What TASC is actually like

This is Wednesday of TASC ’26, unedited. Days differed, but they all had roughly this shape.

1. 7:15Wake up
2. 7:30Breakfast, and a short meeting to set up the day
3. 8:50Track timeYour track, with your instructor. The long block of the day.
4. 11:30Lunch
5. 12:30Track timeThe second block. For two of the tracks this is often lab work.
6. 2:00Capture the flag in the gymOptional. Plenty of people came.
7. 3:00Two sessions running at once, and you pickIn ’26 one was on why we sleep and dream. The other was an ethics session where the room argues.
8. 3:45A workshop run by the TAsOptional, whole group.
9. 5:00Dinner
10. 6:00Taking apart something you wantYou name a goal. Then you work out what you are actually after underneath it, and whether there is a faster or cheaper way to get that thing. People frequently discover they wanted something adjacent to what they said.
11. 7:00The important questions nobody is working onEveryone names the biggest unsolved problem in the thing they care about, then asks out loud why they are not working on it. Then the circle pushes back.
12. 9:30Movie night
13. 11:00Lights out

Mornings and early afternoons are track time. Late afternoons are talks, workshops, and games. Evenings are where the arguing happens.

You choose your track at the opening ceremony on the first evening, after you have met the instructors. Two of the four run genuine labs.

No track assumes prior experience. Students have arrived having never written a line of code or set foot in a lab and done well, because instructors teach to whoever is in the room. There are no grades, no tests, and no credit. Nothing here goes on a transcript.

Every day gives an hour or two to something other than science. These are the sessions students bring up a year later, so they are worth describing properly.

• Taking apart what you want. You put a real goal on the table and work out what you are actually after underneath it. It is common to find that the thing you named was a proxy for something else, and that there is a cheaper route to the real thing.
• The questions nobody is working on. Everyone names the biggest unsolved problem in the field they care about, and then has to say out loud why they are not working on it. The rest of the room does not let weak answers pass.
• Guessing well. A contest where you estimate quantities you cannot look up, and you submit a range. You are scored both on being right and on being honest about how sure you are. Confidently wrong does badly, which surprises people.
• How arguments get made dishonestly. A session on the moves people use to win arguments they should lose, run so you can recognize them, including when you are the one reaching for them.
• Where your values came from. Your stated values, examined for whether you actually hold them or inherited them without looking. Nobody tells you what to conclude.
• Doing something slightly uncomfortable. A workshop built on picking a small thing that is a little outside what you would normally do, and then actually doing it that week, with everyone else doing theirs.
• Late-night arguments with no clean answer. Ethical dilemmas, discussed until people change their minds or find out exactly where they disagree. Entirely optional. Well attended anyway.

What makes TASC unusual is that being wrong out loud is treated as ordinary and useful. Your instructors are undergraduates a few years older than you, they sit in the same rooms as you all week, and they will say so when they do not know something.

The standard we hold is that you should be able to state the strongest real version of the argument against your own position, the one its best advocate would actually make.

We mean this seriously enough that it is in the application. One of the four essay prompts you can choose from is to make the most persuasive argument you can that this program is not an effective use of MIT and the PKG Center’s funding. Students who take that prompt and do it well are exactly who we are looking for.

The first afternoon opens with basketball, then speed friending, then a scavenger hunt around campus, because 25 people who do not know each other need a reason to talk. After that, scattered through the week: capture the flag in the gym, a trebuchet building contest, a Wikipedia navigation tournament, board games, karaoke, a movie night, an optional ballet workshop taught by one of the TAs, and a short walk most evenings before dinner.

There is some free time every day, and most people spend it with the people they just met.

The ’26 cohort was 25 students from 5 states and more than 10 tribal nations, ages 15 to 18. The program is designed and run by MIT undergraduates, overseen by the MIT Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, and hosted at the University of Tulsa. You will also be around the MIT undergraduates spending that summer interning with Native nations and Tulsa nonprofits.

The teaching assistants are former students. All three in ’26 had been TASC students themselves the year before, which is the normal way to come back.

Guest visitors in ’26 included Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. of the Cherokee Nation, Rep. Kevin Hern, Stacy Leeds, Levi Patrick, Amanda Swope of the City of Tulsa, Zahmiria Johnson, Rocky Jia of the Wordspring Initiative, Alexandra Leviness, and admissions officers from MIT and NYU. We cannot promise the same lineup twice, but that is the kind of week it is.

• Where you stay. A residence hall on campus. Most students share a double.
• Meals. All of them, in the campus dining hall. Tell us about dietary restrictions and we handle it.
• Laundry. Available.
• Laptops. Bring one if you like. You do not need one for any track.
• Phones. Yours to keep. You will be busier than you expect.
• Cost. None. Travel, housing, meals, and materials are covered, and there is no application fee.

Staff are with you throughout, and if an activity is not for you, you can step aside from it. Just tell someone.