Skills for Success Course
Pre-College and Pre-Career
Boston University
Pre-Apply for the 2025 Skills for Success Course.
Become prepared to take on the toughest challenges in your future with panache! Develop the skills that are critical to success in college and your career — but aren’t taught in conventional schooling.
Rapidly accelerate your development, working with exceptional peers in dynamic, challenging, and exciting projects that prepare you for a powerful college experience and a high-flying career, regardless of the role.
Join Upcoming Webinars
Meet founders, facilitators, and alumni at our upcoming webinars this fall. Select below which webinar you want to attend, and you’ll receive an invitation via email.
What Our Students are Saying
Ryan’s Futures Forge Experience, S4S 2024
Hear from Berra, an International Student (Istanbul, Turkey)
Hear from Olivia
“This program has triggered me to grow myself. By creating an environment for innovative approaches, facilitating open feedback and by putting students in situations where they need to problem solve effectively, Futures Forge taught me so much.”
--Olivia, S4S 2024
Hear from Zeybek
“Just do it!. You’ll learn more in 2 weeks than in 2 years of high school. You learn so many useful skills that you never learned in high school and you meet lifelong friends."
-Zeybek, S4S 2024
Founders, Leaders, Curriculum Developers
Futures Forge's founders and curriculum leads graduated from MIT and Oxford and founded multiple companies (management consulting, devtools startup, hardware startup). We have published books on political polarization, tertiary education, and technical problem-solving, and have jointly coached and managed over 100 top-talent young adults.
The foundation of our companies’ success has always been the rapid development of talented young people; our employees have gone on to found, lead, and accelerate dozens of great businesses. Today, we are developing talent all over the world using the methods we learned and developed.
We led the 2024 Skills for Success course; we had an incredible experience and are very excited for more students in the next year!
Who is Skills for Success for?
We’re looking for students who demonstrate:
Scores in the top 20% of standardized cognitive tests
A passion for learning and intellectual curiosity
Ambition to excel and lead
A collaborative mindset
Adaptability and resilience in challenging situations
A clear focus on future success and impact
What Students Learn in the Skills for Success Course
Through hands-on challenges, presentations and feedback, reflection, and cognitive exercises, students improve their ability to perform in cognitively challenging future endeavors in school and work.
2024 students highlighted that they most improved in:
Teamwork and leadership
Complex problem-solving and critical thinking
Communication and presentation
Adaptability, motivation, and grit
Learning from giving and receiving feedback
The Course exists to give students an introduction to developing key attributes and increasing their rate of learning throughout their lives. Over these two weeks, students learn the answers to the following questions:
How does each key skill and attribute affect their performance and development?
How will they use these skills & attributes to succeed in the workplace?
What can they do in their own lives to most effectively grow stronger in these?
How can they increase their total rate of learning in any situation?
How can they iteratively explore and test what they are motivated and passionate about?
Students consciously practice and reflect on using these attributes throughout the course to accelerate their development for years to come.
Example Challenges
Each day, a Challenge stands as the centerpiece of learning and growth. Each challenge roughly looks like:
A business-like or engineering-like goal and a minimum set of boundaries
A limited set of resources (time, money, etc)
Guidance on where to begin learning what to do and what it takes to win
Facilitators use the socratic method and spot feedback to help students maximize learning and not get too stuck.
While we don’t share the details of most our challenges (so as to not ruin the surprise), a few look like this:
Build a device to consistently achieve an objective, with highly limited building resources and time
Help a simulated startup fix product-market fit issues
Solve supply chain problems
Diagnose and fix a car that won’t start (without a mechanic)
Students attack and solve the problem, present their solution and approach to peers and facilitators, and discuss how they’ll incorporate feedback into the next day’s challenge.
Coaching and Mentoring
Students are each assigned a coach for their team and themselves individually. Coaches are present during challenges and modules to provide immediate feedback and take notes. In the afternoons and evenings, coaches meet with teams and individuals with two goals in mind:
Help teams incorporate direct feedback and learning from the challenge in order to iteratively improve their performance the next day
Help the individual students overcome their own psychological barriers to growth, and help them find their inner motivation
We draft our coaches from top universities such as MIT, Tufts, Dartmouth, and Exeter. We train them in the feedback and coaching methods used in top management consulting firms, and continue coaching them throughout the program.
The majority of our students said that the passion and talent of their coaches was even more important than the quality of the curriculum.
What Students Learned: In Their Own Words
Daily Structure of the Course
Overview of a key attribute or skill and why it matters
Identifying current strengths in these attributes and skills
Small group research on how they are developed
Preparing for the small group challenge
Taking on the challenge!
Presenting how the group approached the challenge
Feedback between groups about performance, presentation strength, and what could have gone better
Group and individual coaching with facilitators to accelerate development in top-priority areas
What Students Get in the Course
Increased confidence to take on ambiguous, complex challenges in the future
Improved understanding of how to perform, communicate, give feedback, and work in teams
Knowledge of how to increase performance and self-motivation
Understanding of strengths & development areas in key skills & attributes
Paths to continuously improve these skills
Personalized growth plan from the lead facilitators
The 2025 Skills for Success Course In Brief
For: Ages 15-18
Scored PSAT 1150+, SAT 1250+, SSAT 80th+, or ACT 25+
(UK: combined score of 63 across GCSE grades or 7+ holistically)
(Other cognitive ability scores are accepted)
When:
Late June, 2025 (likely June 15 - June 27)
Early July, 2025 (Likely June 29 - July 11)
Late July, 2025 (Likely July 13 - July 25)
Where: Boston University, Boston, MA
Cost: $5,690
Admissions & Tuition
Applying to the Skills for Success Course
Futures Forge welcomes high school students and graduates to apply if they have scored at least 1150 on their PSAT, 1200 on their SAT, 25 on their ACT, or over 80th percentile on most other standard cognitive exams. UK students are invited to apply if they have at least a combined score of 63 across GCSE grades or 7+ holistically, and students of other nationalities may submit any cognitive ability or IQ test. Those yet to take such a test will be invited to take the Ravens Progressive Matrices (RPM) to qualify.
While spots are limited, these cognitive ability tests are sufficient to qualify. Qualified students will be invited to information sessions with facilitators and founders, and interviewed for their ability to operate in complex social dynamics.
Tuition
Costs are $5,690 total, including all teaching, materials, room and board, and meals. Some spending money is encouraged.
Scholarships
Scholarships are available based on a combination of demonstrated cognitive ability, interview strength, and demonstrated financial need. In order to be eligible for a scholarship, you must declare for Block 2 (Scholarship). Note that scholarship funds are limited; qualified test scores do not guarantee a scholarship award. Those who receive a Scholarship offer will need to go through a diligence process to confirm financial need.
90th-97th percentile test scores prequalify for a Half Scholarship (50% of fees)
98th+ percentile scores prequalify for a Full Scholarship
Full Scholars are expected to provide $990 to support room & boarding expenses.
