Once you have been accepted into Shad Valley, you will be sent a form in which you can rank all of our universities in order of preference. Students usually get one of their top five picks. A typical day at Shad Valley includes two or three lectures, hands-on workshops, recreation, project time, and maybe a guest speaker. Most lectures are presented by Shad Valley faculty in the program's prime focus areas of mathematics, entrepreneurship, and various fields of science and technology, including computing and engineering. Guest professors, graduate students, and industry executives also contribute.
Workshops are intensive sessions covering a wide variety of topics each week.
Past workshops have included computer animation, jazz improvisation, cryptography, machine vision, astronomy, chromatography, forensic medicine, neurosystems, new product marketing, electronic networking, creative problem solving, chaos theory, superconductors, and much, much more. Most days include some recreation time, to enjoy aerobics, tai chi, archery, fencing, ballroom dancing, basketball, underwater hockey, or even orienteering. To round out the day, students spend some time working in their Houses. This is time to focus on group projects, brainstorm for the House Event for the weekend, rehearse skits for the variety show, or set up a musical ensemble. Every day is a new discovery.