UCL India Summer School 2024

UCL's first ever Summer School outside of the UK, based at the state-of-the-art campus of The British School New Delhi, will give pre-university students in India a taste of what it’s like to study at a world-leading UK university.

Applications 2024

The application deadline for our 2024 summer school was 23 February. Our pathways are now full.

If you are still interested in the 2024 summer school please complete the application form below; eligible candidates will be placed on our waiting list.

The 2024 UCL India Summer School aims to widen access to education by bringing UCL professors to India from London. The 2024 UCL India Summer School is targeted at current Grade 11 students in India.

Students will gain from a rigorous and exciting curriculum taught in person by professors from one of the world’s leading universities.

UCL has been ranked in the top 10 of the QS World University Rankings for 12 consecutive years, putting it in the top 1% of institutions assessed. UCL is also proud to be The Times and Sunday Times UK University of the Year 2024.

Key details

Dates: Monday 10 June – Friday 14 June 2024

Timings: 9am-4pm daily

Location: The British School New Delhi, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021

APPLY HERE

Cost

UCL’s India Summer School is a non-profit, access-to-education programme that marks our desire to engage with India in a spirit of partnership.

The Summer School fee for the 2024 programme will be INR 38,000. This fee has been set as low as possible. The fee will be payable in rupees directly to The British School New Delhi.

No profits accrue to either The British School New Delhi or UCL.

Teaching and learning

Our cutting edge, multi-disciplinary teaching programme will be taught in person by professors travelling to India from London for one week.

The Summer School will require participants to think creatively, across disciplines, and to apply high-level knowledge and analysis to solving real-world problems.

Students will receive immersive seminar teaching (class sizes capped at 10) in their chosen pathway subject.

Students can choose from one of the following pathways:

Psychology and the Human Brain

Pathway Lead:
Daniel C. Richardson, Professor of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Brain Sciences, UCL

This seminar series will introduce students to the foundational ideas and everyday applications of experimental psychology and neuroscience. Through this approach, we will cover a range of topics such as the mind and the brain, perception, behaviour change, knowledge and learning. Experiencing this cycle of enquiry and evidence will give students the psychological literacy to integrate knowledge across psychology and apply it to the world around them. Each seminar will be framed by a simple question, such as:

Why do people see ghosts?
Can you trust your memory?
How can you change people’s behaviour?

We will use the scientific method and cut across traditional disciplines looking for answers. Students will be introduced to key conceptual issues, methodological approaches and significant findings in scientific psychology, their historical background, and the kinds of empirical evidence on which these findings are based. Students will be encouraged to think critically and evaluate their own behaviour through in-class experiments. A scientific approach will be developed through an appreciation of how empirical data can be used to test competing theories.

Medical Sciences and Artificial Intelligence

Pathway Lead:
John Hurst, Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, UCL

Hello, future science superstars! Are you ready to explore the incredible convergence of medicine and artificial intelligence? Then sign up for ten sessions of interactive deep dives into the cutting edge of this game-changing field. Forget sci-fi robot surgical assistants (that’s the reality now, not the future), we will explore the real-world ways AI is revolutionising the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. From pandemics to personalised medicine, AI is helping us prepare for the future, deciphering medical images with superhuman accuracy and predicting disease outbreaks before they happen. AI is rewriting the healthcare rulebook. Think you need a PhD to understand it? Absolutely not! This series is designed for young people with a passion for science, technology, and medicine. No prior knowledge is needed, just boundless curiosity and a thirst to explore the unknown. Some of the questions we will consider include:

Can AI replace doctors?
How does AI spot cancers the size of a grain of rice on a scan?
How can AI help us predict the unpredictable in medical science?
What about the downsides of AI?

To answer these questions, we'll crack open the AI toolbox and understand how algorithms learn to recognize diseases, recommend treatments, and even perform virtual surgery. We'll explore how algorithms predict disease outbreaks, and tailor treatments to your DNA. And with great power comes great responsibility, and AI in healthcare is no exception. We will consider and debate the ethical challenges of AI in medicine, from privacy to bias, and discuss how to ensure AI serves humanity for good – not harm. We'll also delve into the magic of medical imaging and see how AI is giving doctors superpowers to see inside the body like never before. This is just the tip of the iceberg! Be ready for interactive workshops, debates, and Q&A sessions where you can share your own ideas. This isn't just a summer school, it's an adventure into the frontiers of medicine. Are you ready to be at the forefront of this revolution? Join us!

Creative and Cultural Industries

Pathway Lead:
Kirstin Smith, Lecturer in Creative Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, UCL

In today’s world, machines can perform more and more complex tasks. Likewise, humans can do more and more with the assistance of machines. This seminar series takes you into the world of human creativity and culture, giving you ideas, tools, and approaches that enable you to address problems through collaboration and creativity. We’ll combine philosophical exploration and cultural criticism with practical exercises, to ask:

What is it that humans can, and need to do that machines can’t?
What is the nature of creativity, understood in different contexts as divine inspiration, an emulation of nature, the work of an individual genius, the expression of an unconscious, or the product of chance, play, and experiment?
What are the ethical and political dimensions of creativity: who gets to be a ‘genius’?
What are the ethics of using experience from life as material?

Exploring philosophical ideas and cultural histories, this seminar series invites you to learn in a hands-on fashion, finding out how modes such as play, disruption, randomness, the automatic and unconscious, even failure, copying, and ‘uncreativity’, can all result in creative outcomes. These methodologies apply not only in creative and cultural industries, but in any organisation where problem solving, innovation, and imagining alternative futures is necessary — that is, everywhere you will study and work in the future!

Management, Business, and Law

Pathway Lead:
Manzur Rashid, Associate Professor of Management, Faculty of Engineering, UCL

Do you want to learn how to think strategically and solve real world problems using Game Theory, a key theoretical approach in economics that is often applied in business, management, and law? This pathway will help you to understand the principles of Game Theory and how Game Theory can be applied in real-world situations. Game Theory is a theoretical framework for understanding motivations and rational actions among competing players. Game Theory could be described as a science of strategy. It is an exciting and relevant subject for students, which you can apply to analyse any strategic environment. During the course of the seminar, we will ask:

What is a ‘game’ in Game Theory?
How can we model real-life situations as ‘games’?
How do we ‘solve’ games using key approaches strategies?

You will explore the core concepts and tools of Game Theory, such as ‘Nash equilibrium’, mixed strategies, sequential games, Extensive Form games, Perfect Equilibrium, and Incredible Threats. You will also see how Game Theory can be applied to various topics in business, management and law including: incentives and optimal contract design; principal-agent problems; cartels and anti-competitive practices, as well as wider social and economic questions such as industrial organisation; voting; environmental issues; and ‘arms races’. We will explore how to bid in a competitive tender; price competition; quantity competition; and how to give incentives to individuals, firms, or countries to do certain things, such as reduced carbon emissions. This course will prepare you for more advanced courses in economic theory and enhance your analytical skills. Join us for an interactive and engaging learning experience with lectures, exercises, and discussions. Join us and become a master of Game Theory!

Climate Change and Cities of the Future

Pathway Lead:
Priti Parikh, Professor of Infrastructure Engineering, The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, UCL

Currently around 49% of people in India live in slums or informal settlements in cities. They are the key engines and workforce of cities and bear the double burden of poor housing and infrastructure, as well as the adverse impacts of climate change. Climate change is a reality and is now a crisis reflected in summers which are hotter, and in erratic rainfall patterns. This seminar series will reflect on vulnerable communities in India’s cities with a view to addressing those challenges for the ‘cities of the future’. In this seminar series we will visit a slum settlement on Day 1 and then reflect on the following questions:

What are the day-to-day lived experiences of people living in slums?
How are slums currently coping with poor housing and infrastructure, combined with climate impacts?
What are the key priorities and needs of communities from a built environment perspective?
Why does climate justice matter?
How can our future cities become more climate resilient and equitable?

We will consider day-to-day lived experiences of residents who live in poor housing stock with limited infrastructure services. As part of this exercise, you will think about which services are most important to slum dwellers to make a case for funding. We will also examine the benefits of good infrastructure, built environment, and sustainability and the intersections of these with climate change. A group activity on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) will enable you to show the wide-ranging benefits of improving living conditions in slums on health, education, environment, income, and poverty. You will also be given the chance to make a presentation of your newly-acquired knowledge, to showcase how future cities can be slum free.

Public Policy in Science, Engineering, and Technology

Pathway Lead:
Nidhi Chaudhury, Assistant Professor in Development, Technology and Innovation Policy, Faculty of Engineering, UCL

What is it that connects - and has a strong impact on - business, law, science, engineering, and technology today? The answer is public policy, which has the power to create environments that foster innovation and build just and more inclusive societies. Some of our biggest challenges are transdisciplinary in nature: climate emergency, unsustainable resource consumption, food insecurity, the rise of persistent conflicts, technological advances, and global health crises. These problems are interconnected. They require knowledge from science, engineering, technology, and social sciences to create innovative and concrete solutions. This seminar series will reflect on some of these challenges through the lens of public policy and its design, looking analytically at how we can create an enabling environment for solving these urgent problems. No prior knowledge is required here, just a thirst for learning new things and imagining the world through different lenses! Each seminar will be framed by a question, such as:

What is public policy, and why does it matter in the context of science, technology, engineering and related disciplines?
How can public policy design drive socio-technological innovation?
How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) be used for engaging citizens in solving policy issues for science, engineering, and technology?
How is the ‘nudge’ agenda in policy being used to solve society’s ‘wicked’ problems?

To explore these questions, we will cover core concepts around the design of public policies, thinking about actors and institutions, citizens, local communities, civil society, politicians, government bodies, all of which constrain and shape the policymaking process for bringing about social change. These seminars have a strong applied focus, where you will be encouraged to think analytically and share your ideas through interactive exercises such as role play, real-life simulation exercises, and debates. A group activity on one of these transdisciplinary problems - such as air pollution - along with presentation of its findings will enable you to understand the challenges and opportunities governments face in solving these complex policy issues in science and engineering.

All students will also benefit from the interactive lecture course ‘Disagreeing Well: arguing, listening, and learning in academia (and life)’, as well as a range of study skills, careers, and alumni engagement sessions.

On completion

In addition to their academic tuition, all students will receive a certificate of participation and a personalised academic report card.

The summer school programme culminates in a valedictory event at which students will be able to present their work to an audience of family, friends, and professors.

Eligibility

Admission will be by merit, based on class 10 public examination results or equivalent (e.g. IGCSE or IB pathway results results).
Offers will be made to those meeting the admissions criteria on a first-come-first-served basis.
For admission to the UCL India Summer School 2024, the minimum average overall score in the class 10 public examination is 90%. You will be asked to upload an official copy of your transcript to verify your overall average score.
In addition, for admission to the UCL India Summer School 2024, the minimum average overall score in the class 10 public examination for English Language and Literature is 90%. Again, you will be asked to upload a separate transcript to confirm your score in the English language and literature examination.
Please note the UCL India Summer School is non-residential.
Places on the programme are limited to 50 students, and there are only 10 places available in each of the five pathways.
Current class 10 students may apply and should upload their pre-board exam results, but please note that class 11 students will be assessed first and where they meet the admissions criteria, they will be given priority.
Applications for the 2024 UCL India Summer School must be submitted before the deadline which is midnight IST on Friday 23 February 2024.

Enquiries

For any enquiries, please contact vpee.indiasummerschool@ucl.ac.uk.

Apply here

Please fill in the form below or access the form on a separate page.

For details on how we use personal data submitted in relation to the India Summer School, please read our UCL India Summer School Privacy Notice (pdf).

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