What is Swift Student Challenge? How to Apply in WWDC [2024]

For the past few years prior to Apple’s WWDC event, Apple organizes the Swift Student Challenge.

This Challenge opens the opportunity door for the students to show their creativity and coding skills, and the winners get a chance to attend the conference and can meet with Apple experts.

In my view, other big companies should also organize such competitions for students because challenges like these lift out the hidden strength in our youth which we never even knew existed!

What do you say?

What is Swift Student Challenge?

Swift is basically a language provided by Apple. This allows you to write your apps in coding for their products through Swift Playgrounds.

The Swift Playground lets you create an app on the topic of your choice and publish it by using the iPad or Mac.

For this year’s challenge Apple said:

Swift Playground is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that makes learning the Swift programming language interactive and fun. For this year’s challenge, students from around the world are invited to create a Swift Playgrounds app project on a topic of their choice and they can submit their work through April 24.

By using the Swift Playground, you have to create an interactive scene that must have a runtime of three minutes. And the judgment is done on the bases of:

the creativity of ideas,
the content of written responses, and
technical accomplishment

How Can I Apply?

You must pass these eligibility criteria to submit your information to the challenge.

Be 13 years of age or older in the United States, or the equivalent minimum age in the relevant jurisdiction [for example, 16 years of age in the European Union]
Be registered for free with Apple as an Apple developer or be a member of the Apple Developer program; and
Fulfill one of the following requirements:
- Be enrolled in an accredited academic institute or official homeschool equivalent;
- Be enrolled in a STEM organization’s educational curriculum;
- Be enrolled in an Apple Developer Academy; or
- Have graduated from High School or equivalent within the past 6 months and be awaiting acceptance or have received acceptance to an accredited academic institute.
- and not be employed full-time as a developer

You can receive the award or WWDC scholarship only four times.

If you are eligible for the challenge, click here to see the list of documents you have to submit and the can apply here.

What do the winners get?

Winners of the 2020’s Swift Students Challenge received an exclusive WWDC20 jacket and pin set, and they were able to request WWDC20 lab appointments and post about WWDC content on the all-new.

Winners of the 2021’s Swift Student Challenge received a WWDC gear, a customized pin set, and a one-year membership in the Apple Developer Program.

And winners of the 2022’s Swift Student Challenge received exclusive WWDC22 outerwear, a customized pin set, one-year membership in the Apple Developer program, and an unexpected bonus this year, Apple says they are also giving free AirPods pro to the winners.