The Atlas Fellowship
For thoughtful students who want to understand how the world works.
Applications are expected to open mid-March.
We give 100+ high school students around the world a scholarship, a summer program, and funding + support for their projects.

For original thinkers of all backgrounds.
We want to ensure that students from nontraditional and underprivileged backgrounds can participate in our programs. That's why everything about the Atlas Fellowship (including travel, food, and accommodation) is free.
We designed our application to let talented students of all flavors shine. If you're exceptionally smart, thoughtful, or entrepreneurial—even if you don't have test scores or a conventionally impressive resume—then the Atlas Fellowship is for you.

Fellows are invited to an 11-day, fully-funded summer program in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We offer four different dates: June 12–23, July 3–14, July 17–28, and August 14–25.
The goal is to understand the forces that shape the world and the ways people have come to understand how the world works. We don't just want you to memorize a collection of facts—we want you to have the ability to confront tangled data and draw your own conclusions from it.


The funding, mentorship, and community you need to excel.
That's why Atlas Fellows get access to the million-dollar Atlas Fund to bring their startups, experiments, and ambitious ideas into reality.
The Atlas community is full of co-conspirators, mentors, and ideas to help you refine your understanding of the world and solve whatever problems you choose to tackle.
The Atlas Fellowship is a program for talented high school students to develop big-picture thinking about science, philosophy, and the future.
This isn’t just another summer program – this is a research project and global talent search for people who will help tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems and steer the future of our civilization.
We think bright students can build amazing things, but they rarely have the funding, mentorship, or teammates to do so. We want to make sure the only barrier to great ideas is the laws of physics.


The Atlas Fellowship’s unique emphasis on casual discussion and individual thinking was at once invigorating, exhilarating, and inspiring. The fascinating concepts I learned and debated with my peers in this community led me on pathways to the impact that I’ve always wanted to make.
The Atlas Approach
When did you figure out that Covid-19 was going to be a pandemic that would impact us all? How do computers really work? Why is humanity able to build sophisticated devices like computers, but unable to fix scientific publishing? How might advanced AI systems shape our future? Through big-picture thinking about science, philosophy, and the future, our goal is to help you build models of what’s going on for humanity, and what that implies for you.
Are you setting your own priorities for your life, or are you letting others set them for you?
We want to help you develop agency – the skill of taking actions towards your goals by strategically choosing what to work on, looking places where others don't, developing a hacker mindset to find unconventional solutions, and putting in the hard work to actually make them happen.
We want to empower you to take risks. But we don’t expect you to do it alone!
You’ll meet like-minded colleagues at summer programs, reunions, and in our online community. Beyond that, you’ll gain direct access to our global network of leaders, thinkers, and philanthropists to help you supercharge your projects.
Are you interested in examining the gears of the world?
Applications for 2022 have closed, so subscribe to our newsletter to hear when applications for 2023 open up!
If you know a student who would be a good fit for the Atlas Fellowship, nominate them for 2023.