November 22, 2024 | 8 minute read

Founder's Note - Updates to Algoverse Admissions and Tuition

Hi all, this is Kevin. I wanted to share some important updates about the program tuition and admissions. First to mention, is that starting December 1st, 2024, the tuition for Algoverse’s AI Research Program will increase from $1,725 to $2,325. I wanted to be transparent about why this change is happening.

Last year when Sean and I created the program, we intentionally limited the tuition price as much as we feasibly could in order to increase accessibility to high-quality research mentorship for ambitious students, regardless of their background or connections. Our fee is significantly lower than other programs that provide roughly the same degree of support, which typically range in the $5,000–$10,000 range.

Our primary goals have always been to produce high-quality research and provide an educational experience that rivals what you’d get at top universities, without the barriers of cost or exclusivity.

All Algoverse staff members are AI researchers. I handle many full-time positions simultaneously, ranging from operations to finances, and I still spend most of my time running the program itself–contributing to research across many teams and meeting with students, mentors, and parents. We’ve kept our team incredibly lean to keep our costs as low as possible. However, as people have begun to hear about Algoverse, the demand for our program has grown substantially in the past year. In order to continue offering the same level of mentorship and research quality, there comes a point where we need to hire more team members.

Our mentors and staff truly go above and beyond - they’re a large part of why our students have been fortunate enough to publish their papers at top conferences like NeurIPS, ACL, and EMNLP. The additional funding will allow us to compensate our team for the incredible work they do and make Algoverse a more sustainable program for everyone involved.

One fact that illustrates this point is that we’ve historically supported student groups that needed additional time to write and revise their research papers even beyond the 12-week program to ensure their research and paper is complete for conference submissions. This is not financially feasible to sustain, but our mentors and I have been happy to do this anyways. The increased tuition will allow us to hire more mentors for future cohorts and reduce the workload on our current team.

With the increased tuition, there is also some great news–the increased funds we’ll have from the increased tuition will allow us to increase the number of scholarships we offer. This first year of Algoverse has been amazing. We’ve awarded over $100,000 in scholarships, supporting low-income students across the world, including the US, Nepal, India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Germany, Moldova, and more.

However, our scholarship has become incredibly competitive due to the large volume of applicants, and it will likely only get more competitive as time goes on. This tuition change will give us flexibility to support more students in the coming year, as well as expanding our soft threshold eligibility for scholarships from $40,000 USD to $70,000 USD.

If you apply to our Spring 2025 cohort before December 1, 2024 and are admitted, we will grandfather you at our $1,725 price point. This is our way of thanking early applicants for their enthusiasm and commitment to our program. No further action is required on your part.

I’m incredibly grateful for the trust and excitement you’ve shown Algoverse. It’s definitely been the most rewarding experience of my career so far. We’re excited for what’s ahead and can’t wait to see what our students will accomplish next.

Cheers,
Kevin Zhu