Apple Opens Applications for Swift Student Challenge 2024: Know Dates, Eligibility, Rewards

Apple has begun inviting applications for its annual Swift Student Challenge, a global competition for students who aspire to become developers. The competition requires participants to showcase their coding skills and creativity through its app playgrounds. Every year, the Cupertino-based tech giant recognises 350 winners among the participants. This year, Apple will also pick 50 outstanding submissions from the 350 winners and those participants will be invited to company headquarters in Cupertino.

Apple Swift Student Challenge 2024 eligibility criteria

The Swift Student Challenge landing page is now live and interested students can begin applying to the competition. Apple's eligibility criteria require applicants to be 13 years or older in the US and 16 years or older in the European Union. In other regions, relevant jurisdiction applies.

The applicants also need to either be enrolled in an accredited academic institution or official homeschool equivalent, be enrolled in a STEM organization's educational curriculum, be enrolled in an Apple Developer Academy, or graduated from high school or equivalent within the past 6 months and be awaiting acceptance or have received acceptance to an accredited academic institution.

Apple Swift Student Challenge 2024 Rules

Participants will have to build an interactive scene in either Swift Playgrounds or Xcode on a topic of their choice among the ones provided. The former is an app playground for those who are very new to coding, and the latter caters to those who are proficient in it. The created playground experience should not exceed the 3-minute mark. The submission should be in app playground format (.swiftpm) in a ZIP file. The file should be playable offline and should include all necessary resources in the file. The size of the ZIP file should not exceed 25MB.

The app playground should be built with and run on Swift Playgrounds 4.4 or later, which requires iPadOS 16 or macOS 13.5, or later, or Xcode 15 on macOS 13.5, or later.

Apple Swift Student Challenge 2024 Rewards

Like every year, Apple will pick 350 winners. These winners will get recognition from the tech giant and get a one-year membership of the Apple Developer Program, a voucher that will allow the winners to take an App Development with Swift certification exam, and a gift from Apple.

However, this year, 50 outstanding submissions will be picked by Apple as ‘Distinguished Winners' and they will be invited to its Cupertino headquarters for three days in summer. During the trip, the selected winners will get a chance to interact with Apple experts and engineers, participate in activities, and more, the company said. The travel and lodging will be borne by the tech giant.