Spend the summer building a real app that other people actually end up using.
Six weeks of live sessions, a dedicated 1:1 mentor, and a deployment coach who stays in the room until your student has a working URL to share with anyone who asks what they've been building.
A build studio with a working engineer next to you
Most of each week is spent directing AI to write and review code while a working engineer sits next to your student and explains what's happening. No syntax drills, no leetcode warmups.
A real project and the words to talk about it
Every student ships a deployed app at a public URL and gets coached on how to write and talk about it — for the Common App project section, for portfolios, and for the interview where someone asks them to describe something they've built.
Mentors who teach and ship
Every cohort lead has both classroom hours and production code to their name — harder to find in one person than you'd expect. It means they know the parts that actually trip first-time builders up.
A few kinds of things students build.
Robotics-team attendance app
react + firebase · texts parentsCollege-essay feedback tool
next.js · structured rubric feedbackAP Bio flashcard agent
python · spaced repetition over a unit's vocabCafeteria menu translator
civic-impact build · shareable with a parent groupWe won't pretend a summer project guarantees anything.
We're not a college-admissions service, and we won't pretend a single summer project changes the math on selective admissions. What your student leaves with is a deployed thing they made themselves — and that ends up being a better answer to "tell me about something you built" than a certificate or a generic activity. Demo day is open to family and, if you'd like to bring one, to admissions counselors.
Eight founding seats.
- 12 live build sessions and open studio hours
- A 1:1 project mentor for the full six weeks
- Deployment coaching until it's live at a real public URL
- Story coaching for essays, interviews & portfolios
- Demo day with invited guests
- Reference letter on request
The founding rate is in exchange for a candid testimonial and permission to feature the project on our build wall.
Apply for a founding seatThe Launch Kit.
Every student leaves with three artifacts that turn a built project into something admissions counselors and reporters can actually read.
A press-release template & pitch coaching
What you built, why it matters, and where to send it — the local paper, the school newsletter, the right subreddit. We help you target realistic outlets, with no promises about who picks it up.
A student-to-school adoption letter
A short, professional note your student can send to a principal, IT director, or club advisor offering the tool to the school. The letter — and the response it generates — often ends up the most-cited line on the Common App activities section.
An honest mentor recommendation
Observation-based, always included, never a paid add-on. Strictly factual: what the mentor watched the student do over six weeks. We don't promise outcomes and we don't write glowing letters to order. We write true ones.
What the structure actually commits to.
Chris Meehan — founder
Hi, I'm Chris. I built this for the kid who already has the idea — and just needs someone in the room who can actually help them ship it.
I'm a teacher who also writes real code. So I get both halves of this: I know how to explain a thing until it clicks, and I've shipped the kinds of apps you'll be building — the ones that actually go live and that people use.
I won't talk down to you. If you've never coded, that's normal — about half of every cohort hasn't. You'll learn to direct the AI, check its work, and get something real working. If you already code, we go deeper.
The whole job is to get you to "done." Plenty of people can hand you a tutorial. The hard part is the messy middle, where most projects quietly die. That's exactly where I sit next to you until your thing is live.
For the families reading this: ~15 years in education, degrees from Brown, LMU, and UCLA, and a stack of tools I've built and run at school. The short version — your student is in experienced hands.
Questions, answered straight.
Why $1,100? What exactly is my student getting, and why only 8 seats?
$1,100 is the founding rate, with $1,850 as the standard rate after the first cohort. There are eight seats because this is a solo-run program with a real 1:1 mentor per student for the full six weeks, and eight is the actual capacity rather than a number we picked for scarcity. For that, your student gets twelve live build sessions, a dedicated mentor, deployment coaching until the project is genuinely live, story coaching on how to talk about it, and a demo day. A private CS tutor at the same contact hours runs well past this and wouldn't produce a shipped project at the end. Payment plan available (four payments of $275).
What if my student builds nothing by demo day?
That's the one outcome the whole structure is built to prevent. We set scope small and realistic in week one, and the mentor's specific job is to make sure one thing ships. A small working tool is the win we're aiming for, and the structure is designed to keep ambitious-but-unfinished projects from being the alternative. (Mentors check in twice a week between live sessions.)
Is this for the Common App? Will it help with college?
We don't promise admissions outcomes, because nobody honest can. What we do promise is a specific, public project your student can talk about, link to, and keep improving after the cohort ends, along with coaching on how to write and talk about it. That ends up being a defensible answer when an admissions reader or interviewer asks them to describe something they've built, in a way that generic activities and test prep usually aren't.
Does my student need to know how to code already?
No. About half of each cohort starts with no programming background. Students with coding experience go deeper, and students without it learn how to direct AI, review outputs, and ship the result. We care more about curiosity and follow-through than prior syntax.
Can this count toward AP CSP?
If your student takes AP Computer Science Principles, the project they build here can usually be submitted as the Create Performance Task — just ask and we'll help line it up. It's a bonus, not the point of the program.
Watch us build a classroom tool live, in under an hour.
We pick something the audience submits during registration, build it end-to-end on the call, and deploy it to a public URL before we hang up. Free, and open to teachers, parents, students, and admins. We send the recording the next morning if you can't make it.