Finding Opportunities Near You
This site doesn't know where you live, and it's not going to ask — there's no location feature here, on purpose. What it can do is tell you exactly what to search for and where to look, so you can find what's actually near you yourself.
What to actually search for
Most of these are already mentioned across this site, gathered here in one place with exactly how to look for them:
- Your school's clubs list — a STEM club, robotics team, or Science Olympiad team may already exist and just not be widely advertised. Ask a science or math teacher directly, not just the school website.
- "FIRST Robotics," "FIRST Tech Challenge," or "FIRST LEGO League" plus your city or region — FIRST LEGO League alone runs in about 110 countries, and FIRST Robotics Competition in around 30, so this is one of the few searches on this list likely to work outside the U.S. too.
- "MATHCOUNTS" plus your school district — a national middle school math competition, usually run through schools (U.S.-specific).
- "[a nearby university] pre-college program" or "[a nearby university] summer engineering" — many universities run summer programs for high schoolers, some free or low-cost.
- Your local library's website or a community bulletin board — some libraries and maker spaces run free STEM or electronics workshops.
- "[a nearby hospital] teen volunteer program" — a real way to get exposure to a medical setting if biomedical engineering interests you.
- Your local community college's dual-enrollment page — a real way to take a college-level math or science class while still in high school, sometimes at reduced cost (a U.S.-specific institution; ask a school counselor what your country's equivalent looks like).
Not in the U.S.?
Most of this site's specific program names — MATHCOUNTS, AMC, "community college" — are U.S. institutions, because that's the schooling system this site's author actually knows firsthand. FIRST's programs are a real exception: FIRST LEGO League operates in roughly 110 countries and FIRST Robotics Competition in around 30, so that search is worth trying wherever you are. Beyond that, the honest answer is that a school counselor or science teacher in your own country will know your local equivalents far better than this site can guess at — the underlying advice ("look for a robotics team, a math competition, a university outreach program") applies everywhere, even where the specific names don't.
If your area doesn't have much
Availability varies enormously by where you live, and that's not a reflection of you or your effort. A few things that don't depend on location:
- The hands-on challenges on this site — no lab or club required.
- Free online resources like Khan Academy and PhET simulations, both already linked from this site's math and concepts pages.
- AMC (American Mathematics Competitions), which many schools can administer even without an existing math team.
- Asking a teacher directly whether they'd help start a club — sometimes one just needs a first student to ask.