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What is the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship

The Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship awards $40,000 ($10,000 for each of the 4 years of college). It also gives recipients a programming internship at Amazon the summer after their freshman year of college. In this blog post I talk about how I won the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship in April 2022 and more information about the program. They sent me lots of PDFs with information about the program, so I am including some of that information down below too.

As of 2023, they are accepting 400 students each year for the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship. Many websites say that on average 4,000 high schoolers apply for this scholarship every year. In 2022, 250 students were selected for the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship. Prior to 2022, only 100 people received the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship each year.

Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship Acceptance rate

The Amazon Future Engineer scholarship acceptance rate is 10%. Around 4,000 students apply each year and 400 are accepted.

How much does Amazon Future Engineer internship pay?

My stipend as an Amazon Future Engineer intern this summer is going to be $9,138 per month in Bellevue, Washington, so around $27k altogether before tax for 3 months. They have a couple different locations that interns were randomly assigned to. Examples include California, New York, Seattle, and Bellevue. On top of the monthly $9,138 salary, I was paid $7,106.67 in total for housing for the 3 months that I will be there. I was paid the $7,106.67 upfront in April before my internship started. However, I did have to accept my offer letter before they sent this payment.

Is Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship real?

The Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship is a real scholarship for students interested in computer science. It awards $40,000 ($10,000 each of the four years of college) and a programming internship at Amazon after your freshman year of college. Students are also eligible for a return offer.

If you are accepted, Amazon will mail you a $10,000 check each of your four years of college. The check was written out to my college like from Amazon to [X] University. Then I had to give it to my college.

More about the Amazon Future Engineer internship

Amazon paid for my flight to my internship in Bellevue and back to Chicago where I live. If you do get this program, you will most likely have to fly to another state for your internship. But do know that you don’t have to do the internship in order to maintain the scholarship. You are responsible for finding housing out there yourself. There is a Discord groupchat that us Amazon Future Engineer interns have where you can find housing. I would also recommend checking out Facebook marketplace to find a cheap room to rent.

I was able to book my plane tickets in April 2023 before leaving. Interns are eligible for a return offer if they do well in their first internship. Most interns get a return offer.

I’m not sure how hard the internship is, but they said we would be using Java, Python, or JavaScript in the internship. Also, Amazon offers you the option of two separate types of internships: a software engineering internship or a hardware internship.

If you are accepted they expect you to attend a couple Zoom meetings that are like info sessions about the program. These Zoom meetings occurred in the summer, fall, winter, and spring prior to my internship. You also get to meet some of the other interns in these Zoom sessions.

But the emails with information such as your official Amazon offer letter with your stipend amount and internship location, how to book your flights, and how to get your housing stipend comes around March and April of the spring before your internship. However, as of April 2023 I still don’t know the exact team I will be on yet. They say they will email me my exact team closer to my start date.

Below is some more helpful info from PDFs I was emailed from the Amazon Future Engineer team about the program:

You’ll be assigned a project to complete on your own or with a small team of fellow interns that has a real impact on your team or Amazon customers. You’ll get to ship code to production at Amazon after just your freshman year! The first few weeks usually consist of creating a design document or writing a project plan, and the remainder of the internship is left to work on developing your project.

Your fellow AFE interns will be your support system. You’ll be connected to them through Slack channels, events, and your project and you’ll be there to support each other through challenges and successes.

According to a PDF I was sent: At the end of your AFE internship, interns will meet with their manager to discuss how they’ve grown and can be eligible to return to Amazon for a second internship the following
year. As an Amazon intern, you also get access to programs like ML University, Amazon intern hackathons, and resources to learn about AWS. There are additional AFE perks such as exclusive talks, hackathons, an assigned Amazon mentor, and swag/ goodies.

Q: What kinds of projects do interns work on?
A: The AFE internship is a computer science internship that help prepare AFE interns for a Software Engineering (SDE) job at Amazon or any other company. Interns work on a variety of projects across Amazon. What all projects have in common is that you’ll be working on
products that impact Amazon teams or customers and that the project will be scoped with your
level of expertise in mind. You may work on something like Amazon’s devices (Alexa, kindle
etc.), Prime Video, our consumer business (the amazon.com site), Amazon Web Services, or
some of the central business units that power internal Amazon workings.

Q: Is the internship required in order to maintain the scholarship?
A: Nope! The internship is optional and you do not need to participate in the internship in order
to maintain the scholarship award. That being said, it’s an incredible opportunity and we really
hope you participate!
Q: How long is the internship and when are the specific start dates?
A: The internship is 12 weeks long and specific start dates will be shared after you accept your
initial offer. This is a summer internship offer only, and there will be start dates available to
match any university schedule.
Q: How many hours a week will I be working and how much will I be paid?
A: The typical work week is 40 hours and payment details will be shared through your offer
letter.
Q: How will housing work (will it be provided or will I have to find it
independently)?
A: You will receive a housing stipend to cover housing costs. Details will be sent in your offer
package in early 2023. There are a variety of intern groups to connect and find housing
together.
Q: Does Amazon cover travel to/ from my work location?
A: Yes! Amazon will book a flight to and from your work location.

Amazon believes that supporting students with low computer science skills is important for their education. It’s also essential to build a diverse tech industry.

When are amazon future engineer scholarship winners announced?

For this scholarship, Amazon will tell your recommender for the Amazon scholarship first that you won it so that your recommender can surprise you. They will also send you an official email later that you won it of course. My reccommender was emailed by Amazon in the beginning of April that I won it and he suprised me with it. So, decisions for the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship are announced early April.

Alternatively I’ve also read on Reddit that one person had a random Amazon package sent in the mail to them that contained their scholarship award. My recommender got an email April 3rd that I had got it.

How to win the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship?

In order to win the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship, you should do well academically, demonstrate financial need, as well as have technology based extracurriculars. To select 400 winners across the country, they must first meet the below requirements.

Requirements for the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship

U.S. Citizen, Permanent Resident, or Employment Authorized to work in the United States.
High school senior in the U.S. enrolled in/completed a computer science, engineering, or robotics course or opt-in for an assessment by Amazon.
Planning to attain a bachelor’s degree in a related field of study from an accredited 4-year college or from a 2-year college with intent to transfer to a 4-year college.
Minimum cumulative GPA of 2.3 on a 4.0 scale (or equivalent).
Must demonstrate financial need. This is usually based on household income

They care about how well you do in class, primarily based upon your GPA. They also look for Computer science experience – For example, after-school competitions, competitions, self taught learning, hackathons, and more. They also say they look for work experience. You also have to submit a few short essay responses (I’ve listed my responses below that won me it). They say they also like diversity in race, gender and ethnicity.

They say they’ll review all areas of your application when you submit it. This will give them a complete picture about your suitability for the scholarship.

The Amazon Future Engineer program was launched in 2018 as a comprehensive childhood-to-career program aimed at increasing access to computer science education for students from underserved and underrepresented communities. The program offers various initiatives, including scholarships, internships, and Amazon Future Engineer Robotics grants to K-12 schools across the United States, in an effort to inspire and empower the next generation of computer scientists.

Ethnicity/interests that won me the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship

For my ethnicity, I put I was Hispanic or Latino. The Amazon Future Engineer program seeks out/likes underrepresented people for this specific program, so be sure to put you are an underrepresented minority if you are one. For my field of study I put Science/Math/Technology. My GPA was a 3.90 at the time of applying as well. See the below screenshot. For my grades, I received 3Bs in my freshman year second semester and the rest were As on the transcript that I submitted to them. This Link contains a copy of my transcript.

My stats and financial info that won me the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship

I submitted my mother’s financial aid information who makes $65,000 a year. The below screenshot is what I put for the financial section of the application.

I also submitted to them my 1480 on the SAT (750 reading, 730 math). The high school I went to is also selective and prestigious which might have helped.

In addition, the application also has a section that asks you to put your first preference college/dream school is or you can put the college you will be attending. At the time of applying for this scholarship, I hadn’t heard back from any colleges yet since I applied regular decision everywhere, so I put Stanford University because that is my dream school. Application readers might have interpreted this as me saying I will be going to Stanford. Who knows? Maybe they just liked my ambition that I put Stanford. I guess this shows it might help your scholarship application to put a reach school that is good in computer science!

My extracurriculars and awards

I didn’t put any descriptions for the extracurriculars I did since there was no room to, so they didn’t have any descriptions of what I actually did in my extracurriculars. All they had was the title of what I had done as you can see in the screenshots below:

If you’re looking at my award in the screenshot above and are wondering what a National Honorable Mention from NCWIT is, it’s basically a computer science award that high school girls apply for. The award is based on aspirations and involvement in computing. The National Honorable Mention was an 11% acceptance rate. It was 360 chosen out of 3600. Note that this wasn’t the highest possible award that NCWIT offers (the national honorable mention was the second highest). They have a National Winner one which is 50 chosen out of 3600.

In addition, I believe something that really helped my application was the website I created horizonworldwide.org, as well as my internship for a website developer and the recommendation that he wrote for me for this program.

The recommendation letter that won me the scholarship

The application says that they only want a teacher recommendation, but I felt that my teachers didn’t know me well enough to write me a good recommendation so I emailed the Amazon Future Engineer email and asked them if I could get a recommendation from my website development supervisor and they said yes, so that’s where I got my recommendation. Here is the Link to it.

The essays that won me the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship

First prompt:

Describe your career goals and aspirations. How do you plan to use your computer science degree to accomplish your goals? (1000 character limit including spaces).

My response:

My passion is helping others and my fields of interest grew around this base. Ever since I was little I have wanted to be an elected official. I have always felt like it would be so fulfilling to serve people every day while being able to help any field by changing policies of that field. Politics is something I want to get more involved in. I also love computer science because I have seen how it can influence any field. I am drawn to entrepreneurship as well because I have seen how it can help solve real-world problems fast. I envision myself making use of programming in order to aid my marketing efforts, whether it be for my own entrepreneurial venture or my political campaign for office. Many marketing softwares are built using programming. Because of my desire to help others, I will continue to use computer science to accomplish any end goal I want, whether it be getting involved in research or building a website or app for a problem I believe in.

Second prompt:

At Amazon, we have 16 leadership principles that we use to drive our business. Every software engineer is expected to “think big” and demonstrate “customer obsession”. To demonstrate your ability to think big and have customer obsession, pick a big problem in your school or your community that you think could be solved with the help of computer science. Describe the problem, the impact it has, and describe your “think big” solution that uses computer science tools. (1000 character limit including spaces).

My response:

A problem I see is a lack of youth involvement in the community and in extracurriculars. When people are young they should be encouraged to be hardworking and involved. When people are young they are easier to change. With the help of the website developer I intern for, I coded horizonworldwide.org, a website that helps high schoolers find internships. Recently, I have landed a marketing internship for Scaling Savages. I was looking for a marketing internship to help me scale my website. My supervisor here has a software that scrapes leads off of social media and messages them. We are also building up the social media accounts for my website. He said that I could get involved with coding for other marketing softwares, which includes doing Python. He said that he could compensate me for doing work for him by helping me scale my website. We have to utilize customer obsession when thinking about who would be most effective to target when finding leads using these softwares.

Unusual circumstances section

This section says: Please describe how and when any unusual family or personal circumstances have affected your achievement in school, work experience, or your participation in school and community activities. (1000 character limit including spaces).

Amazon Future Engineer Ambassador Program (For selected scholars only)

The Amazon Future Engineer Scholar Ambassador program is a unique opportunity for selected Scholars to give back to their community and help promote the Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship. As an Ambassador, you will collaborate closely with other Scholars and leaders at Amazon to provide input and feedback on Amazon Future Engineer products and concepts. You will also help spread the word about the scholarship’s goal to provide more equitable access to computer science degrees.

The program is a one-year commitment and includes virtual meetings every month, as well as potential participation in other small group feedback sessions. The program is designed to help Scholars build deeper relationships with one another and leaders at Amazon while contributing to the company’s efforts to expand access to computer science education.

I am applying for this program now and here is my response to

Prompt 1: What is one idea or concern that you would like to solve as an Amazon Future Engineer Scholar Ambassador?

As an Amazon Future Engineer Scholar Ambassador, one of my key aspirations is to help young people pursue entrepreneurship by providing them with mentorship opportunities. Starting a business can be a daunting task, and many aspiring entrepreneurs struggle to find the right guidance and support to bring their ideas to fruition. I want to be able to have resources for the other Amazon Future Engineers so that we can create businesses. Therefore, I believe that by helping individuals connect with experienced and knowledgeable mentors, we can equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their entrepreneurial endeavors. By facilitating mentorship programs and resources, we can create a community of innovators who are empowered to create meaningful change in the world of business.

Other resources:
You can check out my post on computer science internships for high school students.

Reading my guide on what qualities colleges look for can help you with writing application essays for scholarships and colleges because you will want to show these qualities throughout applications. You can also read my post on the best colleges for computer science.