and public policy in a more focused way. You spend more time reading, writing, researching, and discussing ideas. chas
Why choose a program in California?
California offers many humanities programs through universities, museums, and cultural organizations. In these programs, you often work with instructors, take part in research or creative work, and learn through group discussion. This helps you see how humanities subjects are studied in academic and cultural settings.
Staying in California can also be a practical choice. It can lower travel and housing costs while still giving you experiences that are useful for college applications. These programs also work well for students from other places who want to study in California’s academic and cultural environment.
To help you get started, we’ve put together a list of 15 top humanities programs for high school students in California. You can also check out our complete guide on humanities summer programs for high school students, here.
15 Humanities Programs for High School Students in California
1. Stanford Summer Humanities Institute
Cost: $8,850
Location: Stanford, CA
Program Dates: June 21 – July 10 or July 12 – July 31
Application Deadline: February 2
Eligibility: High school juniors and seniors
The Stanford Summer Humanities Institute is a three-week seminar program where you spend your time reading, discussing, and writing at a serious academic level. Led by Stanford professors, the seminars focus on themes such as revolutions or the classical world of the Greeks and Romans, using original texts rather than summaries. You work closely with primary sources like philosophical writings, historical documents, and political texts, learning how to analyze them and connect ideas across readings. The main outcome of the program is a long research paper, where you practice building a clear argument and supporting it with evidence, much like the kind of writing expected in advanced college humanities courses.
2. UC Santa Barbara Research Mentorship Program (RMP)
Cost: $4,975 (Commuter) to $11,874 (Residential)
Location: Santa Barbara, CA (Residential or Commuter)
Program Dates: June 15 – July 31
Application Deadline: March 9
Eligibility: 9th, 10th and 11th graders with 3.60+ weighted GPA
UC Santa Barbara’s Research Mentorship Program places you in a close working relationship with a faculty mentor for an intensive research experience that spans the humanities and social sciences, including literature and philosophy. You spend much of your week doing focused research that goes beyond summarizing existing work, pushing you to form original questions and arguments. Along the way, you learn how to structure a formal research paper, use citation styles like APA or Chicago correctly, and explain your ideas clearly. The program ends with a symposium where you present your work, giving you experience defending your thinking in an academic setting.
3. Classics Week at Great Books Summer Program
Cost: $2,175
Location: Malibu, CA (Pepperdine Campus)
Program Dates: June 22 – June 28
Application Deadline: Rolling
Eligibility: Middle and High School students
Classics Week at the Great Books Summer Program is built around close reading and serious discussion of major works from the Western canon. You spend your days in shared inquiry seminars working through texts by writers like Plato and Dostoevsky, examining ideas line by line and supporting every claim with evidence from the text. Conversations move slowly and deliberately, pushing you to listen carefully, question assumptions, and respond thoughtfully to others.
4. California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA)
Cost: $5,174 for CA Residents, $10,475 for Out-of-State participants
Location: Valencia, CA
Program Dates: July 4 – August 1
Application Deadline: February 28
Eligibility: High school students in grades 8–12, with a strong preference for California residents.
The California State Summer School for the Arts is a selective, state-funded program, and its Writing track operates like an intensive humanities workshop. You write every day under clear constraints, using generative prompts that force you to make choices about language, structure, and voice. Drafts move through repeated rounds of critique, where you learn how revision actually works, from tightening syntax to reshaping narrative flow. The focus stays on producing and refining original work, not on theory alone, giving you a realistic sense of what serious writing practice looks like.
5. Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS)
Cost: Fully funded
Location: Claremont, CA
Program Dates: June 21 – July 17 for the Summer Intensive, as well as year-round events, workshops, and field trips.
Application Deadline: February 23
Eligibility: Current 9th graders residing in Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, or Ventura County. Must be a first-generation college-bound student, from a low-income family, and currently taking Geometry OR Integrated Math II.
Pomona College Academy for Youth Success is a fully funded program built to prepare students for the pace and expectations of a liberal arts education. During the summer, you take two core courses taught by Pomona faculty, one focused on math and problem solving and the other on critical inquiry and academic writing. In the writing course, you work through challenging texts and discuss how ideas around race, economics, and the environment intersect. The program continues through the school year with academic and research support, helping you learn how college classrooms work beyond the syllabus and assignments.
6. USC Summer Programs (Journalism & Law Tracks)
Cost: $11,570 for residential, $8,130 for commuter.
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Program Dates: June 22 – July 17
Application Deadline: May 8
Eligibility: High school students who have completed grade 9
USC’s Summer Programs offer four-week, credit-bearing courses that let you work in settings designed to feel like real professional environments. In tracks like Journalism, you use tools such as Adobe Creative Cloud to report stories, build multimedia packages, and learn how investigative reporting and media ethics work in practice. Other tracks, including International Relations, focus on analyzing current global events through simulations, role-playing, negotiations, and independent research projects. Across programs, you spend your time doing the kind of applied work students encounter in college courses, using USC’s resources to test your interests in communication, law, and global studies.
7. Getty Museum Teen Gallery Guides
Cost: Free. A stipend is paid
Location: Los Angeles, CA, at either the Getty Center or the Getty Villa.
Program Dates: Summer (June – August)
Application Deadline: Usually around April
Eligibility: High school students in LA County
The Getty Museum Teen Gallery Guides program is a paid internship centered on learning how museums teach through art. You train in audience engagement techniques and practice explaining art history in ways that make sense to visitors with different backgrounds. You will research works from the Getty’s permanent collection, from ancient objects to photography, then write and lead your own gallery tours. The experience focuses on object-based learning, helping you learn how to guide conversations around artwork rather than deliver memorized explanations.
8. Scripps College Academy (SCA) Scholars
Cost: Free
Location: Claremont, CA (In-Person)
Program Dates: Year-round, starts in Summer or Fall
Application Deadline: January 8
Eligibility: Female-identifying 10th graders
Scripps College Academy Scholars is a multi-year program where you take part in weekend academic sessions built around college-level reading and discussion. You study topics like race, class, and gender through academic texts, learning how to break down articles and contribute thoughtfully in seminar-style conversations. The program is designed to feel like a liberal arts classroom, with an emphasis on close reading, discussion, and argument building. Support continues beyond the sessions, with year-round advising, campus events, a summer summit, and an active alumni network that stays connected through college.
9. Idyllwild Arts Academy Creative Writing Intensive
Cost: $5,150 for residential, $2,550 for day students.
Location: Idyllwild, CA
Program Dates: June 28 – July 11
Application Deadline: Rolling, though priority deadline is February 1
Eligibility: High school students ages 14–17
The Idyllwild Arts Academy Creative Writing Intensive is a residential program built around writing every day. You attend classes six days a week that combine reading, discussion, and close study of published authors, with time to produce new work from college-level prompts. Drafts are revised through feedback and discussion, helping you understand how pieces change from first idea to finished form. The program also teaches editorial skills, as you work together to produce an anthology, handling layout and proofreading before ending with a public reading of your final work.
10. MOCA Teen Program
Cost: Free. Hourly wage is paid
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Program Dates: Thursday nights and some weekends throughout the academic Year
Application Deadline: September
Eligibility: High school students in grades 9–12
The MOCA Teen Program is a paid internship where you work directly with contemporary artists and MOCA staff to understand how a museum functions from the inside. You meet regularly as a cohort, collaborate with artist mentors, and take part in discussions about current exhibitions, creative practice, and the role of museums in public life. Your work includes planning and producing programs, creating content for MOCA’s social media, and learning how to talk about contemporary art with different audiences. A central responsibility is organizing Teen Night, a free, large-scale event where you handle programming, promotion, and on-site coordination for other teens.
11. WriteGirl Mentorship Program
Cost: Free
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Program Dates: Throughout the academic year
Application Deadline: Rolling throughout the year
Eligibility: Female-identifying high school students
WriteGirl is a mentorship program that pairs you with a professional female writer to explore different forms of writing. You take part in genre-focused workshops that dig into craft details like lyric analysis, personal narrative, or screenplay structure. The program is built around revision, so you draft pieces, receive detailed feedback, and rework your writing with guidance from mentors. Over time, you learn how professional writers approach critique and editing, with selected work moving toward publication in the program’s annual anthology.
12. Youth Speaks Writing Workshops
Cost: Free. Up to $200 stipend for attending all 3 workshops.
Location: San Francisco/Oakland, CA
Program Dates: Year-round. Workshops often start in the Fall/Spring.
Application Deadline: Rolling
Eligibility: Youth ages 13–19
Youth Speaks runs regular Writing and Performance Workshops where you meet weekly with a poet mentor to imagine, write, share, and rehearse your work in a small group setting. These sessions focus on writing from lived experience and developing your voice in spoken word or poetry, with time set aside to practice performance and get feedback in a supportive environment. Workshops also bring in contemporary readings and group discussion as part of the process, helping you connect your writing to broader conversations about identity, culture, and social issues.
13. UC Berkeley ATDP (Academic Talent Development Program)
Cost: Varies by course
Location: Berkeley, CA
Program Dates: June 22–July 31
Application Deadline: March 23
Eligibility: Open to students currently in Grades 7 through 11. Some courses have academic prerequisites
UC Berkeley’s Academic Talent Development Program offers accelerated courses that run at a true college pace. In the Secondary Division, you can take humanities classes such as psychology or law that require heavy reading and frequent analytical writing. Assignments are graded to UC standards, and completed courses can appear on a university transcript. Classes are small, usually around twenty students, and meet two or three days a week, which allows for discussion and detailed feedback. You can choose between half-year or full-year equivalent courses, depending on how fast you want to move through the material.
14. Annenberg Youth Academy for Media and Civic Engagement
Cost: Free
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Program Dates: June 16 – July 3
Application Deadline: April 14
Eligibility: High school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors residing and attending high school in Los Angeles County
The Annenberg Youth Academy is a three-week summer intensive for 26 carefully selected high school students designed to introduce them to college-level media communications and journalism. During the program, you spend five days a week on USC’s campus, meeting from 9 AM to 4 PM with free meals provided. The curriculum focuses on strengthening skills in writing, critical thinking, public speaking, debate, multimedia production, interviewing, and ethnography, all critical skills for understanding how media shapes civic engagement and public discourse. You work directly with USC Annenberg scholars and practitioners, including award-winning journalists and media makers, who are leading research and innovation in how communication addresses issues of race, gender, and ethnicity.
15. 826 Valencia
Cost: Free
Location: San Francisco, CA
Program Dates: July 22 – August 9
Application Deadline: April 1
Eligibility: Rising 9th–12th graders
The 826 Valencia Young Authors’ Workshop is a three-week intensive writing camp where you spend 15 full days, five days a week, from 10 AM to 3 PM, focused entirely on developing your voice as a writer. You work in small groups with published authors, experienced writing mentors, and trained tutors who provide the kind of close attention that pushes your writing forward. Each day combines writing time, workshop-style feedback, and discussion of published work that shows you how professional writers approach revision and craft. You explore multiple genres like fiction, poetry, and personal narrative, trying different approaches to find what resonates with you.
One more option – Horizon Academic Research Program
If you’re looking for a competitive mentored research program in subjects like political theory, philosophy, history, sociology, cultural studies, and ethics, 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!
Image Source – Pomona College logo