BU RISE vs UC Davis Young Scholars Program: Which One Is Right for You

BU RISE and the UC Davis Young Scholars Program land on the same shortlist constantly. Both run six weeks at a major research university, both put you in a working laboratory instead of a classroom, both charge tuition rather than paying a stipend, and both close applications in the winter before the summer you would attend.

Underneath that, they are built for different students. They admit different grades, they cover different sciences, they read completely different evidence, and they send you home holding different things. For a large share of applicants the decision is already settled by an eligibility rule, so start there before you fall in love with either one.

Eligibility settles this for a lot of students

RISE admits students entering their senior year in the fall. You apply in eleventh grade and you get exactly one attempt.

YSP admits rising juniors and rising seniors, so a strong sophomore can apply, and a student who is turned down as a rising junior can apply again the following year. YSP also carries an age rule with no flexibility in it. You must be 16 by the first day of the program and you must not turn 18 before the last day. The 2026 session ran June 21 to August 1, so a rising senior with a summer birthday can be ruled out by the calendar alone. RISE has no equivalent restriction.

Both programs accept only United States citizens and permanent residents, and YSP additionally requires that you currently live in the US and attend school here.

Field is the other hard filter. YSP places students in the biological, agricultural, environmental and natural sciences. RISE spans a much wider range, including astronomy, biology, biomedical engineering, chemistry, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, medical laboratory research, neuroscience, physics, psychology and public health. If you are a physicist, an engineer or a computer scientist, only one of these two programs has a lab for you.

What the summer actually looks like at BU RISE

RISE runs six weeks at Boston University. The 2026 session ran June 28 to August 7.

The program has two tracks, and they are genuinely different summers. On the Internship track you are matched with a single mentor, who may be a faculty member, a postdoctoral researcher or a graduate student, and you spend 40 hours a week on a project that mentor designs for you. You learn who your mentor is and what they work on before you accept the offer, but you do not learn your specific project until the first week of the program.

On the Practicum track you work in a group on a computational research project under instructional staff rather than inside a faculty lab. In 2026 the two options were Computational Neurobiology and Data Science. Practicum students are told to bring a laptop that can handle real software installs, which tells you accurately how much of the work is code. This track is also the only one that comes with a written evaluation from your instructor at the end.

One day a week, both tracks come together for professional development workshops covering things like research ethics, academic and professional skills, and talks from working researchers. The summer ends with a Poster Symposium where every student presents results.

RISE is not for credit. Everyone leaves with a certificate of completion, and Practicum students also leave with that instructor evaluation.

Scale is worth understanding. About 190 students attend RISE across both tracks, with roughly 80 of them on the Internship track in recent years. You live and socialize alongside students from BU's High School Honors and Academic Immersion programs, another 100 to 200 teenagers who are taking classes rather than doing research. Most RISE students live in the dorms, with an 11pm weeknight curfew, though you are allowed to commute from a relative's home in the Boston area.

What the summer actually looks like at UC Davis YSP

YSP runs six weeks at UC Davis. The 2026 session ran June 21 to August 1.

The cohort is about 40 students, and every single one of them is doing research. There is no parallel population of classroom students to blend into. You work one on one with a faculty researcher and their group in a university lab, on an individual project.

You do not choose that project and you do not rank mentors. You are told your assignment when you arrive on the first day. Alongside the lab work there is a morning lecture series taught by UC Davis professors across the sciences, and Saturday field trips to science sites around Northern California that count as part of the program. Housing in the dorms is required, with no commuter option.

What you produce is the part that separates YSP from most summer programs. You keep research notebooks, you write a paper at journal quality describing your project and its conclusions, you present that work at a research symposium at the end of the summer, and then you present it again to students at your own high school in the fall. All of it is graded.

Completing that sequence earns you five units of University of California Group Study credit, which is real university credit on a UC transcript rather than a certificate. The credit is not released until the home high school presentation is finished, which means your obligation to the program runs into the following school year.

How BU RISE selects its class

You apply directly, with no school nomination in the way, and BU requires that the student submit the application personally rather than a parent, counselor or agent.

BU says decisions weigh your high school grades, the rigor of the courses you took, standardized test scores, your essays and one recommendation. Testing was optional for the 2026 cycle. Your transcript must run from ninth grade forward and include your fall grades from the year you apply, and BU publishes an unusually direct benchmark for a program of this kind, stating that the most competitive applicants carry a cumulative unweighted GPA in the A minus to A range.

You write three essays. One on why you chose your subject of interest, capped at 300 words. One on your academic achievements, capped at 250. One on why you want to attend RISE, capped at 200. Internship applicants write a fourth, naming three BU faculty members and explaining how their research lines up with your own interests, capped at 250 words.

The single recommendation should come from a STEM teacher, a guidance counselor or a research supervisor who has worked with you for at least six months. Tutors, coaches and test prep instructors are not accepted. It is also not a free form letter. BU sends your recommender a form of multiple choice questions plus one open response field, and outside letters cannot be substituted.

The 2026 deadline was February 4, with recommendations due February 11, a $75 application fee, and decisions roughly six to eight weeks after the deadline.

The mechanism that decides Internship admissions is the piece most applicants miss. Passing the initial committee review does not get you in. It advances you to a matching phase, where your file is circulated to researchers whose interests align with yours, including but not limited to the three faculty you named. You receive an offer only if a faculty member agrees to host you. BU states plainly that not everyone who advances gets an offer, and that your odds vary by field, with the hardest fields being those that draw a crowd of applicants or that have few researchers available to take an intern that year.

That means the field you declare is a strategic choice, not just a description of your interests. Declaring the most popular subject on campus puts you in the longest queue for the smallest number of host slots.

How UC Davis YSP selects its class

YSP opens January 1 and closes March 1, with teacher references accepted through March 3. Nothing is read until after the deadline, so there is no advantage to submitting early. Decisions arrive by April 15, with the program aiming for April 1.

YSP publishes its acceptance rate, which sits around 10 to 15 percent for roughly 40 seats.

The file itself is short and specific. You submit your school information including both weighted and unweighted GPA, a summary of your activities, interests and any research experience, two teacher references, and five essays. The references are submitted on the program's own online form. One must come from a science teacher and the other from a teacher in another subject. Recommendations from counselors and outside mentors are discouraged, and formal letters of recommendation are neither required nor read.

Notice what is absent. No test scores anywhere in the process. No resume, no awards list, no publications, no portfolio. Supplemental materials will not be reviewed by the committee. Your case is carried entirely by your transcript, your two references, your activity summary and your writing.

That writing is substantial. Four essays run to 255 words each, covering what you hope to gain from the summer and how you will apply it, what makes you stand out from other applicants, a strength plus something that might hinder your success, and the most rewarding experience you have had in a high school science course. The fifth is a 140 character message to the admissions committee. Citations count against the word limits. We wrote a prompt by prompt guide to these essays that goes through each one.

The application fee is $25 and is waived for any student who requests a waiver before the deadline. Fee reduction requests are submitted alongside the application but are opened only after selections are made, so asking for one cannot affect your decision.

What each one costs

RISE published 2026 tuition of $5,930 plus $485 in service fees. Housing with 14 meals a week added $3,978, or $4,320 for the 19 meal plan. The application fee is $75 and admitted students pay a $1,000 nonrefundable deposit that is applied to tuition. A residential summer therefore lands somewhere around $10,400 to $10,700 before travel and spending money. Financial aid exists, is need based, is described by BU as limited, and has to be requested inside the application by the same February deadline. There is also the Snyder BU IMPACTS Scholarship for admitted students with demonstrated need. Commuting from a relative's home removes the housing line entirely, which is a meaningful option if you have family near Boston.

YSP charged $7,750 for 2026 plus a fully refundable $200 security deposit. That figure covers room and board for the full six weeks, the field trips, program activities and the five units of university credit. Fee reductions run on a need based sliding scale, and the program states that it aims to award up to $25,000 in reductions across the class each year.

So YSP is roughly $2,700 cheaper on sticker price, includes transcripted college credit in the fee, publishes what it intends to award in aid, and waives its application fee on request.

When BU RISE is the better fit

Choose RISE when your science is outside the life sciences. Physics, computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering, astronomy, psychology and public health all have a home at RISE and none at YSP. This one factor decides the majority of cases we see.

Choose RISE when you want a say in where you land. Naming three faculty and arguing for the alignment gives you real input into your match, and if you have already read a BU researcher's papers and can write about them precisely, that essay is where the work pays off.

RISE is also the answer when the YSP age window rules you out, which happens to plenty of rising seniors with summer birthdays, and when you have family in the Boston area you could commute from.

Finally, RISE suits a student whose strongest evidence is a long, clean transcript with heavy course rigor. BU weighs grades and rigor explicitly and names its benchmark, so a student sitting comfortably in that A minus to A unweighted range with demanding coursework knows where they stand before applying.

When UC Davis YSP is the better fit

Choose YSP if you are a rising junior. It is the only one of the two open to you, and getting in a year earlier gives you a full senior year to extend the work, publish it, enter it in competition or build a second project on top of it.

Choose YSP if your field is biology, agriculture, environmental science or the natural sciences, and especially if it sits in an area where UC Davis is a genuine national center, such as plant science, agricultural systems, veterinary and animal science, or ecology.

Choose YSP when you want the written artifact. A journal quality paper that you drafted, defended at a symposium and presented again to your own school, backed by five units of graded University of California credit, is a substantially stronger piece of evidence than a poster and a certificate when an admissions reader is deciding whether your research was real work or a summer of shadowing.

The small cohort matters too. Forty students, all researchers, all in the same lecture series and on the same Saturday field trips, produces a tighter group than a research track embedded inside a much larger pre college population.

YSP is also the better bet if your writing and your teachers are your strongest assets. With no test scores and no supplemental materials in the file, five essays and two teacher references carry nearly the entire decision.

What each one does for a science competition run

Neither program hands you an entry to the Regeneron Science Talent Search or to an ISEF affiliated fair, and both end in early August, which is tight against fall competition calendars.

YSP produces the right shape of artifact. A journal quality research report is close to what the Science Talent Search asks for, and the built in home high school presentation gives you a structural reason to stay in contact with your mentor into the fall, since your credit depends on finishing that step. Whether you can keep working on the project past August is still a conversation you have to have with your mentor.

RISE ends in a poster. Internship students working inside a faculty lab have a natural person to ask about continuing, and for students near Boston that continuation is logistically realistic. There is no built in mechanism for it, so you have to create one.

The practical move is identical at both programs. In the first week, ask your mentor in writing what fall access looks like and whether the data are yours to enter in competition. Authorship and ownership questions are far easier to settle before there are results on the table.

One timing note for RISE. Because it admits only rising seniors, your project finishes in August of the year you apply to college. There is no window to extend it before early applications go in. YSP as a rising junior gives you twelve months.

Applying to both

If you are a rising senior in a life science field, apply to both. The deadlines do not collide. RISE closed February 4 and YSP closed March 1, and RISE typically opens its application in mid December while YSP opens January 1, so the writing happens over winter break.

Two pieces of fall logistics are worth handling early. Your recommenders overlap but the formats do not. RISE wants one person on a multiple choice form, while YSP wants two teachers on its own online form with one of them required to teach science. Approach those teachers in September or early October and tell them both programs are coming, rather than returning to them twice in January.

The essays do not recycle. RISE's fourth essay requires reading BU faculty pages closely enough to argue for a match, while YSP's five are introspective and ask you to be specific about yourself rather than about a lab. Budget time for both sets separately.

You will usually have both answers before you have to choose. RISE decisions arrive roughly six to eight weeks after its February deadline, and YSP commits to notifying by April 15.

Get the strategy right the first time

The right program depends on your field, your grade, your birthday, what evidence in your profile is strongest, and what you want to be holding when the summer ends.

Our admissions consultants hold PhDs in the sciences and have placed students into BU RISE and other highly selective summer research programs. We help you read your own profile accurately, pick the program where your case is strongest, choose fields and faculty that give you the best matching odds, and write applications that show a research mind at work.

If you want help applying to BU RISE, the UC Davis Young Scholars Program or any other summer research program, schedule a free consultation with a college admissions expert today.