Junior Paige Mullen spent two weeks of her summer at the prestigious Harvard University Pre-College Program Summer School. Living on campus, she was able to have a college experience and gain knowledge through her studies. 

When applying for the program, one would select two classes that they would like to take, and ultimately would end up getting into one of them. “You would be taking one class for the entirety of the two weeks, all on weekdays,” Mullen said. 

“You would have lectures each day that were three hours long and then homework for about four hours, and then office hours,” Mullen said. 

Mullen decided to take the course: Introduction to Relativity. “This course includes cosmic rays and black holes in space,” Mullen said. “We walked through the history and explained each thing that was discovered, for example, we did Newton’s relativity, special relativity, and Einstein’s general relativity,” Mullen said. 

“My biggest takeaway was discovering how much of a career there can be in physics as a subject rather than engineering or an application. There is so much work done in theoretical physics and working in a lab,” Mullen said. After her time at Harvard she was able to see so many career options that she didn’t necessarily think of before.

Along with academic activities, there were also many social activities that made her experience more fun.  “It was really fun to live on campus, you were able to do many outdoor activities. They had a set amount of activities you had to complete, which included traveling into the Boston area and academic exploration,” Mullen said.

For students who want to further their education over the summer, Harvard Summer School is an opportunity for exceptional students to excel even more. In order to apply, students can visit summer.harvard.edu. For the 2026 summer, there are three sessions, June 21-July 2, July 5-17, and July 19-31.