The Accel Scholars program empowers undergraduate engineering and computer science students at UC Berkeley through unparalleled access to Silicon Valley, personalized mentorship, and industry-relevant curriculum. This program is a joint venture between Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel and UC Berkeley’s EECS department.
Accel Scholars are equipped with opportunities to learn about and move forward in different career paths (engineering, product management, entrepreneurship, etc). The curriculum covers topics not generally taught in class — how to become a great engineer, how to grow your career, how to build your professional network, how to raise money and start a company, and so on.
Accel Scholars will attend regular dinners with industry professionals and experts (founders, heads of engineering, PMs, etc) from Silicon Valley, all the while building relationships with their close cohort and expanding network of Accel Scholars. Every fall semester, scholars are taken on a field trip to various company headquarters to hear directly from the leaders behind Silicon Valley’s most influential companies. Past companies include: Uber, Dropbox, Slack, Doordash, PagerDuty, and IronClad.
We endeavor to get to know each student in our program; individually, so that we can provide targeted, unique, and considered mentorship to help you begin your career on the best possible terms. We work with each student to surface opportunities, leverage our network in your favor, and coach you through recruiting to help you land in a compelling opportunity for the summer and onwards.
Accel Scholars is open to all undergraduate students at UC Berkeley. We do not have a GPA or age minimum,but we do strongly prefer intended or accepted CS and EECS majors. We are looking for exceptional students who have demonstrated leadership, excellence in their academic or professional pursuits, and/or deep passion in a particular area of their discipline.
The application deadline is April 5, 2020.
Accel is a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders from inception through all phases of growth. We’re fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with world-changing companies such as Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Spotify, Atlassian, Etsy, Jet.com, Squarespace, InVision, Flipkart, Qualtrics, Supercell, and many more.
EECS Chair Prof. James Demmel said the department is thankful for the opportunity to “partner with Accel and its network to provide a fast-track for an exceptionally talented and diverse cohort of undergraduates, who will benefit from mentorship by Accel but also by and from one another."