BCT 2025 - Powerful, New Educational Component To Boston JerkFest

BCT - Boston area College Tour - is a new STEM talent pipeline initiative for high school students that provides curated tours of MIT and Harvard. Talented students receive in-person exposure to determine fit with the universities and decide whether to apply for admission. Note that MIT and Harvard are tuition free for admitted students whose family incomes are under $200,000

On Friday, July 11, 2025, 45 students, parents, and guardians, traveling mostly from NYC area, participated in the inaugural BCT. BCT coincided and collaborated with the 12th annual Boston JerkFest, a 2-day Caribbean food and music festival, at the Harvard University athletic fields adjacent to Harvard Business School and the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Special features of the MIT tour were:

  • a 60-minute activity session only for high school students while parents toured the MIT Museum, and

  • a 45-minute lunch and talk session where high school students and parents could pose additional questions to four rising 2nd year MIT students and a PhD alumnus (pictured in the above gallery and wearing name tags). LinkedIn profiles of the MIT students and alumnus were shared a few days earlier with tour participants to facilitate more effective networking.

The MIT & Harvard tours had presentations by admissions officers Trinidad Carney at MIT and Ian McLean at Harvard. One-hour campus tours were conducted by current college students.

Most BCT participants did a day trip, but a few enjoyed the full BCT/Boston JerkFest 3-day experience (Thu-Sat nights) hosted at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Some BCT participants organized their own visit to Northeastern University on Saturday morning. We’ll attempt to add Northeastern University & Boston University to the tour options for BCT 2026!

Here’s a video recap of the 3-day 2025 BCT/Boston JerkFest experience. Video captures only a fraction of the experience. For example, I tasted the best ever jerk chicken meal. It was plated by Chef Audley “Skills” Mills, the winner of the Jerk Chef Cook-Off Contest!

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